Before we watched startups burn through VC money trying to disrupt retail, the retail industry was already being quietly bled dry from the inside — by housewives with binders. This week, we trace how manufacturer coupons evolved from a Depression-era goodwill gesture into a multi-billion-dollar fraud ecosystem, how TLC's 'Extreme Couponing' accidentally taught millions of people to game a system that was never designed to be gamed, and how one Ohio woman's coupon operation got so sophisticated that Procter & Gamble had to restructure its entire promotions strategy to stop her.