In your work lifetime, what is the most creative instance of employee theft you’ve come across?
Question of the Day, Mar 29
In your work lifetime, what is the most creative instance of employee theft you’ve come across?
A dude at our plant would go through the guard shack every day pushing a wheelbarrow . The guard always inspected everything …never caught him stealing. When the guy retired the guard saw him at Wally World and asked him ” I know you were stealing something . The old dude said yep…wheelbarrows Old joke.,.
We had a guy at who was stealing carbide inserts a handful at a time…made thousands . He made one last heist….netted about 10K from what I was told…..they never could prove it but he ran his mouth a bit and told others about his operation .
Drivers selling fuel to other drivers at a discount (for cash) while using our fuel card…….and yes, he got caught.
Well, I’m fucking around on the internet right now.
I suppose that counts.
Shrinkage. Lots of stuff ‘goes out the back door’ – extra stuff that’s not on the manifest, when loading a truck. Big time theft. Happens all the time.
We had new neighbor’s move in next door in 1995, we became good friends.
I became hunting and fishing buddies with her husband Kevin, our daughter babysat her kids, we would spend holidays together, go camping together, cookouts etc.
She started working for us part time helping with the books in 1996, in 1997, full time.
A few years later the company was barely keeping it’s head above water, it was her idea to hire a outside contractor to help us figure it out. They were a joke and threatened to sue after I refused to pay, just had to put up with some juvenile harassment but they eventually went away.
She was pretty good at what she did, and she did it all because we trusted her, as a friend. She had tried to drive a wedge between my wife and I, had me blaming employees, attempting to create chaos and diversions, all the while it was her.
We discovered it by a Shell gas card, she had given a company gas card to her husband and we found a receipt purely by accident.
Then we found the checks she wrote to herself signing my name and entered in the books as payments to paint stores, then we found the way she was cheating the IRS, and so on. Hired a accountant, got a detective and filed charges.
The detective said she had three accounts with $150k bouncing around between them.
The prosecutor asked us if we would settle for a plea of no contest. He promised in exchange for us avoiding the cost of a jury trial she would get 30 days in jail, five years probation with no chance of leaving the state and pay us $35k.
We accepted.
She got 30 days work release and was allowed to work from home. This would be a new home they moved into that was valued at $260k, they made one mortgage payment, forced out 12 months later and left the home a wreak.
She then “borrowed” $60 from three credit unions and $40k from five credit card company’s to pay us the agreed sum of $35k, filed personal bankruptcy, claimed personal hardship to get out of her five year probation as her husband has lost his job and left the state.
We figure she got at least $165k from us, but as she talked us into reducing the company’s insurance bond from 100% to $4k (the lowest) we were fucked. If we would have kept the full bonding the insurance company would have paid us 100% and hounded her for the rest of her life.
She took the money and bought an abandoned building in Lancaster PA, started a paint ball battleground called, Outlaw Paintball.
I hope there is a hell and her toes rot off before she goes.
Fuck her.
Greetings,
I worked at Guitar Center many years ago and I was flabbergasted by the amount of theft that went on there. If the computer told me that we had only one or two of an item in stock, I knew that it actually meant we had none because our count was always off due to theft.
The people, and by people I mean employees and management, were just stealing like there was no tomorrow – guitars, drumsets, turntables, software, microphones – you name it.
I took the job because I, too, wished to have free stuff but I did it the right way. On day one, I went through our computer and retrieved the names of all of the reps that sold to us and I began contacting them. I explained that I could best sell their product if I had one to use myself. I received thousands of dollars worth of free and/or discounted items and did so without resorting to petty theft.
Employee theft never made sense to me.
Every banker.
Just recently I was hit for a “late fee” from my bank. They said it was due on the 7th. I set up the “computer banking” app to send it on the 7th.
They run the computers overnight. The payment was credited on the 8th. Mind you, the money was in one account AT THAT BANK; it was moved to pay them AT THAT BANK. It was supposed to go on the day it was due, but that somehow was “late”. I was at fault for not sending it to them TO BE CREDITED ON THE 7th. They had custody of the money, in one way or another, the whole time, but I was late.
Thieves, pure and simple. When the Crunch comes, it cannot kill enough of them.
