Thievery most foul! (longish)

[mrtauntaun]

NOTE: This actually happened a number of weeks back, but due to an ongoing investigation, I couldn't post about it then.

My wife works for a rather large chain of retail bookstores which have large stand-alone stores and smaller, mall versions. My wife works in one of these 'express' mall stores.

She went to work one day, and her co-workers informed her that they had been robbed the previous day in the amount of $1500. It was a very complicated scheme, from what I can gather.

First, one of the crooks enters and poses as a customer, a Stupid Customer. He approaches the clerk at the cash register (CRC for short) while the other clerk (only 2 on at the time) is otherwise occupied. He makes outrageous demands about wanting to see a book in a section of the store farthest from the registers. CRC protests, stating she can't leave the registers unattended, and the SC begins to pitch a total fit, yelling and screaming. So, to placate him, as the store is not otherwise busy, CRC goes with him to the corner of the store.

See where this is going? Enter crook #2, who comes in quickly, hits the registers, and is gone. The don't clean it out, they leave just enough so CRC won't notice until it's time to count the drawer and BAM, $1500 short.

Now here's the interesting part, which needs a bit of backstory to fully understand. Many of the mall stores used to be affiliated with other companies and were bought out by this large retail chain. As such they have OLD cash registers, OLD OLD. Like the kind the ancient Romans used to have in the Forum. As they are old, they had one interesting quirk: each register, at each mall store in the district, could all be opened with the same key. Corporate genius at work.

So what happened some former employee, who still had this key and knew the stores procedures, unlocked the drawer, took just enough so it wouldn't be missed until closing, and vanished. Of course, SC never bought anything, just left shortly afterwards to join his accomplice. The kicker: the district here is state wide, so they hit almost every store in the state and made off with thousands, possibly tens of thousands.

And all because corporate was too cheap to upgrade the registers!

[draftermatt]

That sucks, but I only have 1 question.

Why was there $1500 in the drawer and not in a safe? Wow that's a lot of cash to have around.

[mrtauntaun]

I agree. There is no safe in the store, from what I can understand. This is a source of frustration for the employees. I'll have to ask my wife if corporate has changed their mind on the safe issue now that this has happened.

Also, I should have clarified, there are 3 cash drawers, and the $1500 was from all 3 combined.

[bigjimaz]

I had a job as a driver/reservationist/counter person for a ground shuttle bus service. They went between the town I lived in to the international airport about 100 miles away. They also didn't have a safe. What they had was a locked plywood door covering a shelf, the door had a slit cut into it where the money was shoved through. The problem with this (other than the obvious) is that anyone who happened to be in the ticketing area could plainly see that you were putting money in. The lock was a simple hasp-type lock where a metal hinged flap was put over a loop and the lock was placed on the loop. Our owner was told by almost everyone working there that he should get a safe. Even his insurance company had told him that they would not cover any losses because of the flimsy set-up.

I was driving the day it happened and was at the destination airport we serviced. It was Tuesday, Nov. 21, THE busiest travel day of the year. Combine this with the fact that the town I lived in is a college town, it was crazy busy. He burst in right before closing time. 11:50 PM according to my friend who was working the counter when it happened. He told her not to move, went right to the '(un)safe' used a common 12 inch screwdriver to pry the hasp off the door and took the days receipts, all $22,000+ of it.

Luckily for the owner the guy was caught 3 days later, but not before spending $19,000+ of it on a new car. When I left the job about 4 months after this incident, the owner had yet to buy a safe. He merely put a metal door on a cabinet under the counter away from the eyes of the customers.

[Crosshair]

Wow, talk about a dumb boss bigjimaz. Just looking on eBay there are several depository safes for sale. Some for under $100.

[BookstoreEscapee]

When I worked register they prompted for a cash pickup at 300 over the starting amount. We kept a locked cash drawer with change (1s, 5s sand coins, to save trips to the back during the day), and we'd stash the pickups temporarily but once we had a few in there we'd take them back to the safe. Which requires going through 2 locked doors with 2 different codes (break room and cash room), and only managers and head cashiers have the code to the cash room and safe (and the key to the cash drawer). And the pickups go in a slot in the safe, and lands in a little locked box inside the safe, which only the managers have the key to. The registers can't be opened, either, without a cash sale or a supervisor code.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I'd like to know how the thief was able to hang on to that key after leaving the company.

I also bet corporate instructs the cashiers never to leave the registers unattended with cash in them (which should be SOP anyway), and takes it out on the poor cashiers who got duped. Upgrading the registers so they can't be opened with the same key makes too much sense.

And bugjimaz's boss got what he had coming to him. A sturdy safe should be a prerequisite for any business, and he should've invested in one after the insurance company told him he'd be SOL if he ever got robbed. But obviously a functioning brain is not necessary to run a business.

