Why should’t I do background checks myself?

Why should’t I do background checks myself?

 

Why do I need Loss Prevention Systems to conduct a pre-employment background checks when I could do some of this myself?

  • A Background Check Company does the work for you, on time and quickly.
  • We understand and abide by the extensive and ever changing Federal, State and Local government laws and regulations.
  • We search actual court house records for criminal histories. Many background check companies use commercial databases that are not complete, do not have current information and in most cases do not have any real information
  • Would you want to know if the applicant is a registered sex offender? If you own a daycare center or other company where children are at this is important information. But this also applies to your employee’s safety. Having a male sex offender working with a woman could cause you extensive risk. How would you feel if something were to happen you could have prevented. By the way, the laws do not allow a defense of “I did not know”. As an employer you have an obligation to know.
  • Does your company employ drivers? A motor vehicle check could uncover a suspended license and prior traffic convictions. Do you want a driver with your name on his uniform driving your vehicle on a suspended or revoked license?
  • We have tools to uncover details that an applicant may be trying to hide from you such as previous employers they do not want you to see. Did you know that one of the most lied about items on resumes and applications are the dates of employment?
  • In special investigative cases we can dig even deeper into a candidate’s background. In many instances the tools we use can give us so much information it can be overwhelming. In those special investigation we can give you the raw data or we can sort through it for you.
  • Loss Prevention Systems sticks with you throughout the process. Do not understand what all of those criminal charges mean? We can help you with that.
  • Need a rejection letter because the candidate did not meet your background check standards? We provide that template to you.
  • Want your background checks FAST? How about same day or next day turnaround as the norm for most checks.
  • Want to talk to a real person where you are not just some account number? In fact we do not even have account numbers. We have clients that we know by name and their changing needs. Loss Preventions goal is to be your partner and stand with you. When you call or email us you reach the same person that knows who YOU are.
  • Our software platform is state of the art. We are connected in some cases directly to the government databases that provide criminal records. This eliminates the middleman and gives us much more reliable information.
  • If we see something suspicious we let you know. This give YOU control over your background investigations.

Exceptional Sale – Employee Theft – Atlanta Gerogia

When you are wondering if you have an internal theft situation, you can turn to exception based reporting to help guide you.
The exception based reporting is just that- exceptions to typical conduct, generally found on the POS system.
For example, if a cashier conducts a “NO Sale” They are generally opening the cash register drawer without conducting a sale. A legitimate reason for doing this would be because they incorrectly gave back a customer change, and need to fix it.
In exception based reporting, a second criteria is added- no sale following a voided transaction. That could mean that the employee rang up a customer who was going to pay in cash. Instead of hitting total at the end of the transaction, they voided the transaction out completely.
To make sure the customer still thinks they are buying your product, the cashier hits NO SALE and takes the customer’s money and gives them back their proper change.
Since the transaction was never completely processed, there is now additional cash in the drawer. At some point, the cashier will take this extra cash and pocket it, creating an employee theft situation. You would not see a cash shortage, but an inventory shortage.
In order to investigate this employee theft situation, you would either need to take a physical inventory of every single item in your store on a daily basis (not very realistic) or you could implement exception based reporting.
For more information on employee theft, employee theft investigation or internal theft contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 – Atlanta Georgia

Bottom of Basket- Employee Theft

I remember working an employee theft investigation regarding a cashier, who was ringing up her boyfriend. Underneath his cart was about $300 dollars in product that she did not charge him for. Because she did not want to draw attention to this merchandise not being paid for, she left them under the cart.
Unfortunately for her, but lucky for us, she did not realize that the items had RF tags on them. When the boyfriend tried to leave, he set off the alarms at the door alerting everyone around to the situation.
I did some research as part of that employee theft case. The girlfriend had been passing off merchandise for several months. It was probably longer than that, but they had left a trail of paperwork that we could follow.
Some of the stolen goods were returned without a receipt so a merchandise credit was issued. Because it is an in store credit, we could track all of the purchases that card made.
Each time they used the merchandise card to pay for a transaction, we saw more merchandise being passed off at the register. They would then return that product and get a new merchandise store credit that we could track. And so the cycle was established.
It’s hard enough to think that one of your own employees has been stealing from you. It’s even harder to think that often, internal theft involves either multiple employees or an employee working with someone outside the company like a friend, a relative, or even a vendor.
For more information on employee theft, employee theft investigation or internal theft contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 – Atlanta Georgia

Is there a primary reason or cause for Employee Theft? – Atlanta Georgia

If you are currently operating a business with less than 100 employees, lack of internal controls will be the biggest internal control weakness allowing employees to steal. According to the 2010 Global Fraud Study published by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, “Lack of Internal Controls” is the leading cause for employee theft at a rate of 47 percent. If you are operating a business with more than 100 employees, your chances are slightly improved and lack of internal controls is the cause of employee theft at a decreased percentage – 33.7 percent. Regardless of the size of your business, not having internal processes and procedures in place or adhering and/or enforcing them is the leading contributor to employee theft.

