I have employeee who has “misappropiated funds” (under $150.00). do I have the legal right to keep pay & bonuses if I or he chooses to terminate employment? Supposedly it was just “borrowed”. What are mine or his legal action in Texas?
IANAL
I don’t know about Texas, but I remember a similar case when I worked in Washington state. The employee was let go (fired) , but not prosecuted. In return, our company withheld the usual pay (vacation, last check, etc…)
I would bet that withholding pay is only legal if the employee agrees to repay the debt in that way, probably in return for your agreement not to prosecute. If the employee has not admitted guilt and agreed to the repayment, they are entitled to trial. I’d check with your state’s Department of Labor before taking any action.
What seawitch said.
IANAL either but I believe you cannot withhold the money because you are not a judge and jury. No matter how certain you are the employee took the money it is not your place to take it back. You have to go to court and have a court decide what restitution should be made.
In short, you have to pay the guy (or gal) their full salary for the time they worked.
As others have mentioned it is possible to get the employee to agree to a repayment of the money in exchange for a promise from you to not prosecute them. I worked in HR once and we had a similar case to this.
Accounting started to get the opinion that money was being stolen from one of their locations on a regular basis. There were only two managers responsible for that location that had access to the safe. Accounting started paying close attention and eventually gathered enough evidence to clearly point to the manager responsible for the theft. The difference in our case was the manger was a black female (actually both managers were) and she threatened to sue the company for discrimination if they fired her or pressed criminal charges. A deal was struck where she would quit and just go away…no repayment of money (around $5,000 all told) and the company would not press criminal charges. The company’s attorneys figured this was the best deal the company could expect in this case.
Thanks folks… The fellow has indeed replaced the funds… However he has several hundred dollars in commisions and bonuses in effect…I DO NOT want to cheat the guy but do I have any recourse?? Am I obligated to pay him even though he has proved himself dishonest?? BTW he has given notice that he will be leaving. What if he takes information or advice he may have learned from me to the new company he might go to work for??