[user104658]

Originally Posted by thesheriff443

People tend to be more tolerant of shoplifters, a thief is a thief no matter what they steal, given the opportunity they would steal an old persons purse.

That's not necessarily true to be fair. I know loads of the local ... "colourful characters" ... who will happily scam for as much as they can get in most circumstances / wouldn't think twice about shoplifting from a supermarket or chain store... but if they saw someone stealing from an old person's handbag they'd be the first people chasing them down to hand out some "local justice" and return the purse. There is a really weird sort of "junkie code of honour" that most seem to follow .

And Kizzy is correct; as a society we are much more tolerant of tax evaders and white-collar criminals / scammers ... all of whom take hundreds, if not thousands of times more than a bottle of vodka. I used to know an HMRC employee who personally stole 60k and helped others to steal hundreds of thousands and he got 6 months in an open prison and a slap on the wrist fine (less than the amount he gained) and no one really thought anything of it... he was just as popular locally as he was before he got caught.