Screenshot : WISN-12 News ( YouTube

Maybe those weird airport self-help books were right. Maybe the key to achieving anything in life is confidence, swagger, acting like you know what you’re doing, faking it ’till you make it, etc. It works for wine tasting, and it seemed to work, temporarily, for one unnamed man who absconded from a Costco in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, on Friday with 24 bottles of Hennessy cognac valued at $1,500.


News station WISN-12 obtained surveillance footage of the man’s journey through the store, which shows him breezing past the registers. He has a momentary interaction with a Costco employee, who then seems to let him exit the store. Smooth talker, eh? How did he explain away these bottles? Where were those famed Costco receipt-checkers?

Police did eventually track down the suspect, who was driving a mini van with Minnesota license plates. He’s been arrested, though police have not released his name or the charges he faces. He also allegedly stole a home surveillance system—probably to safeguard that cognac cache.