Yes Dictograph Corporation in the 1970's and 80's stopped and deterred many shop lifters and employee thieves By leasing to to merchants for $350.00 a month a CCTV Camera system
With its big 3 inch Lens and red blinking light it panned back and forth or was sometimes stationary carefully keeping an eye on shoppers and employees . Some times just 1 camera or as many as 3 to 6 cameras in a business
A warning sign warned that a sophisticated anti theft camera system was deployed
Once a month a technician would come in with his special suitcase go up a ladder open it up pull up an antenna and talk to a person at central control who gave directions how to adjust the camera.
Except the whole thing was a charade the cameras where Fake and the technician talking to master control that was a tape recording he was talking to in the brief case .
One of the most best kept secrets in the industry they pulled it off for several years till thieves figured out what was going on.
I thought all along they where fake but i was in the industry and knew we had fakes I even put up some that looked real at the time and still some times use them strategically along with real cameras to give the impression every area on a floor is being watched.
Plus the trick worked it stopped a lot of problems by being a deterrent .
Of course many business now have cameras and many times they are broken or not working or are of such poor quality the images can not be used in court but all in all dummy cameras have done their job.
