During my thirty years of Loss Prevention Investigations into what many refer to as white collar crime (employee theft or internal theft) I have come across some pretty bizarre reasons told to me by the employee thieves that I have caught.
There have been several cases where the employee thief stated that the reason that they stole from the business was that they were not given enough time off for job interviews at other business. OMG! This is weird on many levels. Number 1, I had serious problems connecting the two. How did you get from not getting time off to stealing thousands of dollars in cash and merchandise? It must be because the company is just one of those very “evil employers” that we hear about in the news all the time. Of course, the employee criminal kind of forgot to mention that the employer was the one to hire them in the first place, train them and pay them faithfully. It couldn’t be the employee’s fault…could it?
Another one that I always get a laugh (or headache) out of is the “I needed the money for my pharmaceutical problem” (not the kind you get from your Pharmacy). OK, let’s be fair and look at it from their point of view:
“I have an illegal (insert drug du jour here) habit that I have to feed sometimes hourly. I need the money. Holding up a bank seems like a lot of effort. Plus you have all those pesky exploding dye packs and gunfire associated with bank robberies. I know! I will just steal it from my employer. Can’t get shot doing that.” (some countries you can, oh well)
Another one on my top ten hit list is the “You didn’t give me my raise on time” excuse. So they decide to take it out on their evil employer. In the follow-up on those cases I can remember with this excuse, I recall that most of them were not even going to get a raise because they were not a very good employee. Maybe if they put more effort into their job? What a concept, work hard, get paid and go home, not jail.
And yes the majority of these people went to jail and got sued. Some of them we even let the IRS know about since they “forgot” to by taxes on their stolen gains. Maybe with all that, white collar crime is not a profitable idea.
For more information: white collar crime
Shoplifting and shoplifters are just a retail life fact of life, similar to the “oldest profession in the world”, it isn’t going away. And if you are naïve and think that shoplifting will not happen in your store then don’t read any further since you won’t be in business much longer anyway. If you are a retailer you understand that shoplifters are like pond scum, it stinks and is a serious distraction from a beautiful environment.
Preventing shoplifting is no different than the approach to any other business problem. Control it and minimize the distractions so you can stay focused on what is really important, making money. You can achieve this by using an Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) system. And as huge coincidence we happen to sell Checkpoint systems (sorry for the shameless commercial).
But getting back to the issue. EAS systems are proactive. Some retailers are under the impression that if they put a camera system (OK, we sell cameras also, no more commercials I promise) in their store that this will deter shoplifters. Camera systems are passive. Unless you are watching it live at all times it is not as effective. Shoplifters know this. In addition the cost to cover every location in the store where a shoplifter may conceal merchandise is in most cases cost prohibitive.
Merchandise is tagged or labeled by your staff. When a shoplifter tries to rip you off the protected merchandise trips the sensors at the front doors alerting your staff. Merchandise stays tagged at all times until your people remove or deactivate it. It’s proactive, all day, everyday. There is no video to watch or review. Shoplifters know what EAS systems look like and how they work. In most cases they just simply go elsewhere (like your competitor who isn’t protected). This is a much stronger deterrence than a camera system.
In summary, the key is to do this in the most profitable, cost effective way possible. You have enough work to do every day. I guess I can sum it up like this; a Checkpoint security system is like having shoplifting prevention flying on autopilot.
I almost forgot…pond scum can be controlled with chemicals sold at any farm and seed supply store.
For more information: checkpoint security systems
Internal theft also known as employee theft causes close to fifty percent of all retail business loss. In thirty years of conducting employee theft investigations I am still shocked by how poor a job most businesses do in common sense prevention. For example I conducted an investigation where $5000 in forged business checks were cashed. It turned out that the stock of checks was unsecure in an office supply room. The janitor’s stole 20 checks from the middle of the stack, waited a while and them began to cash them. These checks should have been secured in a locked cabinet with strict controlled access. The checks should be logged out and issued to the person that processes them.
We drop our guard because it is “more difficult” to do it the right way. You prevent employee theft by doing it the “right way” not the easy way. The key is “prevention”. Another excuse is we say, “oh I trust that person, they would never do that”. Those words get more business people in trouble. When a management person says that they are basically saying that they have no business common sense.
Another case involved employees that stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in product from a warehouse they worked in. They had keys to the warehouse that contained millions of dollars of merchandise. The alarm system was not reporting opens and closes. So coming back at night and loading up a truck was not a problem.
Internal theft or employee theft lurks around every corner. You have to be actively watching for it to prevent it. Internal theft will not go away or stop on its own. In fact it will get worse. Get your policy manual off the shelf, dust it off, update it and make sure people understand that this is your companies “business bible”, live it, enforce it! This doesn’t mean that it never changes. As your business changes your policy and procedures should change.
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