Walgreens "Coupon Fraud" johnson city, Tennessee

I worked at Walgreens for a little less than three months in 2009. When I was  being trained, I was told by numerous employees that if the customers did not want their register rewards, you could  throw them away, give them to the next customer, or if there were no more customers, you could keep them. I was young and naive, and took their word for it without asking the managers.

I knew of several employees who would also bring back items they had purchased when they had register rewards to obtain the coupons. I was almost to where I was going to start drawing benefits around the three month mark. Being told it was alright by previous employees, I had taken 2 $1 register rewards and one $5. The rest of the register rewards I had, I had purchased the items. I did not take these from any customers, they were ones found in the floor or parking lot. I used them to buy food one day, and this coworker that had hated me from day one reported me, after urging me to use all of the reigster rewards I had, even those that I had gotten from purchases. The vast majority of workers at this store use register rewards that they have obtained both by purchase and by other means.

The next week I was called into a small room in the back with a man from LP and the store manager (and I was extremely ill at the time with 2 inner ear infections and sinus infections). They had me sit in this cold room with them drilling me for quite a while. The man from LP said that They had been investigating me for a week, saying that I had used numerous coupons that I stole from customers, though I was certain their investigation consisted of ONLY asking this employee what happened and taking her word for it. They did not present me with any video evidence of me doing anything wrong. They claimed that these register rewards could be tracked (they cannot be especially if they were obtained by cash). He made me sign a note saying that I took these rewards. I tried to explain to them that I had no idea that it was against the rules. No police were present, so this was not a criminal case.

They took the money out of my paycheck and said that I would be contacted by their lawyer to pay a large fine of several hundred dollars to pay the salaries of the managers that had to investigate the "case". I was also told that I would have fraud put on my record. I waited for 4 months for the notice from their lawyer and it never came, and I had to move. The fraud did not turn up on my record until this year (it has been almost two years since the incident).

I have since found out that walgreens and their employees do this all the time.

What is going on here?