Employee Theft Investigation Leads to Better Profits – Atlanta Georgia

It’s true. Employee theft investigation can lead to better profits.

Working as a corporate fraud investigator for a specialty retailer with 20 stores, I had my first real observation of just how an employee theft investigation impacts profits. Recently the company had inventory in 10 stores. 8 of these stores did pretty good, some better than expected. However, for two stores, it was clear they had an internal theft problem. One store had shrink as high as 12%. Merchandise was disappearing before it even made it to the floor. My partner and I launched a corporate fraud investigation in each store. During the course of the investigation, we looked at all avenues of employee theft including, POS systems (Registers, checkstands), backroom areas including trash, conducted general interviews of all employees to get a feel of what was happening. As we dug, we uncovered a wealth of information and evidence to prove the high shrink numbers were a direct result of employee theft.

It is pretty well known throughout the retail industry that internal theft is more than 70% of the average retailer’s losses. In some cases, it’s much more. Controlling the effects of internal theft can be difficult if you don’t know what you’re looking for or at. In many cases it takes the help of an outside corporate fraud investigator to really get a good look.

As we continued our corporate fraud investigation, we narrowed our suspects down to 3 main culprits in the first store and 5 in the second. To us, it was clear internal theft caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in loss to this company. We did interviews of the employees and gained confessions from each. Many of the employees admitted to being involved because they were unhappy with the company, the store, the manager or fell on hard times in their personal life.

Employee theft investigation is a must when there are suspicions of employee theft. When I speak to my stores, I constantly share with the management the negative impacts of employee theft and inform the employees of the damages of internal theft.

For more information on employee theft , employee theft investigation , internal theft , corporate fraud investigation or corporate fraud investigator contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 – Atlanta Georgia