Employee Theft

[blas]

Has anyone ever had a coworker who stole money/merchandise from the store that they worked at, or been caught scamming the store in order to GET free stuff?

A couple of hacks ago, actually just a couple of months ago, it was either March or April, we had an employee at the gas station who'd only been there for a few weeks. She seemed like a decent, hardworking girl. She was good with customers and no one ever complained about her.

Then one day, my ex coworker (the one who could never find a babysitter) noticed that a lot of scratch offs had already been scratched. My manager told us all to be careful and if we saw anymore, let her know ASAP. She spent a few hours looking back on camera. She knew it wasn't me or the other girl, it HAD to be the new girl (because the entire staff at the time was the manager, the asst manager *who was off at the time for surgery*, myself, little miss i can't find a babysitter, and new girl......plus our little janitors, but they weren't allowed behind the counter).

Her drawer had come up short. We were short a few cartons of Marlboros. The camera proved that she'd stole money right out of her drawer and had been scratching and validating lotto tickets (w/o paying for them).

She was arrested. It made the local paper, and EVERY customer had to ask about it. So much for being discreet, right?

[Kiwi]

my bosses favourite who could take whatever shift she liked, didnt have to call in, never had to EVER do counter work and basically was the department managers lap dog took $100 note out of the register.....

another co-worker and I were pulled into the office (despite it going missing a day I wasnt working) and yelled at.... trying to get us to confess.... which we didnt because we couldnt because we hadnt done anything....the manager then hauled everyone else in, bollocks everyone over and over (guess who was the one girl missing) and again no one confessed

then the 2IC pulls us aside the next weekend and tells us whos done it... no apology from the boss or anything HAHAHA thats karma for you! If I was going to steal and lose my job, it would be for MORE than a megar 100 smackers!!

[purplecat41877]

Less than a year ago, one of my service desk coworkers saw one of the checkers constantly stealing money from the register. Eventually, the service desk coworker called the police who came for the checker.

[Thrifty]

I just found out my two night cashiers were scamming the store, less than a week ago. They knew enough not to do it in front of me (their manager) but they thought it would be okay if they did it in front of the manager I was training for another store.

It seems they were scamming two different ways. One was giving deals to random customers, I'm unsure why though. Maybe they liked the customer and wanted them to come back more, maybe felt bad about some of our high prices ::: The other way was to put money in their pocket. They were in cahoots with some day time employees as well as other customers. Customer comes up with 30 dollars of merchandise and cashier says I'll make it so you only pay 5 bucks for all this if you give me another 5. They only did this on big sales not small ones.

Well all of the sudden the night time sales went down a couple of hundred bucks. Usually we do 1000 and up between 6 and 9 but we started doing 800 sometimes 6 or 700 as well. We were all trying to figure out why, and had a secret shopper come in.

Yup they pulled the trick with the secret shopper, and we also has the manager trainee as a witness. Needless to say sales have been ever since we've taken them off register.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

We had a guy in the backroom steal a razor. Somebody saw him open the package and pocket the razor, and after a while he came and got the empty package, and we gave it to the manager on duty.

A couple weeks later, he got fired for something unrelated.

We also had a backroom guy stealing things by putting them in the compactor and going around the store to pick them up later. He was even stupid enough to brag about it to his friends.

Then there was the guy stealing video games and returning them for cash. We knew something big was up when the corporate LP guy came in personally to make the bust.

[CrazyCashierGuy]

My first boss got caught embezzling money from the service desk after being transferred to another store while I was on educational leave. Turns out he had been doing it at our store and had gotten someone fired because management thought that it was they who was stealing from the desk. Needless to say, the company is facing a lawsuit if she ever finds out what happened. No big issue for me, I thought the guy was a jerk.

Apparently we lost like 5 cashiers and our second shift service coordinator last week for massive credit card fraud as well. Don't know the specifics on that one.

[Rine]

I think I posted these stories a couple of hacks ago...

One cashier was caught helping her friends steal clothing. She would ring up the items, bag the items and put them into the friend's cart and then the friend paid with a credit card. When the transaction was complete, the cashier gave the receipt to the friend and then voided out the transaction on the register, so it was like the transaction never happened. Well, they got caught and arrested.

Another girl used to pay her store credit card bill behind the register and not put any money into the register. So, like, she would ring it up as her paying 100 dollars in cash but not putting that money into the register. No telling how long she did this, but I guess LP finally realized what was going on when her registers would show up short.

[Imogene]

Ooo! Fun.

Let's get out the WayBack Machine, Mr. Peabody!

"Indeed, Sherman."

