EMPLOYEES STEALING FROM EMPLOYERS

1. Theft of Products

Theft of products is popular because in the majority of cases, the perpetrators are never caught. Often, the theft gets chalked up to inventory errors, unless the employee gets careless or a large volume of product comes up missing in a single inventory period.

We’ve caught employees in the act of stealing everything you can imagine – from soda pop to 3 million dollars worth of computers. We even had a case where a guy had nearly the entire staff stealing from him.

2. Theft of Money

Money can taken be directly from the register, items can never be properly rung up, and theft can occur from bank deposit bags.

3. Theft of Time

Manipulation of time systems is one of the oldest tricks in the book. It’s as simple as not clocking out for lunch or as complicated as having another employee sign you in and out in order to get extra hours. Salaried employees may come in late and leave the office early. We have seen numerous incidents when supervisors set up “phantom employee.” They create timecards for them, generate checks and then cash them at a local liquor store or check cashing agency.

Employers pay a small fortune every year in wages that were not actually earned, and it can have a big impact on the bottom line.

4. Worker’s Compensation Fraud

We regularly investigate worker’s compensation fraud, and come up with evidence that represents the truth. Much of time, these people are genuinely hurt, but often we catch the guy out on the golf course. The video tapes don’t lie either. Make sure though the agency you retain has investigators considered as experts in this arena or they won’t be able to testify if needed in court.

Best Private Investigator to Uncover Employee Expense Fraud

Uncurbed employee expense fraud can lead to big losses in your firm. You can hire a private investigator to find out who is involved. The best private investigators are as good with data as they are discreet. They can conduct covert surveillance and investigation to find out which one of your employees is forging expense receipts and invoices. They check data logs and card usage timelines to identify if personal expenses have been made on your business accounts. The best PIs even interview vendors and deliver a full report to help you take the right HR or legal action.

What to do now?

If you suspect that an employee is stealing, resist the urge to confront them without proper evidence. This is the step that a lot of business owners forget, and it can come back to bite them later.

Trained, male and female professional private investigators can provide this proof. Here’s how.

Business owners and management often ask us to put an undercover agent in businesses to help catch thieves. This is almost never the proper solution, because it’s expensive and time consuming. Professional interview and interrogation techniques from a trained interviewer are more enough to get a confession, and it takes only a few hours. If you have a big problem involving theft amongst multiple employees, trust me when I say that when we get one rat to jump ship, they all jump.

Performing surveillance using proper video equipment and monitoring techniques can catch theft, employee time manipulation, and worker’s comp fraud. It does has to be done correctly, such that the evidence gathered will be admissible in court of law.

Most of the time, these cases do not go to court. But it’s still critical to hire an investigator that produces only court admissible evidence of wrongdoing, and is an expert witness with experience in front of a jury. If you do have to go to court, this will make all the difference.

Peter M. Callahan

Attorney at Law Callahan Thompson Sherman & Caudill, LLP