There was a story in News Of The Weird once about a guy who worked for a company called Roadway Express who got a fake I.D. printed with his picture on it and the name “Roadway V. Express.” He got busted the first time he tried to cash a check with it.
This will not help you. When I was in my drug addicted youth, I worked at a gas station/convenience store. I robbed the place blind. People would come in and pay cash and it would go in my pocket instead of the register. I would always leave with ciagrettes and beer and snacks when I closed up for the night. I cost them thousands of dollars.
I was never caught. They knew about the missing inventory. But I was fudging my inventory paperwork. A guy from another shift was actually fired because my stuff showed up on his inventory sheets.
I still feel bad about that.
>There was a story in News Of The Weird once about a guy who worked for a company called Roadway Express who got a fake I.D. printed >with his picture on it and the name “Roadway V. Express.” He got busted the first time he tried to cash a check with it.
Rats. There goes my plan to change my name to Exxon L. Corporation.
Re: The Roadway Express incident.
Back when Fina was still Fina Oil & Chemical, there was a fellow in their Tyler office who engaged the services of a data broker to market Fina’s proprietary seismic data and, incredibly, stipulated in the contract that revenue from sales were to be paid to Max Xxxxxxx/Fina.
He opened a bank account styled as such and merrily deposited data sale revenues. I don’t remember exactly how he was nailed, but I believe it was due to his absconding with all of the revenues, thus making the scam apparent. He did go to prison, and Fina’s Tyler office was a prickly place to visit for a while (I was a partner in a data brokerage business at the time).
Another Fina employee, a geologist who was worried about getting laid off, got nailed when his boss happened to enter a copy shop as he was picking up a large batch of seismic data he had copied to create his own data base should he find himself unemployed in the near future. He did find himself unemployed, but sans data base, and the last I heard Fina had planned legal action.
OK, both of these are ones I’ve heard about but not been involved in, but I’m reasonably sure they happened. I’m removing company names just in case:
There was a woman working as a secretary at a large company through a temp agency. She decided she wasn’t making enough money, so she started turning in a lot of hours on her time sheets. Not a lot as in ‘worked 45, claimed 55’ but a lot as in ‘worked 40, claimed 80-120’! Her manager at the company simply signed her timesheets without looking at them, and the temp agency and accounting department at the company kept paying because the procedures were being followed. After a few weeks of this, someone at the temp agency went to talk with the manager to see about sending in a second person. But he dismissed this, since as far as he knew, she was working only normal hours.
This kept up for a few months until accounting at the large company decided to do an audit, and the manager was forced to look at the numbers. She was fired and arrested, and the large company insisted that the temp agency pay them back, but the temp agency refused as they had timesheets signed by the manager (as required by their contract) and had even taken the extra step of talking to the manager in person about it. The manager ended up simply being fired, and they used this story to warn managers to check timesheets before signing them.
OK, one about direct theft. A particular company had a problem with brand new laptops disappearing. They didn’t want to go to the police right off the bat (they could look bad, or could end up accedentally accusing a wrong person) so they let it sit for a while, which led to a few more laptops going missin. After two weeks (!) someone had the idea of checking the survelience tapes. It turned out that one of the IT guys was simply taking the laptops, putting them on a cart after hours, and wheeling them to his car without even covering them. At that point they did call in the police, but it’s amazing to me how long it took for them to think to look at the tapes.
(Honestly, I’ll never really understand these sorts of crimes - if you can get a real job, why risk 10 years in prison and a felony conviction for money you could just save and get? I can understand someone embezzling a million dollars or some other large amount, but this kind of thing makes no sense to me).
That reminds me of the story where an executive (we’ll call him ‘Dave’) from Burger King was checking into a hotel with his Corp. AMEX card. The receptionist politely did her work and then passed back the card saying, “I hope you enjoy your stay Mr. King”
He replied with a smile, “Please, call me Burger”.
~vert
I used to work in the corporate office of a retail clothing chain. One of the Division (the one I worked for) sold expensive men’s suits and sportswear. This was in the early 90’s and it was all about corporate america and power suits, etc. For some of our stores the average suit was $1,500 and customers would easily spend $5,000 each time they came in.
One of the most respected Managers of a high profile store had an interesting scam going. Part of the customer service was that if a customer didn’t like the $3,000 suit he had just bought and had tailored (and even worn), he could return it - no questions asked. The returned clothing was “damaged out” and was then sold at the end of the year as part of a huge warehouse sale. Things usually went for 10 cents on the dollar, or less.
