Misplaced Trust – Employee Theft

I ran a store that did a thriving mail order business. It was a great way to capture sales from customers not only in the area, but also some of the tourist shoppers as well. It was a little too late when I found out that one of my employees was committing employee theft through our postal process.

The employee that was running the mail orders had quit to find a job somewhere else. He had gone out with one of my other employees and had confided in them how much product he had taken and how easy it was to get away with it.

He had been shipping orders out to his home address and to the addresses of his friends. These orders were never paid for. Because we didn’t do an audit on 100% of the packages, his internal theft was undetected.

He would hold his personal packages behind until the mailman was about to come by. Then he would slip his packages in with everything else. There was no record of the packages, and there was only a slight influx in postage.

I keep kicking myself thinking that there should have been some glaring red flag telling me that there was an issue. Unfortunately, he was smarter than I was (or my policies). It was a matter of misplaced trust. He was going to find a way to steal regardless of what I did, or what a random employee theft investigation would have shown up.

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

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