Can stupid action that looks like theft be criminal? On another site, a third hand story was told: In an office supply store, expensive printers go missing without payment. They find out that an employee is so obsessed with selling extended warranties that when she sells a printer and manages to sell extended warranty as well, she fills out all the forms, charges for the warranty - and forgets charging for the printer. It seems that this is indeed due to stupidity and not intentional. Can she still be guilty of theft? And if a customer walks away, having paid exactly the amount the cashier asked them for, but without having paid for the printer, could that be theft? If not, do they owe the money for the printer?
No. Theft is, in most jurisdiction, an action by which the offender takes another person's property with the intent to permanently deprive them of it. The clerk isn't taking any property from the store, and she doesn't have any intent to deprive the store of anything. She is therefore not guilty of theft. If she were doing this intentionally -- either in league with the customer or even without the customer knowing -- she could likely be held liable for the theft, either on a conspiracy theory or perhaps an innocent-agency theory. The lack of criminal liability of course does not mean that there can be no accountability. The employer is free to terminate the employee, and it will have different options -- depending on jurisdiction -- to recover the value of the uncharged printers, perhaps by docking her paycheck or through a negligence action.
The party that made the overpayment would have the right to sue you for "unjust enrichment" or "breach of contract" (since the terms of service no doubt provide or strongly imply that you are entitled to only one payment per sale), if you didn't voluntarily return the overpayment following a demand to do so, even though you received it through no fault of your own. Most of the core cases involve clerical errors in the bank account number used for a bank deposit. In general, there is a right to recover an accidental transfer of property to another, even in the absence of a clearly applicable contractual arrangement. As another example, if you were accidentally given a valuable coat at a coat check by accident and didn't notice it until later, the true owner would have a right to have it returned. The FTC regulation applies (as demonstrated by the link cited in the question) to intentional unsolicited deliveries of merchandise (which would always be tangible personal property by definition) to you through the mail. It does not apply to transfers of money, or to the accidental mis-delivery of property to the wrong person or the wrong address. The law in question is as follows: 39 U.S. Code § 3009 - Mailing of unordered merchandise (a) Except for (1) free samples clearly and conspicuously marked as such, and (2) merchandise mailed by a charitable organization soliciting contributions, the mailing of un­ordered merchandise or of communications prohibited by subsection (c) of this section constitutes an unfair method of competition and an unfair trade practice in violation of section 45(a)(1) of title 15. (b) Any merchandise mailed in violation of subsection (a) of this section, or within the exceptions contained therein, may be treated as a gift by the recipient, who shall have the right to retain, use, discard, or dispose of it in any manner he sees fit without any obligation whatsoever to the sender. All such merchandise shall have attached to it a clear and conspicuous statement informing the recipient that he may treat the merchandise as a gift to him and has the right to retain, use, discard, or dispose of it in any manner he sees fit without any obligation whatsoever to the sender. (c) No mailer of any merchandise mailed in violation of subsection (a) of this section, or within the exceptions contained therein, shall mail to any recipient of such merchandise a bill for such merchandise or any dunning communications. (d) For the purposes of this section, “un­ordered merchandise” means merchandise mailed without the prior expressed request or consent of the recipient.
If you were to seek legal recourse for breach of contract (their Terms and Conditions), the best outcome you could hope for would be "making whole", and since they have already offered this a court could award you what the retailer already offered, but make legal costs on both sides the plaintiff's liability (ie. you), since you could have taken the offer and avoided court. The Terms and Conditions associated with the discount code mean that you won't be able to return the gift cards for cash. It will be argued that by using the code, you agreed to those terms and conditions. The second paragraph of their reply looks like an attempt to scare you, but it has legal merit. By using the unauthorised code you could be considered to have made false representation when you entered into the contract. This could render the contract void, and if they could demonstrate it had been done deliberately to gain money it could meet the threshold for fraud (which is what the police would possibly investigate : if it can be shown that you were aware the discount code didn't apply to you it would constitute making "a false representation ... to make a gain for himself" [sub-paragraphs 1-5, paragraph 2 of the Fraud Act 2006]). You may be able to argue that the voucher websites misled you (though it sounds like you, I and the retailer already know that's not true), but since the retailer has offered to repay what you paid there are unlikely to be any damages - and, unless the voucher site took commission from your transaction, a contract between you and the voucher sites would be difficult (possibly impossible) to establish. In the circumstances, returning what you originally paid is a good offer.
