Employee theft accounts for the majority of shortage in any store, as they have more access to the company’s assets than a shoplifter. Just like shoplifters show tells, associates can display them, too. Sudden changes in an associate’s behavior should warrant suspicion of internal theft. Someone who seems overtly friendly, complains about their financial situation or that they are underpaid or an associate that has friends and family visit the store often, are some things that wave a red flag.

As an LP professional, I encountered an associate who frequently complained to fellow coworkers that he was unhappy at home and couldn’t make ends meet. He told everyone who would listen. Then, this same associate came into work with a high-end set of $200 headphones and a new MP3 player one day. He continued to complain about his financial situation. Within the same week of his first shopping spree, he came in with a designer belt which he gloated about, showing everyone the receipt in which he paid $400 cash.

This information triggered my awareness and I decided to begin an employee theft investigation on him. We posted a covert CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) camera above the register in the department he normally worked in. After a few weeks of surveillance, we caught the associate red-handed stealing cash from the register. When questioned about the theft, he admitted that he made duplicate receipts for customers who were paying with large amounts of cash. He used those receipts to void the transactions later at his register and pocketed the money at the end of his shift.

Being observant of associate behaviors may lead to a case of employee theft and having a reliable CCTV system in your store can play an integral role in conducting an employee theft investigation.

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

Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase CCTV Systems that can help you stop Employee Theft and Internal Theft problems and help with your Employee Theft Investigation. 

One of the more complex employee theft cases I had to work on was because there wasn’t a clear-cut way to explain to the associate that they were stealing.

Usually when I conduct an employee theft interview, the employee being question is aware of their wrongdoing. They may try to justify it or completely deny it, but deep down, they know it was wrong.

We had a cosmetics department in the store. At the different counters were the testers of eye shadow, and lipsticks, and of course perfume.

It wasn’t uncommon to see an employee occasionally walk by and give a little spritz as they walked to their selling department. Sometimes they would tryout a new shade of lipstick on a break. For the most part, the employees were respectful, and made purchases of the items they tested. Since this was no different than how we would treat a customer, we stayed out of the way.

One day, an employee came to me fuming because another employee would do their full makeup every day from their testers. Then this employee would take the lipsticks and eyeliners with them.

Because the makeup had no retail value, it was a hard sell when I went to talk to this employee. I explained moderation. I explained respect for the other associates. I even explained it was employee theft of company property. Nothing.

While they no longer work for the store, to this day, I really think she still believes that it is ok to take something that doesn’t belong to her, as long as it doesn’t have a price tag.

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

Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase CCTV Systems that can help you stop Employee Theft and Internal Theft problems and help with your Employee Theft Investigation.

I got a phone call the other day from a friend of mine who works as a district level investigator for a national retail chain. She was leaving a store when she noticed an undercover police officer escorting someone back to his patrol car. As she was watching, she noticed that all of a sudden the parking lot was filling up with squad cars, surrounding the area.

Needless to say, she was rather taken aback and decided to wait and see what was going on. Sure enough, moments later one of the store employees, who had been sitting I his car, was being put into handcuffs and taken away.

She immediately went in to let the store managers know that there was a very distinct possibility that employee would not be returning from his lunch break.

Now, there is always the protocol of innocent until proven guilty in our legislative system. However, that doesn’t mean we should not be doing our due diligence and opening up an employee theft investigation.

If the employee is clean, than the employee theft investigation will yield no results. If you have an employee selling drugs, or other illicit activities on their lunch break, in the store’s parking lot, mind you, than chances are, there will be something to find in that employee theft investigation.

As investigators, we have our pride to think about and always want to feel like we are on top of every single employee theft case. We never want to feel like we overlooked, or weren’t smart enough to catch on to the employee theft.

That doesn’t mean we can’t push our pride aside and let someone else’s investigation open the door to our own employee theft case.

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

Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase CCTV Systems that can help you stop Employee Theft and Internal Theft problems and help with your Employee Theft Investigation.

For most of us it can be difficult to separate our work lives from our personal lives. We are spending more time at work, involved in work, checking our emails and voicemails for work, sometimes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our families are often pushed to the side because our work can be so consuming.

It is no surprise that so many people develop relationships at work. They can be friends, or even love interests. Even in the loss prevention profession, it is not uncommon for people to meet their future spouses while on the clock.

