One Thing Leads to Another- Employee Theft Investigation

One of the best ways I have found to do an employee theft investigation is to find the beginning of a paper trail and then start to follow it. At my company, we use merchandise credits/ store credits for returns made without a receipt.

A real customer who purchases an item, loses or throws out their receipt and later needs to return that item are given a store credit/ merchandise credit. They are generally ok with this because they will either be replacing the item they are returning, or will have other shopping they can do at our store.

From an employee theft perspective, many employees who commit a fraudulent return will then be issued a merchandise credit. There is no receipt because there was never a sale to begin with. The employee will then use the credit to purchase more items. Frequently they will use their employee discount along with this credit.

That is were the paper trail begins. We track employee purchases and can also track a merchandise credit’s history. When we see an employee with the credit but no corresponding purchase history, we know something is not right.

After starting with a single merchandise credit, we can find that it will lead up to other merchandise credits that the employee uses. From there, the employee theft investigation doesn’t take long before we can figure out the pattern of what this employee is doing and how they are causing losses to our store.

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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