Follow the Paper Trail

I recently concluded an employee theft investigation. This was a little different than ones I had previously worked on. This case of employee theft wasn’t just about an employee in my store stealing; it was about a partnership between an employee and a vendor.

I was noticing through routine audits that paperwork for some direct from vendor merchandise seemed to be incomplete for a very long time. The policy was within 24 hours, but this manager waited for weeks to complete it. After questioning the manager as to why it took so long, and reiterating the 24-hour policy, it still wasn’t completed.

After the first month or so, I noticed serious discrepancies in what we had for inventory and what we had in invoiced amounts. There was an increase in the orders, but no increase in sales or stock levels in the store. I immediately started an employee theft investigation on the manager.

One of the first steps I took to determine if it was an employee theft case was to watch the deliveries on CCTV. Sure enough, this manager greeted the same delivery guy for each order. Then the delivery guy loaded up cases of the product in question. Under normal circumstances, it would not be unusual for this vendor to remove any “old” product. Since the manger did not record and charge the vendor back for these cases (per policy), I knew I had a case of employee theft.

The end result of this employee theft investigation was that the manager let the vendor take out cases of product but never charged them back to the company. This way the vendor kept his high commission of the product. The manager later met up with the vendor and took the cases home with her for personal use.

This was a case where the paper led a trail in an unexpected way to employee theft.

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