What’s the statute of limitations on theft?
Until I know, I ain’t saying shit.
About 1973, a USAF General stole a color TV from our Tyndall AFB TLQ and took it to his residence. About 1975, our handsome TUSLOG Supply Sargent who I noticed lived unusually well on his pay was caught by our Chief of Maintenance ordering extra car batteries, tires etc, which he then sold. About 1978, I noticed BX Security Tags at the bottom in a trash can belonging to my Puerto Rican Clark so I advised the BX manager and called him the next time the Airman left the work area; he caught him stealing women’s lingerie. About 1980 while talking to a Sgt, I noticed raw spots just inside his nose. I advised the SPs who tracked him to Canada, a large drug purchase, and a sales network at GFAFB. About 1985, a Black coworker worked late and then carried a PC out to his car but he was caught by a then unknown to us system of hidden cameras watching the doors. You need to ask a question about catching sexual escapades.
Paying 15% long term capital gains tax to the federal government on the sale of our family business, after 30+ years of paying income tax, payroll tax, Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, unemployment taxes, licensing fees, etc. The federal (and to a lesser extent, state) government is the most creative thief of all. It’s why the tax code is as long as it is and why the crooks in charge like it that way. I can confidently say 100% of federal employees are stealing your time and money in some form or fashion every day.
Snitches get stitches.
Everyone here more than 6 months know I am a car guy. One of my jobs was as a roving manager of a large chain. My job was forensic loss prevention and training of new staff.
One of the most creative guys was the manager at our tri-county location. I was subbing for his assistant who had been in a car accident and during the shift my boss called me and told me to look around. I did look around.
This guy had been the manager for 11 years. His scam was to take middle age low mileage vehicles from mostly older customers and price the repair through the roof. He would tell them the vehicle was not really worth the repairs. About a dozen of these cars were abandoned. Some he did buy outright but at greatly reduced value. The abandoned vehicles he would send the required 2 registered return receipt but would send it to the wrong number or zip code.
In total he made 88,000 bucks doing this. How do I know how much?
I found his file on the shop computer and stripped the password out with a simple utility. He was a great record keeper. Vin numbers and dates and sold amounts. I think he may have even paid the taxes on them as a business.
He went out cuffed and stuffed.
Post Script:
About14 years later I went into a job interview with a district manager and HIS boss was that guy. For some reason I did not get the job…….
@jamesthewander: Was that the Comenity Bank?
We have plenty of money, use one credit card for purchases, but……… My wife went into Herberger’s. Never shopped there before. Found a small appliance on sale (of course). They enticed her with an extra $20 off, I she opened a Herberger’s credit card. A completely useless credit card.
I paid the bill when it came. Fast forward to this year. It’s been a whole year since my wife used the card. She bought some small item – less than $30.
The bill came, but here’s what caught me. It is sent quite a while after the billing cycle closes, this leaves you a small window to pay. So if you wait to pay the bill (7 – 10) days, there may not be enough time for it to get Comenity, and get posted.
I paid the bill.
Next month I get a bill for $35 late fee! My payment was a day late. My wife opened the account, yes we are responsible, and I accept that, but clearly a $35 late fee on $21 is theft.
If you Google the Comenity Bank, you will find that they are not really a bank. Some sort of credit card processing? company. They run this scam with many small company credit cards, such as Victoria’s Secret. There are ton’s of similar complaints.
And oh yes, I paid 5 or 6 bills that day, they all cleared within 3-4 days. It took Comenity several days more (maybe they wait to open the envelopes?), and then a day or two more to post it.
Legalized theft.
I had a college roommate who took an over-night job cleaning/buffing floors in a grocery store for one Summer. The son-of-a-bitch was so bold that he would grab a shopping cart and just hit the isles as if he was shopping then wheel it outside and dump the groceries in his car trunk. We did eat quite well that Summer. Lots of steak.
We jumped into Ft IrwinCalifornia back in the 1980’s to wargame the California National Guard and some newbie 2nd Lieutenant lost his M-16. We had to stop everything and look for that rifle for two solid days, walking on line, arms length apart, 120 men in each company, four companies in each battalion, three battalions in the regiment. I saw the same damned jack rabbit at least 20 times and we walked until we were ready to cry.