Whether or not this would be allowed would generally call for a more fact rich situation than the one presented in the original question, that would cast light upon why a retailer might be inclined to refuse to accept payment. Hypothetical legal questions that presume that people are acting irrationally for no good reason are generally ill posed and don't have meaningful answers. Sometimes, there might be a legitimate privacy interest implicated if the invoicing party acknowledged a payment from a third party. For example, suppose that the invoice was for a paternity test and payment would confirm that the incapacitated person actually obtained a paternity test. Sometimes, there are legal rights beyond payment that are implicated and the reasonableness of a refusal might hinge on those rights. For example, suppose that the invoice was for an option to keep using an oil well. Payment of the invoice by the deadline would keep the oil well operating and the land owner sending the invoice might prefer that it not be paid so that the oil well would be shut down. Quite a few contracts are structured in this way. Maybe the invoice was for the right to purchase a first edition of a book when it was finally released, for example, and not paying it would free up a copy for someone else at a price that had increased in the meantime. Or, suppose that the invoice were for unpaid taxes and payment of the taxes would prevent property from being seized for sale by tax authorities, and the taxing authority would prefer that the invoice was not paid so that the valuable property could be liquidated. But, it is hard to imagine that there would be any reason that an ordinary retailer with an ordinary bill would ever refuse payment, although I suppose that this might trigger an interest or penalty amount owed under the contract for late payment. If that were the case, the principal of mitigation of damages, which says that a party to a contract must take all reasonable steps to mitigate their damages, might obligate the retailers to accept the payment or forfeit the penalty amounts that the retailer could have avoided as damages by accepting payment. I doubt that an undelivered tender of payment from a third party would eliminate the obligation, but, it might limit the damages that could be claimed as in the scenario above.
No, it does not. There is indeed a 2-year guarantee for all goods, but "goods" is defined to be a "tangible movable item" according to Directive 1999/44/EC Article 1, subsection 2(b). In less legalese, a physical item; software doesn't count. While there has been discussion about extending this protection to software, I'm not aware of this having been done yet. Even if it were, determining whether goods are "faulty" ultimately comes down to whether it conforms to the contract of sale (Article 2). I think it's likely that vendors in this area would put a disclaimer for unforeseen security vulnerabilities, or something to that effect.
In general, a private seller of second hand goods makes no warranty as to their merchantability or fitness for purpose: the onus is the buyer to find any faults. However, if the seller has taken active steps to conceal the fault for the purposes of the sale then they are responsible. For example the courts have held that a boat placed deliberately on the sand to conceal a hole made the seller responsible while a painting covering a hole in the wall of a house did not because it had been there for many years. Different laws apply if the seller is in the business of selling second hand goods.
Possibly The game company has almost certainly excluded liability under the contract you entered. There may be some consumer protection that you have that they cannot exclude - I don’t know enough about German law to meaningfully comment. Notwithstanding, if you were to initiate legal action against the, as yet, unknown wrongdoer, you could subpoena the relevant records from the game company with a court order. No matter what privacy or other protections the other person has, the game company must obey the order or be in contempt. Without such an order the game company is right that they can’t disclose details of other users. As a practical matter, it will cost several hundred € to initiate legal action and several thousand to pursue it to the end. And you might lose. A better response is to treat the lost €80 as a relatively cheap life lesson - many people lose a lot more learning to recognise scams.
I'm not sure there would be any need - or any ability to bring - any civil action. Forgery would appear to count as a Category D felony under Section 205.090 and, "In addition to any other penalty, the court shall order the person to pay restitution.", so person "a"'s damages should have been met under the process of the criminal prosecution of person "b" for forgery, with nothing further to claim. Person "c" will have stolen a car. Whether that car was legitimately owned by person "a" may only be relevant if person "c" is using their belief that it belonged to person "b" as mitigation (for example recovery of a debt - though it won't help much as this should have been done through proper channels), which again would be a criminal proceeding.