Most companies have clear-cut policies in their handbooks regarding personal relationships and fraternizations for a couple of reasons. One is to protect everyone form harassment or favoritism in the workplace. The other is to protect against employee theft.

It is not uncommon for employee theft to take place when there are friends or relatives (significant others) working together and having access to merchandise and a register or unsupervised back door.

Not many people know that there are policies in place regarding delivery truck drivers. Most of my stocking crews know that there is a strict time limit that must be followed for how quickly a truck must be unloaded.

While they think it is about their own productivity levels, an even bigger part is to prevent employee theft.

In large cases involving store associates and drivers, there is usually documentation of the drivers lingering at those stores and developing relationships. These relationships lead to the potential and opportunity for major theft to occur.

When the trucks are pushed on as soon as possible, those relationships do not have time to form, thus cutting back on the potential for employee theft of that nature to occur.

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

Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase CCTV Systems that can help you stop Employee Theft and Internal Theft problems and help with your Employee Theft Investigation.

I have no doubt that the relationship started out with the simple question of “how about a hot dog?”

Like all unfortunate circumstances what started out as a simple working relationship between a hot dog vendor in our parking lot and a store employee quickly went south.

The employee would go out on his lunch breaks and grab a bite to eat and a little small talk with the vendor. Over time they got to know each other a little bit better and would talk about families and how their workdays were going.

Eventually the vendor would give out some free food to this employee as their relationship turned to friendship.

It wasn’t long after that the vendor started to talk about getting some things for free back from the employee. This was the beginning of a very serious case of employee theft.

It started out small enough, the employee passed off some screws and adhesive to help the vendor fix something broken in his hot dog cart. Over the next few months, the employee theft grew to include some power tools and other expensive store items.

When we conducted the interview, the employee stated how he never intended to be caught up in an employee theft situation. He was feeling obligated to his new friend to help him out and the items started to get out of control with cost and frequency.

A small part of the employee was glad he had been caught because he now had a way out of the situation.

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

Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase CCTV Systems that can help you stop Employee Theft and Internal Theft problems and help with your Employee Theft Investigation.

In the world of employee theft investigations, a sweetheart deal does not refer to any sort of Valentine’s Day sales event. It is talking about employee theft where an employee gives away product or unauthorized discounts at the point of sale.

Sweetheart deals are also referred to as pass offs. There are common scenarios we watch for when we are reviewing/-conducting surveillance for an employee theft investigation.

A straight pass off is when a cashier gives away merchandise to a friend or relative. There is no sale generated.

A variation is when an employee pretends to ring up the transaction. They may scan the items and then later void them out. They might also print out a receipt that shows an estimate of the product, but no sale is actually conducted.

Sometimes the employee theft will only involve partial payment for the contents of their friend’s shopping cart. They might ring up a few low dollar items, but slide the expensive ones. I had an employee theft investigation where the cashier would “forget” to ring up the large items on the bottom of her boyfriend’s cart.

While this list is not exclusive, these are typical employee theft scenarios that occur regardless of retail niche or product sold. Sometimes there might be a creative twist to the employee theft, but the overall concepts are the same.

For as long as there have been employee theft investigations, there have been sweetheart deals uncovered.

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

Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase CCTV Systems that can help you stop Employee Theft and Internal Theft problems and help with your Employee Theft Investigation.

Depending upon the size and location of your trash bins, you may have access to an open top trash compactor. In some of the stores I worked in, we were fortunate enough to have them built into our receiving department.

The plus side was that we could empty the store’s trash at any time of day or night and in any sort of weather, without somebody actually having to tote the trash outside.

Most companies have policies against using opaque trash bags, so no one can hide merchandise inside the bags and then take it out the back door.

When you have a trash compactor that is open, you need to be just as mindful about what and how things are being thrown away.

I recall an employee theft investigation that revolved around the night stocking team. The store was missing large quantities of power tools. We would reorder, but we never actually saw them on the selling shelves.

We started an employee theft investigation and noticed that we were showing receipts for the product. We set up surveillance on the night stocking team. Sure enough, they would pull the power tools off the truck, set them to the side until the end of the night. Then they would toss them out the compactor before the day mangers came back.