Back my second Christmas at Chesterfield, I had a coworker who pissed me off so badly, cause she never did a damn thing. I swear, I remember having to come up from the back of the store to ring out customers, while my coworker was sitting (Sitting! In a store with no chairs in it!) at the computer where we could look up movies in print, which was turned to face the registers at the counter (a bizarre set up no matter how you look at it, as customers continuously tried to use the comp without asking) which was not even five feet from the register, yet I had to come up from the back, where I was busiliy stocking some section or other. What was she doing? Looking up movies she wanted... Excuse me, but, you're on the clock here, little miss! One night, she actually came up to me (again, I was busy stocking) and asked me if I liked her, and, in far more detail, I told her no. A few weeks later, the Third Key and her were walking out to make the deposit, and someone sitting in the vestibule between the doors saw her drop a DVD, Third Key worked the next morning, and found the open case she had taken the DVD from. She admitted to LP to stealing something like $400 from us total, and ten or so movies, if I remember correctly.


At one point, we got a new SM at Chesterfield, nice guy, fun to talk to, bit of a flake... One day, I walk into work, and old SM is standing behind the register. I walk to the back, and get intercepted by someone I thought was a customer.
"Can I help you?"
M "Uh, no... I'm good, thanks."
"Well, you can't go back there right now, you can drop your coat behind the register and clock in."
M "Actually, since I'm an hour early, I'll just keep my fleece and wander the mall, thanks."
I wander the mall, and end up in GameStop at some point. As I start to head back to the store, I see the new SM getting lead away in handcuffs. I return to the store, look old SM in the face, and ask "Any chance you can say what's going on?"
SM "Nothing beyond that He doesn't work here any longer."
M "The handcuffs kinda gave that away."

[BrassCowboy]

I think we all remember M, the jackass coworker of mine. One day, at a closing shift, he walks up to me with two cigarellos in his hand.

"Hey Brass, I'm gonna take these two today, and then pay for them tomorrow."
"No you're not."
"Why not? Are you gonna tell on me?"
"Yeah."
"F-bomb."

As he went to put them back, he turns to see if I'm watching him, and he thought I wasn't. I was though and I saw him put them in his pocket. I told the store manager, and he said that since it was only two cigarellos at 75 cents each, it wasn't worth checking the security tapes. I asked if I could just take two cigarellos without paying and he quickly changed the subject.

Arseholes.

[Ree]

I worked with a girl for several years.
We were friends. She was in my home, and I was in hers.
I will call her Laina.

The year I left to have my major surgery, and was unable to return to my original duites right away, she was given my job of handling store returns claims.
Sadly, she used it as a way to rip off the store, and had been doing it for a while.

I was the one who figured it out and had to turn her in. I was upset, but probably moreso, at the fact that she had used me in her lies.

I was doing up the tills that morning, and went to break. On my way to the breakroom, Laina stopped me and she asked me if one of the tills had been over by $20. I told her that it had been, and I was trying to figure out why.
She said that her MIL had been in the previous evening, and returned a phone, but when she got to their place later, she told them she just realized the cashier had never given her the money.

When I got back from break, I gave Laina the extra money, but when I started back on the till, I just happened to look at her returns receipts. Laina had signed the slip. I thought it was odd, but figured maybe she had been at the cash with her MIL, and had just signed the slip for her.

That same afternoon, one of the new cashiers, Tonya, approached me. She said she was bothered by something.
Laina had just been given a refund on a phone, but she had no phone or no receipt. All she had was the in-store warranty card that we give out with our electronics items. Tonya said that she had asked Laina where the phone was, and was told it had been given to the guy in that department to put back. She had checked with the guy, though, and he had not been given a phone.

Alarms bells started going off with me.
I looked in Laina's returns area, and there were no phones. I did a count on the 2 SKU's for the phones that were in question. I ran an inventory adjustment report, as well.
On the one, there were too many to get an actual count without alerting her that we were doing it, because it was a clearout item and we had shelves full of them in stock, piled up to the ceiling.
On the other, though, the count was correct, however, the report showed that I had made an inventory adjustment, removing from stock the one she had just returned, so that it wouldn't show up, since it didn't obviously exist.

When I got paged to the front cash to do something, she had snuck into the office where I was still logged in, and changed the quantities under my ID. It looked like I was in on it with her.
I checked with the cashier from the previous evening, and found out that there was no MIL returning a phone. Laina had handed the cashier the warranty card and been given a refund, although the cashier had forgotten to hand her the cash.

I was really mad. I even went to the dumpster and pulled out the bag of garbage from the previous evening and pieced together the ripped up card that had Laina's handwriting on it, as well as going through the garbage at the cash to get the card she had given the cashier that day. It was in her handwriting as well.

