Employee theft of Gift Cards – Atlanta Georgia

There is a new trend of employee theft (also known as internal theft) that I am finding in my stores.  This internal theft concerns gift cards.  Generally gift cards are hard to steal since most don’t have any value until rung in the POS system.  If a cashier tries to ring up a gift card and does not put money in the register then the till will show short and the theft is obvious so this does not happen often.  I completed an employee theft investigation a few months ago that has yielded a new twist and turned into several internal theft investigations.

What I found during this employee theft investigation was that the cashier used coupons to “pay” for the gift card.  Here is how this theft is occurring.  Many stores (especially as we approach the holidays) carry gift cards to a variety of other stores.  Most all stores have in house gift cards available for purchase as well.  The cashier will ring up the gift card when no one is around and then use coupons that have already been redeemed by other customers to “pay” for that gift card.  The register thinks the card was paid for so no shortage occurs in the till.  It is not until you reconcile the coupons that you find that you do not physically have as many as the system shows were redeemed.  In many stores that take in mass quantity of coupons (such as grocery stores) those coupons get sent to a third party and the store may never see the chargeback that hit their cash line when the coupons are “redeemed” with the vendor.

In order to pick up on this type of employee theft I suggest looking at a few things.  First, keep an eye for gift cards and coupons lying around the registers that don’t belong.  Also, look at employee purchases with gift cards and then trace the origin of that card to see how it was valuated.

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