The day crew was busy getting the store ready to open, so no one ever saw the stockers drive around to the compactor and take out the power tools.

The employee theft investigation revealed that no one ever locked up the compactor. It was left open 24 hours a day and anyone could access it.

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

Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase CCTV Systems that can help you stop Employee Theft and Internal Theft problems and help with your Employee Theft Investigation.

One of the more complex employee theft cases I had to work on was because there wasn’t a clear-cut way to explain to the associate that they were stealing.

Usually when I conduct an employee theft interview, the employee being question is aware of their wrongdoing. They may try to justify it or completely deny it, but deep down, they know it was wrong.

We had a cosmetics department in the store. At the different counters were the testers of eye shadow, and lipsticks, and of course perfume.

It wasn’t uncommon to see an employee occasionally walk by and give a little spritz as they walked to their selling department. Sometimes they would tryout a new shade of lipstick on a break. For the most part, the employees were respectful, and made purchases of the items they tested. Since this was no different than how we would treat a customer, we stayed out of the way.

One day, an employee came to me fuming because another employee would do their full makeup every day from their testers. Then this employee would take the lipsticks and eyeliners with them.

Because the makeup had no retail value, it was a hard sell when I went to talk to this employee. I explained moderation. I explained respect for the other associates. I even explained it was employee theft of company property. Nothing.

While they no longer work for the store, to this day, I really think she still believes that it is ok to take something that doesn’t belong to her, as long as it doesn’t have a price tag.

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

Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase CCTV Systems that can help you stop Employee Theft and Internal Theft problems and help with your Employee Theft Investigation.

Unlike the immediacy of watching your high shrink merchandise walking out with a shoplifter, employee theft investigations take time. You might be able to see them take some product, or conduct a fraudulent refund on live surveillance, but that is only the beginning.

The true exposure or scope of employee theft investigations is generally revealed through detailed exception based and statistical reporting. I have had many conversations regarding the importance, or the usefulness of such reports.

On one hand, reports should be the road map that leads you from point to point in an employee theft investigation. It might lead you to additional refunds or pass offs of merchandise. The reports may also show you if other employees or outside parties are involved in the employee theft.

The flip side is that if you truly have a pulse on your store and your inventory, there should not be any surprises when you run your reports. If the employee theft targeted a specific item, there should not be any surprise that this item is on a high shrink list.

Statistical reports like excessive refunds, or inventory losses should reiterate the findings of your employee theft investigation. They should tell you that there are certain areas of concern and employee theft is the likely culprit. Sudden spikes in the losses from certain product groups are good examples.

While it very well could turn into an example of which came first the chicken or the egg, reports will ultimately enhance and solidify any employee theft investigation.

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

Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase CCTV Systems that can help you stop Employee Theft and Internal Theft problems and help with your Employee Theft Investigation.

It can be very exciting to uncover a case of employee theft. For some, it can be so exciting that logic and common sense can be replaced by a case of tunnel vision.

Let me give you an example…

Back in the day, I had a cash register with a hundred dollar shortage. It was pretty uncommon to be short more than five dollars in a day. We didn’t even bother keeping an over/ short tracking log for less than five dollars just for that reason. So when I saw a hundred dollar shortage, my heart sank.

My heart sank at such a huge loss, and then I took a breath and decided it must have just been an error and I could find it with a little research.

So off I went to disprove this as an employee theft case. It didn’t take me long to realize how wrong I was. The first cash transaction showed a very clear case of employee theft, at least that’s what I thought.

The employee rang up a low dollar transaction for a customer. He handed her a hundred dollar bill. She tendered the transaction, and handed him his change and very clearly, the hundred-dollar bill back.

When I went to my manager to open up an employee theft investigation, I was shocked that she didn’t want to interview right away. The video was so clear and we had suffered a big loss.

I needed to take a step back and realize that even though the employee had incurred a loss, it didn’t mean that she was intentionally stealing. That was the difference. If we couldn’t prove that intent, we had no case of employee theft.

I watched her like a hawk for months. Not even a single penny short. Maybe she did give intend to give that hundred back, or maybe she just had a bad moment. Either way, we could never prove it was a case of employee theft.

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

Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase CCTV Systems that can help you stop Employee Theft and Internal Theft problems and help with your Employee Theft Investigation.