This Manager decided that if it was good enough for customers, it was good enough for him. He would buy six or seven suits at the beginning of the season (there were 3 seasons each year) and then return all of them for credit, and buy six or seven new ones for the beginning of the next season. He had been doing this for 4 or 5 years.
The reason he got caught was that he had a habit of letting employees pick out a tie or shirt for their birthdays and then put the sale on his employee account. He did this for one of the cashiers, who then noticed that at the end of the day her gift was never added to the register. She got suspicious, called Loss Prevention and they eventually figured out through audits what he had been doing. He had never paid for any of the gifts he was giving his employees. He was fired, but I don’t think that he was ever prosecuted.
On a related note, an Assistant Buyer was caught stealing when she wore a shirt to a Season Preview event at one of the local stores. The shirt was from the line for the season that was to start in a week. It wasn’t for sale yet. We had been having a major problem with items missing from our sample room, so the Buyer got suspicious. The next day at work she asked the Assistant to go get the Sample of the shirt she wore the night before. The Assistant went off towards the sample room, but then cut for the stairs. The Buyer called security and asked them to watch what she does and the call her back.
A few minutes later the Assistant returned with the shirt. Then security called back and told the Buyer that the Assistant had walked out the parking lot, picked up a shirt from her trunk and then came right back into the building. After confronting her they found out that she had been stealing from the sample room for several years - to the tune of $30,000. She was fired and made arrangements to pay back the company for all of the merchandise she had taken.
~vert
Want a recent story about Bobby Knight’s son?
Tim Knight’s being investigated by Texas Tech for arranging for merchandise purchased by the university to be shipped to an Indianapolis store operated by his mother without the university receiving payment.
He says that the university will be reimbursed, but no one was told about the deal until the story surfaced.
(Link above is to the Star-Telegram, which broke the story)
This story made the rounds in the telco I worked for a few years back - I can’t vouch for authenticity, but it’s creative enough:
A line technician for said telco would regularly be on call in case of line trouble. As is common, he would wear a pager and get a basic amount just for being on call, with a larger amount if he actually had to respond to an alert.
So, in order to maximize his benefit from this state of affairs, he installed a timer cut-off switch discreetly. The timer would cut power to the line equipment, he’d be paged, take off in his company car, visit his mistress who lived near the installation, reset the timer switch and bill the company for time spent servicing both this and that.
Worked perfectly until another technician found the timer switch and was smart enough to read the cut-off time but leave it in place.
Man, that pisses me off! I’ve been in 4 bike tours and raised a couple thousand dollars for MS. To think that an @$$h01e like that could negate that.
Oops, I said the same above statement 2 [sup]1[/sup]/[sub]2[/sub] years ago. Nevermind.
I used to work in a paint store which would refund money for paint bought not used (excluding specially mixed paint). One must have a receipt and the transaction was then supported by a handwritten 3-part document which was tallied at the end of the day and then stored with the days cash register tapes.
The first part of this story concerns a customer I saw walk into the store, pick up a gallon of pre-mixed Antique White off the shelf, come to the counter and show a receipt and ask for a refund. (Okay, it was 11.99 plus tax, but still). I went to the manager, told him what I had seen, and was told to make the refund anyway.
Part Two concerns an employee who wrote fictional returns supported by receipts never taken by the customer. He got caught as the result of an internal audit. Fake names and addresses, and his disconnected phone number. This was back in the 80’s…
Quasi
I worked for an office equipment/supply company, and we had a running problem with the cash not quite balancing. We didn’t have a register, just a cashbox and manually written-up sales orders, since the bulk of the supply orders were delivered/charged.
After a while, it was pretty obvious what was happening - cash sales were being made and the paperwork was being destroyed. (The paperwork was kept in the same box as the cash.) This was a big deal- most of the orders were at least $300 or more.
Things were pretty tense for a while, since there were about six people who had the opportunity to jigger the till. (Myself included.)
The fella finally got caught out when customers started coming in and asking for the “half-off if you pay cash” deal-- and saying “but that other guy always cuts me a deal if I pay cash.”
Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, there.
According to the owners of the amusement park I work at “all employees are thieves, we just havent caught them yet.”
This is why most games made in th last 20 years or so have play meters in them. Also dispense ratios are tracked so if a game is malfunctioning and dispensing too little or too many tickets it can be fixed. It also rather conveniently points out where ticket thefts by arcade staff take place.
