Tick- Tock

Sometimes you can’t figure it out fast enough. Any time you are working an employee theft investigation the clock is running. The longer it takes to build your case, the more shrink you will incur. The scope of your employee theft may go from just a few dollars to thousands seemingly overnight.

I had a case where I just knew in my gut that a few employees were stealing from us. It started after I saw a few suspicious returns on an employee. She purchased some clothes and later returned them. Company policy was to have a return slip and a check in with loss prevention prior to any employee returns being done.

I had never seen the clothes come back to the store. I asked her why she didn’t get a pass and she stated that she forgot. Well over the next few months I noticed that she was returning almost every item she purchased, never getting a return slip from my department.  It was time to start compiling some surveillance for the employee theft investigation to help my case along.

I discovered that she always had the same associate do her returns. I then started looking at his accounts. He was having a large number of returns to his account, starting shortly after hers did. My case of employee theft had just doubled!

Well, after I started to mirror their schedules, I noticed that items were being rung up and taken out of the store. They weren’t having someone check their purchases, and I noticed the bags were rather large for the purchase.

As it turns out, the employees were in it together. They were making purchases and adding items to their bags. They would then bring the receipts in and credit their accounts. It was a double loss, but we were able to stop it before they got any other employees in on the scam.

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