As a business leader you have total control over the internal procedures you have put in place and the processes that you follow day in and day out. We see our margins decreasing yet we elect to do little about enforcing our existing control or improving our internal controls. Shame on us!

But what are some of the reasons why businesses do not put sufficient emphasis on internal controls? We have good intentions by implementation processes and procedures to protect our businesses but if we don’t enforce them sufficiently, we are making idle threats and employees may not take us seriously. By drawing a line in the sand and making a stand on employee theft issues, we send a clear message to our associates indicating that employee theft or lesser violations will not be tolerated under any circumstances.

Other times we may get so busy with running our businesses which makes it hard for us to enforce our own procedures. Unfortunately those are the times that we may be faced with another serious employee theft investigation or a series of employee theft instances. Want to bring employee theft under control once and for all? Make your line in the sand a granite wall with no compromise that the waves will not affect.

We know from long experience in the loss prevention field that there are many reasons that employees steal. Some of those reasons involve greed, want or a need of some kind. We as employers can do little to effect the reasons except to do the best we can to screen out potential problems such as candidates with poor criminal histories; candidates that have a poor credit history who may be handling our money and drug abusers top the list.

For more information about employee theft contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 – Atlanta Georgia

Are you in need of Loss Prevention Consultants? – Atlanta Georgia

Have you reviewed your recent inventory numbers and wondered why your inventory losses have increased? If that is the case you may benefit from the expertise of trained professionals who can take a look at your business and create an effective loss prevention program. Loss Prevention Consultants are trained specialists in the area of inventory shrinkage control.

When a shoplifter first enters your store, he/she does not want to draw any kind of attention. Loss Prevention Consultants can assist in raising the level of awareness to provide the best possible customer service by greeting customers as soon as they enter the store. This raised level of attention displayed by your employees may very well deter a shoplifter.

Loss Prevention Consultants can help you create business plans and policies to decrease your shrinkage numbers. For example, if your business has a fitting room, consultants may suggest that employees physically handle all clothing that goes into the room, and that the fitting room never be left unattended. Shoplifters choose to conceal merchandise in fitting rooms, so by monitoring what goes into the room this type of theft can be prevented.
Is the layout of your sales floor conducive for shoplifters to pursue their trade? Loss Prevention Consultants can review the layout of your sales floor and make suggestions for improvement.

Loss Prevention Consultants will locate blind corners in your store and offer suggestions to rework the display to possibly open up the aisles to improve visibility of your customers and their actions. Loss Prevention Consultants will look at your sales floor with the same eye as a shoplifter and can easily make suggestions for reducing those blind spots.

High theft items should be located in a high traffic area in the store, away from the entrances. These items should also have good employee coverage so that they can be monitored. By having the merchandise away from the entrance, this can help prevent a shoplifter from grabbing the merchandise and making a quick escape out the doors.

Learn how to curb the opportunities for shoplifters to pursue their trade by hiring Loss Prevention Consultants.

For more information contact your loss prevention consultants or call 1.770.426.0547 – Atlanta Georgia

Can someone truly steal more than $121,000 from a convenience store?

After having noticed irregularities during an audit, the owner of a convenience store in the Metro Atlanta area contacted us indicating being suspicious of employees involved in lottery theft.

Where would you start when assigned a task like this? First we needed to gather additional information which the loss prevention investigator did with the use of two covert closed circuit TV cameras installed to view the cashiers’ area and the lottery machine. Video confirmed that the store manager, who had been employed for several years, was routinely stealing large quantities of lottery scratch off tickets.
Another employee would pocket the cash from cash sales after having given customers their change back from the register.
Once the loss prevention investigator had gathered this information, the convenience store manager could be interviewed. The Atlanta area convenience store manager admitted stealing lottery tickets totaling $111,150.00 and cash in the amount of $6,500.00. The store manager had a gambling problem and stealing lottery tickets satisfied that problem. The cash had been stolen to pay for some bills.
The second employee admitted to stealing approximately $3,400 in cash by ringing up sales and pocketing the cash. The loss prevention manager was able to obtain a confession from this second employee as well who admitted to stealing “spending money”. This employee also indicated knowledge of the manager’s lottery ticket activities. This individual who needed spending money had been employed for a year and a half at the convenience store.
In Atlanta please call us at 770.426.7593.