- Do you want to understand what is going on inside an employee’s head when they are involved in employee theft?
- How do you talk to your employees about employee theft?
These and many other issues are addressed in our new training seminar
“Keep your friends close, keep your employees closer”
We go in-depth into the world of employee theft and the employee.
LPSI can conduct this seminar live at your company, at our facility or live via a WebEx.
Contact us for more information.
Ever hear of Fred Tokars? He was an expert white collar crime money launderer. We hear that term, money laundering, associated with white collar crime on the news and in crime reports but does the average person actually know what it means?
Mr. Tokars, an attorney in the 1990’s in metro Atlanta, seemed to think it was necessary to have a hit man kill his wife in front of their children. Apparently she found out that he was laundering money. Dirty criminal money.
In the white collar crime world money laundering is very prevalent because most of the money that is laundered is gained illegally. (It wouldn’t need laundering if it wasn’t illegally obtained) People want to cover their tracks.
Money laundering is defined as the practice of engaging in financial transactions to conceal the identity, source and/or destination of illegally gained money. Tax evasion and false accounting make up many of the white collar crime accusations in the money laundering world.
So how do white collar crime experts launder money? Say a business, such as a gas station, has a long standing relationship with a bank. If they have made consistent deposits for years, then the opportunity may arise to make a “larger” than normal deposit every now and then. This doesn’t look criminal, can be attributed to the business and the money launderer can now pull their money out of the bank all nice and clean. There is a limit on deposits however, anything over $10000 is bank monitored.
People can also use shell companies that show income on the books but actually don’t make any money. The income is reported, taxes are paid and the money is laundered. This is white collar crime at its best.
Do you suspect white collar crime in your business? Contact us or call 770.426.0547.
Cell phones are a common staple in today’s society. Almost all people, from the elderly to the toddler age have one. Unfortunately, criminals can use our cell phones against us. White collar crime involving cell phones has increased exponentially over the last few years. Typically white collar criminals are of high social standing, have higher than average paying jobs and commit some sort of crime.
Yes, even my 76 year old mother has a cell phone. I’m not sure she knows how exactly to use it, but yep she has one. The increase in technology has given criminals a whole new avenue to defraud people, cell phone cloning and service fraud.
What is cell phone fraud? It’s the unlawful use, tampering or manipulation of a cell phone or the actual cell phone service. It would never occur to most people but…There are all types of evil criminal things we can do to commit fraud with a cell phone. The two most prevalent crimes are cell phone cloning and subscriber fraud.
Cloning is based on the fact that every single cell phone in the world has a unique factory set electronic serial number and telephone number. You can take a phone, “clone” another phone’s electronic serial number and phone number and bam, an unsuspecting user is charged for fraudulent calls. Where does the white collar crime come in? It’s easier to work for a cell phone company and obtain the electronic serial numbers to commit the cloning.
Subscriber fraud is when a person or persons signs up for service with fraudulent identity. Where is the white collar crime in this? These criminals may work in a retail store or outlet and obtain your personal information, open a cell phone account using that information and cause you months or years of frustration trying to clear your name and good credit standing.
Have you been a victim of white collar crime? Contact us at www.losspreventionsystems.com or call 1.770.426.0547 for assistance.
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