Compare billchanger sales to total tokens collected by machines. An arcade doing 5-6K a day its pretty easy to lose 200 tokens a day to walkouts. When the token inventory climbs for several weeks in a row after dropping for several weeks in a row look for your staff selling tokens out of thier pockets, or your staff playing games all day with thier friends.
Those have meters too, when meters started looking screwy the owners started coming in and spot checking billchanger token counts and meters every day. Took two days to catch a manager who was stealing.
Ignorance purged, time for stories:
Cashier at waterslides was collecting coupons on grocery bags via roomie who bagged at grocery store carrying coupons on bags. Roomie brings home 30-40 bags, they trim coupons, cashier brings to work.
Typical transaction 4 waterslide wristbands, $6 each. Cashier asks customer if they need the receipt (which they are required to give to customer on ALL transactions) customer says no, cashier slide receipt under register. Next customer 4 for waterslides, $24. Rings up two 2 for 1 passes totalling $12, pockets $12. Asks customer if she needs receipt. Customer say yes, gives her last receipt for full price. The girl did this for MONTHS before somebody took a look at the fact that she was doing about 50% coupon sales compared to about 10% for the rest. So we watched her with binoculars for a few hours and got to watch the system. The park GM looked up from his calculations and stated “This little bitch has been making more than me for last 3 months!!” When we arrested her she a 30/hr a week min wage employee who had $380 in her pocket 2 days before payday and another $1100 in her purse. We don’t know exactly how much she got away with but if she would have been a little less greedy she could have gotten away with it indefinitely. Her registers were always perfect and we never had a complaint about her, star employee in every other respect. 2 for 1 coupon abuse comes and goes in the history of the park, most of it is so small we would never be able to isolate it statistically,we have to depend on cashier sups to spot coupons coming out of pockets.
Batting cage attendants are probably our most commonly fired employees for theft, they usally place traps in the token chutes to collect tokens then sell them out of their pocket at their little equipment window (they already legitimately do token sales as part of the job). They usally get busted when the billchangers hardly make any money so we start watching or just sweep in and check all the machines for traps. So far about 80% of the times we have spot checked we nailed someone.
One time I saw a bunch of young kids running around with one of them doling out ride tickets from a gallon ziplock bag. I walked up and
ME: “Wow your mommy must like you guys alot to buy you all those tickets”
KID: "No she didn’t buy them, her boyfriend gives them to her.
ME: “Really! whos her boyfriend?”
KID: “Steve! He’s right over there [kid points]”
ME: “Wow what a great guy, your mom is lucky to have such a nice boyfriend”
KID: “Yeah we have 3-4 more bags like this at home” (quick visual guesstimate $200-$300 in tickets in the bag)
ME: “Ok you guys have fun” [kid runs off]
ME: [radio]operations supervisor to duty manager, please come to rideland, bring the cuffs[/radio]
Employee swears up and down that the kid is lying, we search him and he has about $20 worth of tickets in his pockets. We round up the kids also and make them call their mom. She shows up and amazingly enough mom is another park employee! 2 firings at one shot.
Not fraud but you want STUPID!!!
Waterslide attendant and ride operator b/f g/f (different couple than story #2).
Relationship is a little rocky, b/f can see g/f’s workstation from their apartment across the street. B/f sees g/f talking to a guy at her station for 20-30 minutes and they look too friendly for his tastes.
B/f runs across streeet hops fence, runs up to g/f’s workstation and confronts guy talking to his g/f with a gun.
Customers scatter and the ensuing commotion attracts security before the “Man with a gun” call is made by the area supervisor.
Security responds to the area.
B/f runs back across street pointing gun in our general direction to discourage pursuit (successfully I might add). We call police and inform them of situation.
VCSU shows up (Violent Crimes Supression Unit, commonly pronounced SWAT team)
They try to call the apartment to ask him to surrender but hes on the phone. Call traced to a cell phone. Belonging to anyone, anyone…yup the girlfriend. Up on her waterslide station telling him where all the VCSU guys are positioned outside the apartment. We go grab her and take her into custody, and turn her over to VCSU a few minutes later. After about 20 minutes the guy threw his gun out a window then surrendered without further incident.
sidenote: FPD’s VCSU has been disbanded due to their “heavy handed” tactics. They had quite a history of cuffing damn near everyone in an apt building and sorting it out later looking for one guy. At the time they were a godsend and word of VCSU units in the neighborhood would strike fear into the hearts of many criminal types. Now they have been supplanted by a much lighter armed but more specialized MAGEC team (multi agency gang enforcement consortium)
Yep. I Help fundraise for MS too. That is the lowest of the low, ripping off Charities, man.