In all my years, no employee walked out the door with an item of merchandise that had an RF tag on it. They stuck to the items that did not have any sort of tag or label. In fact, they went out of their way to find the items without them. Checkpoint tags and labels are a proactive solution to preventing employee theft from happening in your store.

One of the hardest parts of working is retail management, is dealing with internal theft- alternately referred to as employee theft. It’s a personal blow to think that someone you know, someone you trust, is stealing from you and your company.

During many employee theft investigation interviews, most employees said that they stole because they couldn’t afford the items. In my experiences dealing with these cases, it is often an unforeseen circumstance that makes these associates change their honest ways. It could be that a spouse lost their job, or medical bills came sneaking up on them.

While you can’t control the outside circumstances of every employee’s life, there are some steps you can take in preventing employee theft. By using anti theft devices like pedestals, hard tags and labels you can often keep your employees honest by making them realize how hard it will be to discreetly steal from your store. Providing visual cues like these retail anti theft devices, goes a long way to preventing internal theft.

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.

The most recent consultation I did was for a little convenience market. There were very few policies in place, which made it just that much easier for employee theft to take place. I sometimes do loss prevention consultations for small business owners; however, I usually don’t go in as loss prevention.

Generally I go in as an overall operational consultant. It is easier to offer my services that way rather than saying I am here to see who is stealing from you. No owner wants to hear they have internal theft.

This particular owner was too insecure about being a tough boss. He wanted to be easy going, and easy to work with. I think he was afraid that if he acted too much like a boss, his employees would leave, or he would not find anyone who wanted to be hired for his shop.

Unfortunately, because of his lack of policies, his employees took advantage of him. They arrived late for work and frequently called in unable to work. This caused animosity to the other employees who were held up waiting for replacements to show up and relieve them of their shifts.

The employees were also allowed to ring themselves up. Several employees again took advantage of the situation. Knowing no one would check their purchases; they started adding extra, unpaid items to their bags.

As a result of the employee theft investigation, half of the staff was terminated for employee theft. It also opened his eyes to the importance of having policies in place.

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.

When you are wondering if you have an internal theft situation, you can turn to exception based reporting to help guide you.

The exception based reporting is just that- exceptions to typical conduct, generally found on the POS system.

For example, if a cashier conducts a “NO Sale” They are generally opening the cash register drawer without conducting a sale. A legitimate reason for doing this would be because they incorrectly gave back a customer change, and need to fix it.

In exception based reporting, a second criteria is added- no sale following a voided transaction. That could mean that the employee rang up a customer who was going to pay in cash. Instead of hitting total at the end of the transaction, they voided the transaction out completely.

To make sure the customer still thinks they are buying your product, the cashier hits NO SALE and takes the customer’s money and gives them back their proper change.

Since the transaction was never completely processed, there is now additional cash in the drawer. At some point, the cashier will take this extra cash and pocket it, creating an employee theft situation. You would not see a cash shortage, but an inventory shortage.

In order to investigate this employee theft situation, you would either need to take a physical inventory of every single item in your store on a daily basis (not very realistic) or you could implement exception based reporting.

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.

 

As an investigator, I take on employee theft investigation only when large or repetitive cash shortages or merchandise discrepancies appear. It is not very common to look at small dollar employee theft cases.

There is a growing trend among many small businesses and low volume stores that is a concerning. It is the theft of small cash wrap items caused by internal theft. Most of these employees are cashiers, so they are close to these items throughout the course of their normal shift.

We are seeing many employees taking small items at the register such as a pack of gum or a candy bar. Sometimes it might be a drink from the store’s coolers. Often, the employee simply forgets to have someone ring up those purchases because they were distracted after taking the item.

They take the items while they are on the clock, which is why they get distracted easily when a customer comes up to pay, or the manager is busy elsewhere in the store.

It might only happen once, or it might be a few times before this employee realizes that no one caught his or her mistake. No one noticed that the pack of gum or the soda was never paid for. It is in that moment that the employee will continue to take those items because they know that no one is watching.

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.

Back in my early days of management, I had a significant cash shortage. In fact, it was most of the day’s cash sales. This was well before I knew anything about internal theft.

I had worked the morning shift, and my closing manager called me when she counted down the till for the night. We were several hundred dollars short and she couldn’t figure out why. After recounting several times, we were convinced that we had an employee theft situation.

I called my district manager. He started to go over some basic procedures that we were not currently using. One of them was a sign-on and off for our registers. We let one person sign on and then everyone used their log in to ring sales for the rest of the day. The other was that we would often not have anyone up at the front counters to see what was going on in our shop.

Since we had no cameras or exception/ tracking reports, it was useless for us to conduct an employee theft investigation. The money was simply gone.

After we started using the sign-on and logging off after we were done, the issues stopped. Months later, I had an employee tell me that he had seen the old assistant manager come into the store and go behind the counter when no one was around. We suspected then that he had been coming behind the counter and opening the drawer while no one was looking because we never logged off the register.

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.

 

I remember working an employee theft investigation regarding a cashier, who was ringing up her boyfriend. Underneath his cart was about $300 dollars in product that she did not charge him for. Because she did not want to draw attention to this merchandise not being paid for, she left them under the cart.

Unfortunately for her, but lucky for us, she did not realize that the items had RF tags on them. When the boyfriend tried to leave, he set off the alarms at the door alerting everyone around to the situation.

I did some research as part of that employee theft case. The girlfriend had been passing off merchandise for several months. It was probably longer than that, but they had left a trail of paperwork that we could follow.

