As an investigator, you know that your case is made when you are ready to interview your suspect. You have your evidence, you know what has happened, for the most part; and you are ready to sit down with your employee and find out why.
However, when I did an interview recently, the response I got from an employee made me think. I asked a question something like, “Tell me about some ways that you have contributed to losses to your store.”
The employee replied, “Where do you want me to start?”
I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog focusing on shoplifting and “external” theft sources; but, the fact is that more money is lost through internal, or employee, theft than through shoplifting.
Why? Because they always take more than a shoplifter can. They are in your store every day. Sometimes they are trusted employees. Sometimes they have access to everything. And, even if they don’t, thieves are very creative. They will find a way.
Take, for example, the employee in this story, who embezzled close to $800,000.00 from her employer. Over the course of 6 years, she slowly, but surely, drained UPS of over 3/4 of a million dollars.
Or how about the employee from an article I recently commented on here. $1.5 Million since 2003. She was employed at the company for 44 years.
We spend a lot of time here talking about shoplifters, and we should. It’s a problem. But I tell my stores this: “You hire people from the same pool that the shoplifters come from.”
That means that if a store is in a high theft area, and is prone to shoplifting issues, then there is a very good chance that the store will be hiring some of the very people who are high risk of theft, or even already involved in theft. You don’t think thieves get jobs with retailers just so they can steal from them? Think again. Our job, as loss prevention, is to protect our companies and customers from these predators.
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