Employee Theft

Comment

Comment by david churchill on February 18, 2011 at 4:28pm

As a Fraud Consultant and Investigator I work for a number of companies who call me in to assist when they discover they may have been subject of an internal fraud or theft.

There are a number of issues that arise when it is believed there is an internal fraud.However, the main points is always - What do we do now? In theory all companies should have a contingency plan in place for such an eventuality but this is the real world and many don't.

Whatever action an organisation subsequently decides to take should not interfere with what is required initially.First actions should be to obtain and preserve what evidence is available, ensure there will be no further losses and consider what immediate action is to be taken against the 'suspect'?

If a decision is made that the police should be involved then we would prepare an evidential package for them, in order to cut down their work load and hopefully to encourage them to record the matter as a crime and to prosecure where appropriate.

One of the main issues I come across is the difficulty of trying to convince the police to take on a case.Therefore, it is important to ensure that the evidence is gathered and presented to them in a professional, manageable and timely manner.

Even if we do not go down the criminal prosecution route but consider recovering assets in the civil courts this evidence will greatly assist the process..

Dave Churchill 

Comment by Richard Emery on January 7, 2011 at 2:08pm

With retail theft by employees estimated at £1.6bn I would be very interested to know how often retailers involve the police with a view to a criminal prosecution?
 
It seems to me that there are at least two opposing responses to this question.

1) Dismissing a member of staff for theft is a complicated enough procedure without adding all of the complexity and cost of supporting a criminal prosecution.

2) We have a duty to support criminal prosecutions because if we don't prosecute people who steal from us then there is nothing to stop them from simply moving to the shop next door and committing the same crime again.

The supplementary question is: “What should the Police and CPS be doing to help retailers reduce the level of employee theft?”

Comment by Ian Kirke on December 14, 2010 at 9:08pm

Members may be interested to note that my 2009 Masters dissertation (in Criminology & Criminal Psychology) addressed the issue of employ driven shrink.

Titled, “The Credit Crunch, other fine Biscuits and Foie Gras – Do retailers have the appetite to deal with employee driven stock loss?” the aims of this research were to critically evaluate -
1. What are the key drivers that fuel internal dishonesty?
2. Is retail security fit for purpose?
3. What methods actually reduce internal stock loss?
4. Are retail managers and in-house investigators equipped to manage internal stock loss investigations?

A copy of the full dissertation can be accessed via
http://www.tfsuccess.com/news/CreditCrunch_Dissertation.pdf

A more digestible whitepaper (based on the dissertation) can be accessed via
http://www.tfsuccess.com/news/CreditCrunchWhitepaper.pdf