Avocado crime wave as shoppers pass them off as cheaper carrots at self-service tills

SHOPPERS have been stealing expensive avocados by passing them off as cheaper carrots at self-service tills.

Emmeline Taylor, a senior lecturer in criminology at City University of London, said people switch labels or deliberately input the wrong item to pay less for produce.

She said: “I was working with retailers to reduce shoplifting when one major supermarket discovered it had sold more carrots than it had ever had in stock.

“Puzzled by this development, I looked into its inventories and found that in some cases customers were apparently purchasing 18kg of carrots in one go.

“Unfortunately this wasn’t a sudden switch to healthy eating, it was an early sign of a new type of shoplifter.”