A Best Buy employee in Florida has been charged with fraud after allegedly exploiting his manager’s code to apply significant discounts to nearly 150 items. These discounted goods were then purchased and pawned by the employee and his accomplices.
Concerns arose when a manager noticed unusual sales figures starting in December 2024, as reported by an ABC News affiliate in West Palm Beach. Private investigators identified 36-year-old employee Matthew Lettera as the source of these discrepancies. Lettera is accused of making 97 discounted purchases for himself and conducting 52 additional transactions for others, with some MacBooks allegedly discounted by as much as 99 percent. This scheme reportedly caused Best Buy to incur losses exceeding $118,000.
According to a LinkedIn profile that matches Lettera’s details, he began his tenure at Best Buy in January 2020 after transitioning from a career in culinary arts.
An arrest affidavit from the Palm Beach Police Department, reviewed by a local CBS News affiliate, suggests that Lettera’s fraudulent activities commenced in March 2024, roughly four years into his role as an “experience manager” at Best Buy. During this period, he allegedly executed numerous highly discounted transactions, escaping detection for months. The scheme appeared to escalate as Lettera reportedly enlisted colleagues to participate.
Lettera seemingly underestimated Best Buy's management and their efforts to recover the pawns' inventories. His arrest followed a police investigation that traced some of the marked-down MacBooks back to local pawn shops. The shops worked with law enforcement, offering sales documents that allegedly link Lettera to the sale of these considerably discounted items and profiting from manipulating Best Buy’s discount policy.