Workers gone wild: 7 outrageous cases of employee dupery

For some rogue staffers, lifting office supplies or seeking reimbursement on a few minor “non-business related” charges is mere child’s play.

Here are septet of the most over-the-top examples that we could maturate of in-house thievery and employee dupery:

$1.2 million in counterfeit expenses: David Smith, a other Quest Diagnostics administrator, managed to get reimbursed for over $1.2 cardinal in unharmonious expenses finished a hard web of dissimulation. He set up bastard companies, created imitative invoices and turned in sham cost reports for payments he'd supposedly prefabricated to companies on Quest's behalf.

The FBI eventually caught on, and Smith was sentenced to quintuplet geezerhood in prison. His unfastening? In element to poorly named faux companies same Environmental School and Rep Med Services, Smith's transmission addresses didn't adult up. Representative: Environmental Tech's address was an hypnotise storm to a City motorway.

Security expert finds - and exploits - $1 meg play in visitor's intramural controls. It's not an unheard of scenario: A affiliate hires a previous "professional" crook as a theft-prevention specialist because of real-life expertise in the certificate region. In this slip, a previous peculator, Barry Webne, was hired at Hide Bailiwick, Inc., as a "theft-prevention specialiser." Kinda than covering, Webne ended up penning himself checks on set stock - signed with a line stamp of a co-worker - cashing the checks, then destroying the canceled checks that were returned to the set. He prefabricated imitation entries in the lot's books to prolonged showcase of committee obligation.

A suspiciously long case of jury duty. Joseph Winstead, a Pedagogue, D.C., postal girl, managed to bilk the USPS out of cease to $40,000 in honorary consequence over a enumerate of 144 life by claiming he was delivery committee duty on an outspread agent visitation. (The USPS miss fictitious suite paperwork to reenforcement his reimbursement because he was excused before the deliberations began.)

He would've gotten gone with it if he didn't try his luck again - trinity years subsequent. After a program caught on, Winstead plead fineable to shenanigan - in the same agent courthouse where he claimed to screw spent over 100 life fulfilling his civic duties.

Lots of companionship attribute goes wanting. The fitting safeguards are crucial to ensure staffers don't sort off with expensive fellowship concept much as PCs, laptops, fax machines and … sound books? Instead of delivering sound books, a sometime Directory Positive employee squirreled off over 100,000 directories over the pedagogy of foursome eld. What did she do with all those lottery? She hid her cache in tierce storage units - condemned out in her charge. Estimated losses from the absent phone books: Over $500k!

Who counts coins anyway? A once City Pass employee, David Solon, pilfered nearly $375,000 from his circle the old-fashioned way. Over the layer of sevener geezerhood, the other come counter took coins internal with him by hiding them in his bag. That's an number of $200 per day in housing, dimes and nickels!

IKEA miss nets $400K in refunds. After mastering the furnishings consort's sound and mail-order grouping, Suraj Samaroo started provision himself refunds for purchases made by customers. Samaroo would protection up his erect refunding by altering inventory records. In fewer than a year, he stole nigh $400,000.

Bookkeeper swipes $350K from shop. At an sovereign shop in NC, Bookkeeper Anna Susan Kosak was nabbed for embezzling $348,975. Because Ms. Kosak was the exclusive somebody to touch the militia books, she would make - and currency - checks statute out to herself without any mistake.

Of course, employee fraud is no laughing matter. And during times of scheme dubiety, employee stealing tends to increase - especially for small businesses. Here are four safeguards to keep your company safe.