I told one of the AM's on duty and then stewed about it all weekend.
He had gone to the manager on my behalf, and when I came in on Tuesday, I was called in and asked about it. I had saved all of the evidence.

The police were called, and they discovered that the theft was much more extensive, and had been going on for a long time.
She was fired, but it didn't go to court. She was given the chance to pay off what they could account for, and if she didn't have it paid off by that date, she would be charged then.
She paid it off.

[digilight]

About 10 years ago I worked for the Sweet Factory (one of them over priced candy stores that sells it by the quarter pound). We had a store manager (she was cool), and a asst. manager (she was a b!!!h). I was begining to hate this job anyway (it was my second job and I was taking a full load of college courses at the time). One day about 1500 bucks goes missing from the safe (the only people who would have access to this would be the AM, the SM or the DM (who I never remember seeing at all). The staff knew that the person responsible was the AM who had a habit of counting out the drawer with the safe open while her tweaker BF was hanging out with her in the back. We think that the BF or her took the $$$ while she was counting out the drawer. The SM was promptly fired over this (or forced to resign not sure which). How did I find out about this you might ask. I had a massive migraine and didn't feel like going to work anyway so I called out sick and asked the AM to talk to the SM. She said that the SM no longer worked there due to the missing $$$. So I still called out and thought about it. About 2 hours later I showed up at the store and turned in my uniform and told her that I no longer worked there either and didn't want to put up with her Sh!t.

For the record I never thought about trying to contact a member of corporate to let them know about the AM and clear the SM. I still feel bad about that too.

[red hot pegasus]

Once, while I was working at a toy store,the SM fired a kid one night for stealing nintendo games(this was back in July of1990). I had a feeling the kid wasn't stealing the games,but had no proof. Ifound out what happened a few months later when one of my former coworkers came thru the BurgerKing drve-thru when I was working(the store manager fired me because he said I wasn't getting along with anybody there). My former co-worker told me the SM was fired for stealing,get this, NINTENDO GAMES!!!!! Apparently, he'd been sneaking them out in a small igloo cooler until someone ratted him out. Besides the games, he was also stealing our empty soda cansand bottles(MA has a 5cent deposit on them) that we were saving in order to buy a microwave for the breakroom.
The funny thing was,he sued the company to get his job back! The compamy promptly told him to take a hike!!

Another tale,when I was working at KMart, our store was chosen to close due to the bankruptcy filing. But it wasn't poor sales that was the only reason for our store to close; the garden shop manager(an adult who should have known better)
and the young kid we had working in recevingwere going thru the merchandise as it came in,went thru it and threw a lot of it in the compactor,only to come get it after the store had closed for the night. So, in eccense we lost our jobs due to the sticky fingers of a couple of co-workers.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I also had a guy stealing video games (or maybe I should say another one). They busted him right as he was leaving at the end of his shift. The LP person asked me to hold his jacket, and it weighed a ton from all the video games he stuffed in there.

Another time one of my friends came really really close to being fired and arrested for till tapping. Money was disappearing from the register while his numbers were in it.

They finally put a camera on that register and it turned out the money was being taken by somebody else, who had somehow gotten my friend's operator numbers and was signing into the register as him.

[ladodger34]

Another tale,when I was working at KMart, our store was chosen to close due to the bankruptcy filing. But it wasn't poor sales that was the only reason for our store to close; the garden shop manager(an adult who should have known better) and the young kid we had working in recevingwere going thru the merchandise as it came in,went thru it and threw a lot of it in the compactor,only to come get it after the store had closed for the night. So, in eccense we lost our jobs due to the sticky fingers of a couple of co-workers.

When my dad was working in retail, one of his AMs was pulling this scam. Stuff started coming up missing and they couldn't figure it out. I think he watched the guy do it from across the parking lot. They finally busted the guy by hiding in the trash bin and nailing him when he came to pick up his nightly loot.

[Spiffy McMoron]

Just before I left Crappy Tire, I had a coworker that was busted for stealingfrom the company. Basically, he would get a buddy to buy stuff from his till, not pay for it, and later he would return the merchandice using another co-workers till number. He and his buddy managed to steal upwards of $5000 form the store, in a matter of months, before my co-worker got caught. He came into work, police were called, and he was led away in cuffs.

Now this is where the story get funny.

Apparently, the father of my coworker will not come into the station and post his bail-and I can't say that I really blame dad. So my co-worker, fearful of his anal virginity should he spend the night, calls up a buddy who had cash to spare-his partner-in-crime.

Buddy gets to the police station, is promptly arrested, and is tossed in the cell next to my former co-worker.

Last I heard, both are facing charges of Fraud Over $5000.