Utah shopper duped into buying $1,000 in baby formula in likely scam
Feb 6, 2025, 12:36 PM
SALT LAKE CITY – If you were approached by a mother begging you to help feed her baby, you may be moved to do so. A very similar plea pulled on the heartstrings of Virginia Baird when it happened to her.
“Can you please help me?” asked a woman who approached Baird while she was inside a store. “I need diapers and milk for my baby.”
Baird agreed but when she went to hand over cash, the woman refused.
“She said, ‘No, no – your card is good,’” Baird recounted. “And I thought, oh, she doesn’t want to ask for any more than what she actually needs.”
Inside the woman’s cart wasn’t milk – rather some cans of baby formula. Being put on the spot like she was, Baird hadn’t thought about the cost.
“I had no idea they were $57,” she said.
Virginia and Bob Baird explain to KSL’s Matt Gephardt how a woman at a store tricked Virginia into buying her nearly $1,000 worth of baby formula. (Tanner Siegworth, KSL TV)
She said what happened next felt like a choreographed dance. At the self-checkout, the woman scanned the products and asked Baird to insert her card. At that very moment, another boy stood in a way that prevented her from seeing the total. He also kept talking to her, distracting her.
“’Oh bless you. Thank you so much. Jesus bless you,’” she said the boy told her. “I mean he hugged me, kissed me – woof!”
Then, poof, they quickly walked out the door, hopped into a waiting truck, and sped off. It wasn’t until that moment Baird looked at the receipt and saw she had just spent $948 on baby formula.
“Numb, just numb,” she said of how she felt as she explained it to her husband, Bob Baird.
“Deer in the headlights,” he said of her appearance at that moment.
Virginia and Bob Baird are not alone.
Searching online, I found several social media posts and news articles from all over the country talking about this exact same scheme. And, just last month, a video posted on TikTok showed a Walmart associate confronting a woman believed to have been pulling the same ruse on a customer.
Similar distressed stranger schemes involving baby formula have been reported around the country. (KSL TV)
As for the Bairds, they said they reported it to a store manager and learned they aren’t the only victims here in Utah.
“And she said, ‘Was it a woman and a little boy?’ I said yeah. She said, ‘Oh yeah. They were here yesterday. That’s what they do.’”
All of this of course begs the question; what could a con artist want with a bunch of baby formula? Formula is readily resold online, plus many stores will let you return unopened cans for a cash refund or store credit.
