Employee Theft – It Could be Worse

That’s right, your problems with employee theft could be worse if you had hired a person like the one who worked at the U.S. Marshal’s Service in Washington, D.C.

According to an article at the Examiner online a ten-year employee was sentenced in Federal Court to 21 months in prison plus 3 years probation and restitution of $104,000.

What made this case seem unusual to me were the different ways the former employee who worked as an administrative officer at the Superior Court found to defraud her employer.  None of these ways by themselves are all that unusual, but for one person to come up with these schemes shows that she really put forth some effort to get over on her employer.  Just one avenue of employee theft was not enough.

The ex-employee admitted to:

· Used an agency credit card to pay personal expenses
· Created a fictitious employee and submitted false time and attendance records for that employee for a year, converting the payroll dollars to her use
· Had U.S. Treasury checks issued to pay down the balances on her personal credit cards by referencing false invoices

The grand total of admission was $104,000 – your and my tax money, by the way.  Aand this is probably al she could remember.  Surely there’s more.

Of course the really ironic thing about this article is that the victim was the U. S. Marshal’s Service.

If a federal law enforcement agency can become a victim of employee theft, what chance do the rest of us have?

Lesson learned: Never let one employee, no matter how trusted, take so much responsibility that no supervisor or auditor ever checks up on all their work functions; Require at least two sets of eyes on every disbursement before the money is paid; Audit payroll occasionally; Review company credit card activity often; Trust but verify!

White collar crime has a huge impact on private businesses in every category.  Each business has to take the initiative to protect itself from internal theft.  Loss prevention consultants are business-oriented professionals who act to prevent employee theft through an objective look at the business’ policies and initiate and conduct an employee theft investigation if called for, and bring an unpleasant situation to a satisfactory conclusion.

Call 770-426-0547 to speak with one of our loss prevention consultants about potential employee theft situations or an employee theft investigation at your business, or click here for more information.