Employee Theft...

[Davage]

I install and support retail management systems (computers ) to lumber yards. Occasionally I'll get a call from a store owner asking me to assist them in tracking down employee theft in the way of debit card refunds.

This afternoon I helped the store owner track down every time an employee used her own personal debit card to do "fake" refunds of goods. She'd return 6 bundles of insulation, a door or two, and put the funds back on to her own debit card.

I had to laugh (just because it is so sad really..) when I came upon a couple of transactions that were 2 days apart. One day she did a fake return of $300 worth of goods and puts the funds on to her debit card. 2 days later, she pays her own account at the store for the amount of $100 using her debit card. She steals $300 one day and then 2 days later uses $100 of it to pay off her own in-store account.

In the hi-tech world that we live in, it still surprises me to see how often cashiers will try to steal from their employer using their own debit card which can be easily traced...

Probably by the time I finish typing this post, the cashier will no longer be employed.

This stuff happens far too often... Don't steal from your employer! It's NOT worth it!

 

[Hall]

Put it back on the debit card ? Maybe it's just my credit union, but any returns I do on purchases where I swipe it and choose 'debit', they have to give me cash back. I'd prefer it go back on the card, but they seemingly don't have the option.

 

[Van]

It varies by retailer, walmart will do cash back or a store gift card but doesnt put it back on the card anymore, Meijer's puts it back on the card if its past a certain range. I rember having one or two other retailers put it back on a card when I did a return but its been a while.

 

[vurbano]

Not Employees but.......

People will steal anything and they are getting bolder all the time. I am engineer for a local municipality. We have theives stealing the aluminum tube railing off of bridges around the city and selling it to scrap yards. Hundreds of feet of it, just think of the risk involved with that!. We also have theives stealing huge copper wiring out of Ct cabinets on City pump stations under construction.

 

[Hall]

Every return I've done recently has been cash-back so I'm still suspecting it's my credit union that's forcing it. Even a car part core that I paid for with the debit card got me cash back when I returned the old part.

 

[digiblur]

A friend of mine works at a local restaurant chain and some how one of the waiters figured out a way to override a failed credit card in the system. Once they figured that out they were using those refillable credit cards and not filling them back up. When a table would pay them cash they break out their almost empty credit card, charge it, override it, and take the cash home. There was trail leading to each and every employee doing it. I heard about 5 of them were doing it. Cleaned house!

 

[TheForce]

I've witnessed some strange employee theft in my time too.The first crazy one was at a large research facility I worked at right out of high school as a lab tech. Another lab tech checked out a 50 ft. coil of half inch copper tubing and wound it around his chest under his shirt. When he walked to the parking lot got in his car and then seated he had trouble breathing due to the tubing compressing his chest. He drove to the security guard station and about 20 ft before passed out at the wheel and ran into the guard shack. The security thought he had a heart attack and pulled him from the car and discovered he was wrapped with the tubing when they tried to do CPR. They tore his shirt off and pulled the tubing off quickly spinning him about on the ground while many of us watched. It was quite a sight I'll never forget. Then a few quick breaths of mouth to mouth brought him around. Next they arrested him and the local city police hauled him away. He did 3 years for his dumbass crime against his employer.

 

[Foxbat]

Don, your stories always bring a smile to my face...

Unfortunately, they haven't caught the copper thieves at our place. Some welders went to use one of their Welding machines and found the 20' cables were missing, cut off at the power unit. People risking their livelihoods over $50 - $100 in copper...

 

[Claude Greiner]

I got a friend who just recently retired from AT&T and in Detroit they got the copper thieves mining copper from the telephone poles all over Detroit.

He has over 35 years with AT&T, but decided to retire this year. Simply got tired of splicing 2000 pair cables, and then right after he finishes the Job and goes home the thieves hit the same place again and he is back out splicing cable!

 

[stone phillips420]

copper is hot seems as if every municipality now having trouble with thieves

i can see all those soon tobe forclosed homes looted for the copper and other precious metals

 

[Van]

Copper theives are hitting cell towers to, it made the news not to long ago about how when they hit the control box at the base it kills the tower effectively creating a dead zone and a danger to anyone needing to call 911. Theres a scrap yard on the way to my mothers place and every day I go by there it always has a line waiting to get in though so far what Ive seen has been actual junk so atleast for Georgia its been a good thing with the scrap prices going up across the board because alot of the properties have been cleaned up.

 

[Hall]

...and found the 20' cables were missing, cut off at the power unit. People risking their livelihoods over $50 - $100 in copper...

I'll bet they got more than that but even if they didn't, that's a LOT of money to the people who do this. I took some scrap metal (old lead water pipe, copper tubing from ice maker, etc) to a yard a couple of years ago (when prices were lower). For 12' of 1/4" copper tubing, I got almost $10 ! Welding cable is what, 4-6ga ? 20' of that probably gets a real nice chunk of change.