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