My last comment for now--we have a lock on our recieving office door similar to the one bigjimaz's boss used, and if you use a lock like that on a door you might as well lock it with a glob of chewed gum. Our infamous Bungee Boss broke the hasp right off the door, and would spend his shifts holed up in the normally-locked office, drinking cough syrup, chewing tobacco and dozing until his shift was done, or he got buzzed enough that he had to go home.

[Der Cute]

Old cash registers dont need a key tho.

You can lift the chassis up and find a nub on the bottom towards the back, under the tray. It's a release shaft that lets the door open w/o a key.

Had to use it a few times when drawers would get stuck w/ coin rolls or something, or not being allowed to use "nosale" key.

Pop it open, do the bizness, close and done.

Cutenoob

[BusyBee]

Don't even need a key for any of the registers I've worked. Half of them, you just have to scan something and press Sale, or just press NoSale... the other half, you just press a button near the side of it.
I hear some people spend their time occasionally thinking up how to rob the places they work... I've never bothered cos it would be so damn easy

Did any of the bookstores have security cameras mrtauntaun? I take it they caught the guy?

[mrtauntaun]

I don't know if they caught the guy, all they could do is narrow it down to former employees who were 'key worthy' in the state, but from what I'm told, that was not a small list (high turnover, especially after Christmas). They did go over the mall's security cameras (none actually in the store), but CRC could not pin down the peps, so it appears they knew where the cameras were. From what the other employees think, it was likely someone who got fired and somehow managed to keep they key with the intent to do this.

They did have a big round of meetings stressing the importance of never leaving the cash registers unattended, but I am happy to say corporate didn't make the cashiers the scapegoats.

I remember from my retail days some of those registers that had the button on the bottom, and I asked my wife about that. She said the key in question actually locked the drawer, and these models don't have that 'safety' button on them.

Upgrading the registers so they can't be opened with the same key makes too much sense.

You're right, other than that meeting, corporate has not plans to make any changes the SOP.

[Andara Bledin]

I sometimes shop at one of those in-mall bookstores that mostly used to be another bookstore chain. Corporate totally doesn't care about anything like, say, keeping them stocked in some sort of coherent manner. You know, like keeping extra copies of the first book in a series on hand, and keeping at least one copy of each of that series in stock, especially for popular stuff, like the Dresden books... but I digress...

I've had a few jobs where robbing the place would have been easy as pie. One of the guys at my current place of employment has been witnessed stuffing money in his pocket and still works here. *complete bafflement*

One of my first "real" jobs was Medieval Times out here in California. I was there for 18 months and near the end of my patience with them, they put boxes in the ticket booths for us to store any bill over a $20. They only did that after one of the head cashiers stole a bunch of money. Of course, he stole it after it was collected in the main office. They weren't high on brains in there. I must have whacked my knee on that stupid box a million times. To say it was poorly placed would be an understatement.

^-.-^

[Dips]

The bank I used to work at would be ridiculously easy to rob. The setup was (and is) all open and "friendly." In this case "friendly" means that we didn't want our customers to feel untrusted. So instead of locked security doors, we had three foot high wooden rails with a gate held closed by one of those sliding bolts you sometimes see holding the stall door shut in public restrooms.

The vault was right behind this gate, open and visible to anyone in the lobby and the teller area was completely open and accessible too.

We had an old bastard customer who didn't like waiting in line to get to his safe deposit box, so he'd just waltz right into the vault, knowing that an employee would have to chase him. Then he'd demand that the employee help him, since she was already there, ya' know.

The boss saw nothing wrong with this.

[sportsmom]

A sturdy safe should be a prerequisite for any business, and he should've invested in one after the insurance company told him he'd be SOL if he ever got robbed.

My hubby is a locksmith and you would be surprised at how many businesses there are that take in thousands of dollars a day that do not have proper safes. It blows my mind how people think that their money is safe in some little thing, or that they will buy a safe to store their money in that is only 1 cubic foot and not bolted to the floor, or isn't rated for a fire.

People can be really stupid sometimes.

[Best Made Tacos]

People can be really stupid sometimes.

I worked once at a place where one of the supervisors, no less, ran a scam where he'd briefly take over from the cash register employee, put thru a customers eftpos payment (usually a small amount, it was a coffee shop), surreptitiously add extra $ to the transaction in the form of a cash out, then take the cash from the drawer later and pocket it. Worked for quite a while, until customers started coming back with complaints that they never purchased $50 worth of lattes. Then he got fired and charged by the police.
Really, he was shafting the other employees as well as customers, because they initially got the blame, as it was their cash register the thefts ocurred at.

[scruff]

I'd like to know how the thief was able to hang on to that key after leaving the company. .

Heck, last job, the boss forgot to ask our receptionist when she left for the keys to the _entire building_.

(I met her in the pub the next week and got them back, but if she'd not been honest, or had anyone dodgy nicked her purse which had the keys in it...)