Some of the stolen goods were returned without a receipt so a merchandise credit was issued. Because it is an in store credit, we could track all of the purchases that card made.

Each time they used the merchandise card to pay for a transaction, we saw more merchandise being passed off at the register. They would then return that product and get a new merchandise store credit that we could track. And so the cycle was established.

It’s hard enough to think that one of your own employees has been stealing from you. It’s even harder to think that often, internal theft involves either multiple employees or an employee working with someone outside the company like a friend, a relative, or even a vendor.

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.

Track your overages and you may discover that you have an internal theft case, just not in the way you would imagine.

There is a saying that less is more. While that applies to many situations, especially when you are talking about how much money an employee stole from you; it is not always the most accurate for an internal theft cash case.

When you conduct a typical cash employee theft investigation, we generally start with the obvious. If there is money missing from a till, then we have employee theft. So we research the discrepancies – the cash shortages.

Here is one way that many employees get away with their own “perfect crime”.

If I am a trying to steal money from a register, and I want to be smart about it, I will know that I cannot simply take money from a till. Someone will notice, and it will only be a matter of time before I am caught.

So what if I find a way to inflate the till and take the extra cash. Simple enough if I do a refund without an actual customer. So if I refund an item and the total comes to $24.00, I can easily pocket a ten and no one will be the wiser. In fact when the drawer balances, there will be an additional $4.00.

So there you have it. You have an overage, and they have money in their pocket.

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.

In the world of employee theft investigation, a sweetheart deal does not refer to a Valentine’s Day sales event. It refers instead to employee theft in which an employee gives away product or unauthorized discounts at the point of sale. Sweetheart deals are also referred to as pass offs.

When we are reviewing or conducting surveillance during employee theft investigation, there are common scenarios we are looking to discover.  A straight pass off happens when a cashier gives away merchandise to a friend or relative and no sale generated.

A variation occurs 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 employee theft involves only partial payment for the contents of their friend’s shopping cart. The internal theft occurs when the employee rings up a few low dollar items, but slides the expensive ones. I once conducted employee theft investigation discovering that the dishonest cashier would “forget” to ring up the large items on the bottom of her boyfriend’s cart.

While this list is not exclusive, these distinctive employee theft situations occur regardless of retail niche or product sold.  In general the techniques are unchanging although we may occasionally discover a creative twist to employee theft.

Since the inception of employee theft investigations, sweetheart deals have been a constant in the execution of internal theft by employees.

Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase CCTV Systems that will help end employee theft or internal theft challenges and facilitate employee theft investigation.

For more information about employee theft or employee theft investigation and internal theft please contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 – Atlanta Georgia.

While it does happen, it is very rare that someone who does not work in your store causes issues with cash shortage. If you have a cash shortage problem, then you probably have an internal theft problem.

One of the first things that should be done is to maintain a daily cash over and short log. It is the first at a glance look at what is going on with your cash. You have to have a handle on when and where you are missing your cash, as well as tracking any overages.

To be accurate, you need to create a chart that lists the sales date and the dollar amount (short or over). You might decide to only track discrepancies over a certain dollar amount – say plus or minus five dollars.

Next mark an X by the employees who had access to that register on that day. They could be cashiers, or managers that might have a key to the drawer, or someone who reconciles the drawer either at opening or closing.

Now that you have your chart made, you need to document all of your cash discrepancies. Over time you should start to see a pattern emerge. If the same cashier is working on every day there is a discrepancy, or maybe there is a pattern (cash shortages on Fridays when there isn’t a paycheck) you probably have an issue with employee theft.

In order to find out if you have a theft issue or a simple training issue, you will need to conduct 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.

The most sought after item that dishonest employees like to steal is cash. Unlike merchandise, cash can be used anywhere and cash is often the easiest item to steal.  It is small and easily hidden, employees handle it all day, and cash has no sensor tags applied.

Do you know if internal theft involving cash is taking place at your business?  What are you doing to uncover this distinctively challenging form of employee theft and put an end to it?

There are a variety of situations and circumstances in which employee theft involving cash is likely to occur.  There are also a number of considerations when conducting the employee theft investigation around these losses.

The most uncomplicated scheme is simply taking money directly from the drawer.  The effect of this style of internal theft is blatantly obvious the next day when the accounting department discloses that money is missing from the drawer.

It is most effective to begin the investigation by reviewing “No Sale” functions when conducting an employee theft investigation.  Most associates do not take cash during an actual transaction because of the witnesses (i.e. the customer) present.

Instead, the employee waits until it appears that no one is observing to conduct a “No Sale” function, and then pockets the cash.  The employee wrongly believes that the absence of witnesses enables him to hide his or her actions.  In reality this type of theft is usually quite simple to pinpoint.

Another scheme to take cash is conducting voids.  This is more difficult to apprehend, but it can be accomplished with due diligence. The dishonest associate will void a transaction and take the cash in this particular form of employee theft sting.  Because the register now assumes the sale did not happen, it will then not show short since the cash “should not have been there” according to the register.

Prevention and discovery requires that the employer routinely watch for associates conducting a lot of voids followed by “No Sales”.  Since they voided the transaction the cashier has to use the “No Sale” function to open the drawer and make change for the customer.

The employer can also pull random voids and review the video to see if the merchandise stays in the store or, if in fact, the customer takes it out of the store.  The cashier is stealing from you if the customer takes the item out of the store.

There is no easy solution for internal theft; however, a thorough employee theft investigation helps eliminate problems and prevent future loss.

For more information about employee theft, employee theft investigation and internal theft please contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 – Atlanta Georgia.