Obviously I'm not a credible source but from first hand experience working at a red circle retail store this is absolutely true. I remember many times people swapping barcodes on expensive lego sets at self checkout. We'd get told on the radio by AP to either let them go or intervene (act like the machine was busted). I was naive but I should have realized sooner it wasn't my fucking job to be in such a situatuon but I wanted approval I guess. We'd hold the machine and reprint the receipt. If you hit $1000 after multiole trips, then cops would be waiting outside or sometimes AP got into altercations if the thief tried to flee before the cops arrived.

They'd almost always let you get away with it on the first offense. Only times I remember them stopping theft was teenagers to give them a scare.