Turns out some Cali LowRider National Guardsman had found it and driven to his drug dealer to sell it and if it hadn’t turned up in a bust a few hours later I think I might still be out there looking for that rifle. I don’t think the Lieutenant stayed with the unit after our return.
Does this story count?
Its not creative but the most ridiculous one I knew of.
The retarded daughter of the plant manager was caught stealing toilet paper and medical supplies from the first aid station. and by retarded i don’t mean just stupid, she had down syndrome.
In college (1969) , the guy in the next apartment, had a part time job at ACME market. He was a check out clerk. I would go in Tuesday morning, about 9:00 – get a cart full of food, meat, you name it.
He rang up about 10% of it. We did this all through grad school.
Loans? We don’t need no stinking loans.
Hard to pick a best story… at one company where I worked corporate was ordering thousands, maybe millions of dollars of equipment and billing to our site. Stuff would sit on the dock for a week, then they would have the shipping/receiving guy send the equipment to India. The CEO (this was a major US company) had relatives in India where the equipment was sent, all off the books.
Worked at another place where the engineering VP was a big bible thumper and wore it on his sleeve. Would lecture us about integrity, etc. One day one of my interns needed a copy of the database software (this was back when you loaded software from floppy disk) but the software was nowhere to be found since the VP had “loaned” it to his church. Ooooof. Not a big theft, but that hypocrisy made it worth a mention.
@Dutchman: no, it wasn’t Comenity, it was Warren Buffet’s favorite bank. My kid will graduate college in two years, we’ll almost certainly have to move with him to his new job location; when I close these down, those turkeys will NEVER see any more accounts with my name on them.
Smaller credit unions are a much better way to go.
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q102.pdf
This is probably standard operating procedure, but the worst I saw in my working life was when I was working a summer during college as an electrician’s apprentice building a trash-to-steam plant in Chester, PA (just south of Philly). As I found out later in life, this Union shop worked a typical workweek that ended around 2:30 on Friday when the actual whistle blew at 5.
Besides that, our typical lunch hour was spent putting down 3-4 pitchers of beer between 4 of us, and then staggering back to work and climbing up a 30 foot step ladder to monitor electrical cables being pulled through turns in the electrical “trays” hanging from the ceiling. Best thing was that it paid about double minimum wage at the time ($3.35/hour). Great job for a college kid, but I certainly learned how Unions can kill productivity.
On my first house the mortgage servicer was one of the big NINJA outfits – I think Countrywide but I could be wrong. They had a scheme where your payment had to REACH their office before an arbitrary early time on the due date, like 11am or something, but their mail delivery wasn’t until the afternoon. Anything that arrived on the due date was “late” with huge late fees. I only know about this because of the class-action settlement letter I received during that period.
I don’t think I’d call it creative but I had a number of jobs on Air Force Bases in Europe and the US. The level of outright theft was huge! A rather large number of people had set themselves up in positions where they only “worked” a day or two each week and that “work” was largely just fucking off.
Just one example….I got hired to work in the base commissary (grocery story) and I was being trained as a civilian to replace two Air Force members and they were the ones training me. As time went on I learned that they had been caught and convicted of stealing huge amounts of cigarettes from the commissary. I’m talking a dozen full cases at a time and this went on for a year or more. On top of that, and the thing that got them busted, they stole some big strobe lights off of an active runway on base. They were spotted stealing the lights and when authorities showed up they found some of the smokes.
Both guys were actually reporting to military jail each night and being let out in the morning to go to work where they trained me to do their jobs. Once I was trained they were transferred to Ft. Leavenworth military prison where they did hard time by making little rocks out of big rocks with big heavy hammers supervised by some crazy ass Marines.
Double serial numbers on crawlers and loaders middle to upper management . Using crane to lift new wheel loader tires over fence onto flatbed blue collar. Riding mowers and various other power tools charged on the company card for years by the maintenance cartel. Never a dull moment back then 80’s.
As a third career I became a math teacher in an inner city high school in the ‘dysfunctional unified school district’. There was a Mr. Sullivan on staff, an English teacher whose guiding principle was the best defense was a good offense. A real piece of work, petty thief, but he had tenure doncha know….
A few years later he disappeared, did not show up for the new school year. Turned out he had stolen the real Mr. Sullivan’s identity to get the job and the lazy district office never checked to verify his credential. The real Mr. Sullivan had just retired and was getting two retirement checks- his and the false Mr.Williams. We all got a good laugh out of his comeuppance.
Two years later he was spotted at a job fair in the next county working the same scam. Some people have no shame.
A kid I grew up with stole C4 explosives while he was in the military and had it stashed in his father’s house. Some time after he moved out, his dad put it out with the trash and put a note with it saying to be careful because it was explosive. (And his dad was a WW2 vet!).
Anyway, the trash crew notified the police, who notified the military, and the by-then grown “kid” went to Ft. Leavenworth for an extended time.
“Hello” ……..’This is Ned Schneebly”
Always despised the office product sales people who had garage sales with merchandise that would compete with Staples. Recall collecting funds for Pony League (baseball) and fishing money out of the can for ice cream. Special place below for me,
My comment was in reference to Sawgill’s above….
LLPOH, for the love of God, don’t read this a article. You’ll have a heart attack. These are crooked people here. Remind me to avoid TBPers when all hell breaks loose.
The company had a “tool loan” for weekends. With the signature of a superintendent you can bring home heavy tools to work on weekends. Well, this was a superintendent that liked hunting, so he purchased many “tools” that he later loaned. Among the ones I remember where binoculars and an infrared 20k$ thermal camera he used for night vision. Technically not a theft but…
Blockbuster movie rental…
We spent quite a bit on those rentals for a few years, (teens in HS)
Always got them back on time, no problem. The next year they started
charging late fees…no way…I argued hard with the manager!! Refused
to pay. Soon enough, it gets reported that the entire $800 million profits
earned (previous year) was from late fees. Basterds.
The military stories are interesting as the young and dumb get pinched hard for petty theft while the contractors get paid to steal from Uncle Sucker. My mother worked in VA hospitals and saw thefts of stuff from the hospitals by doctors. I guess the moral of the story is that small thefts by small fries will be punished severely but big thefts by big boys will be rewarded. The story about a small business getting ripped off by an accounting clerk is too common as she can steal lots of money and cover it well. Ideally have two people involved separating accounts payable and receivables. That reduces the chance of setting up a dummy company to send checks to for bogus products or services. The other comments about financial institutions is true as they a frauds who will screw you without lube or mercy. Keep on trucking and don’t get caught.
My husband works for a County government. A number of employees have been caught stealing time while ‘on the clock’, thereby cheating County taxpayers and State taxpayers. Only 2 were fired, the rest were given warnings, only to repeat their offenses over and over again.
So what did they do?
One woman who had a County vehicle never reported to the job sites. She clocked in and got her vehicle, then drove home and stayed there all day with her baby.
Another woman who had a County vehicle “hid” most of the day while on the clock. She shopped, drove to friends’ houses, and hid on back streets. All the while, she hid herself and her newborn during her scheduled shift. She had no daycare arrangements other than herself.
Both women were discovered via their free iPads that were in use during their days of hiding. The iPads provided the County computer geeks with their locations during the hours they spent online in their County vehicles dodging their jobs. Those gals provided their own evidence to the County — they both should have been fired, but being gub’ment, they probably worried over a discrimination lawsuit.
Two men set up a business, running parallel to their jobs. They were both PEs and although they did their jobs, they also ran their business during the same time. They were caught and fired for using County office equipment that provided evidence. Newer models of printers and other equipment have the ability to track and store images so they inadvertently provided their own evidence for their dismissal.
All new County vehicles have the gub’ment spy devices on board now. Will it really make a difference?
I.C. said:
“All new County vehicles have the gub’ment spy devices on board now. Will it really make a difference?”
No, but now the boys and gals in IT will be besties with all the crooks willing to pay the IT people for a little technical assistance.
I have a friend that runs a trucking company and he can do amazing things via computer and even tells the drivers of his capabilities. He’s honest about it but there’s always a percentage of born losers who still attempt to lie, cheat and steal. He’s got some epic stories of firing guys in the middle of nowhere and leaving them stranded or arrested.
Twas I above.