Is an employee selling drugs from their job? What are signs of drug trafficking in the workplace? What can human resources do to stop drug dealing at work? These are questions every business owner and human resources department should be asking themselves before contacting a private investigator.
Why is an employee meeting with people in the parking lot on break?
It’s common for drug deals to happen in cars. It makes for a quick and private way to do an exchange in plain sight. In the backseat of car, on break from work, is where Jade Violes sold heroin while working at a Pizza Hut in Indiana.
In 2015, Violes was arrested for selling heroin after an undercover police officer purchased from her in the Pizza Hut parking lot. If an employee is meeting with people in cars during work hours it’s not unreasonable to suspect they may be selling drugs.
Why do employees keep meeting in the bathroom?
Do employees sell drugs in the bathroom at work? At the Senate mail room in Pennsylvania they did. This past March two employees of the Pennsylvania Senate were charged with crimes related to the distribution of heroin. A third employee was also fired from their job in connection to the drug peddling.
Police were alerted to the crimes when an employee not involved in the inter-office drug trade found 20 packets of heroin in the bathroom. Corey Miller was charged with possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance after police found eight more packets of heroin in his wallet. Bathrooms can offer privacy to employees that some find too tempting to resist exploiting.
How can they afford all that stuff?
Does driving a fancy car mean someone is selling drugs? What about buying a new big screen TV and the latest smart phone? What if an employee is doing all of this and more? If this is the case then you may want to call an investigator.
Human resources departments know how much an employee earns from their job. If an employee is suddenly showing up in expensive clothes with fancy accessories and they haven’t picked up a second job then something could be up. It’s one thing to live outside your means, but there are limits to how much one can acquire on credit alone.
We recently fired an employee for using drugs at work. Could there be more?
Was an employee recently fired for using drugs at work? Were they the only person using on the job? Were they buying drugs at work? These are questions every human resources department should be asking when an employee is caught using drugs on the job.
Some businesses believe the nature of their work precludes them from having drug dealers in their midst, but that’s a mistake. It may be easy to write-off drug dealing from Pizza Hut, but it’s tougher when someone like 53-year-old James Peter Kranyecz gets bustedselling marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine from the church he worked at.
We caught an employee bringing drugs to work. Were they the only one?
Catch an employee with a small amount of drugs? Don’t just assume it was for personal use. The packaging and quantity of drugs should be taken note of when considering what to do next. Did the employee bring drugs on-site for personal use or were they distributing to coworkers? Was the employee acting alone or with their coworkers?
Earlier this year five United States Postal workers were arrested after conspiring to help distribute marijuana through the postal system. First, the postal workers gave their work schedules and routes to a drug dealer. Then the dealer timed when he mailed the drugs to make sure they ended up in the postal workers’ hands. According to News 5 Cleveland, Michael Tobin of the US Attorney’s Office said, “These are folks who had jobs, decent jobs as mail carriers, and they threw it all away for $200, $300, $400 of cash.”
For Private Investigation Inquiry contact Thomas Lauth, Lauth Investigations 317-951-1100
David Schroeder, Blog Writer, Lauth Investigations International
Theft in the workplace is a major problem. According to the Global Retail Theft Barometer employee theft costs American businesses even more than theft by non-employees. Employee theft made up 43% of all lost inventory in 2015. That’s an annual cost of roughly $18 billion. It’s $2.3 billion more than the cost of theft by customers. Most of the theft that occurs isn’t an employee taking items and walking out of the store with them.
“Usually it happens during checkout, when an associate manipulates a transaction to benefit themselves or someone else,” Ernie Deyle, a 30-year veteran of the retail loss-prevention wars who leads the business consulting practice at London-based data analytics firm Sysrepublic told Fortune.com. Employees might, for instance, enter refunds, discounts, or voided transactions into a cash register or “cancel transactions, modify prices, or say someone used a coupon when they didn’t.”
The interesting question, of course, is not so much how as why. “Key reasons … include ineffective pre-employment screening, less employee supervision, and easy sale of stolen merchandise,” the report says.
Deyle sees cultural differences at work too. “Internationally, there’s more of an unwritten code that says it’s not honorable to do something dishonest toward an employer,” he says. “Here, it’s a different mindset. There’s so much turnover in retailing, and very little loyalty.”
So what can businesses do to combat employee theft and protect their investments? For starters they can invest in a stronger background check system. The reports says one of the key reasons theft happens is due to “ineffective pre-employment screening.” Everyone’s trying to cut costs and increase their dividends, but a lack of investment in screening employees thoroughly can end up costing your business more down the line.
One of the best ways to prevent losing inventory to employee theft is to get your employees involved in the prevention process. Very few people want to be the one to tell the boss about a coworker’s theft. It’s not that they think stealing is ok or don’t care, but who wants to potentially ruin relationships with people you have to work with every day?
Tip lines in 2016 mean more than just 1-800 telephone numbers. Setting up an email address dedicated to tips allows employees to anonymously report a coworker’s stealing. Everybody text messages nowadays and creating a text message tip line is perfect for younger employees. Tip lines are a great way to empower your employees to report cases of theft without exposing themselves to retaliation from coworkers or the people they report.
Another cause for employee theft is a lack of consistent oversight. Employees don’t want someone constantly standing over their shoulder, but thinking someone is watching them will decrease the rate of employee theft at any business. Cameras are a good option to create the presence of supervision and keep employees mindful of their actions.
Private investigators can help with every aspect of this and more. Recommending and installing cameras in places most likely to disrupt theft is too easy for a good P.I.. They can also operate the tip lines to make sure every tip is investigated and your employee’s anonymity is protected. Investigators are perfect for higher quality background checks too. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Protect your assets today.
For Private Investigation Inquiry contact Thomas Lauth, Lauth Investigations 317-951-1100
David Schroeder, Blog Writer, Lauth Investigations International
The individual could be a witness, heir, a missing child, or a criminal. Maybe the individual is a former disgruntled employee who could whistle-blow about corporate misconduct or fraud. You might needing locate a subject in possession of the proverbial “smoking gun”—as in the case of stolen assets. Whether it’s an interview, serving papers, or investigate individuals, a Lauth PI can help you to identify and locate the subject.
2. We Locate Assets
Lauth Investigators are skilled at locating assets such as real estate, unclaimed property, and other valuable property like: artwork, antiques, collectibles, motor vehicles, aircraft, vessels, etc. A Lauth investigator can also help attorneys to identify the location both domestic and offshore bank accounts.
3. We Can Leverage for Negotiations
A Lauth Investigator can pull together key sources and intelligence to inform your side during litigation, in an M&A deal, during an internal investigation, or any other adversarial situation. It can make the difference between a favorable settlement and an unfavorable one.
4. We Can Help Attorneys Enforce Judgments
Obviously, a judgment is only useful if you are able to enforce it. A Lauth Investigator can help attorneys to identify current assets and uncover efforts to hide or misrepresent them through the transfer to family members, friends or other parties.
5. We Can Connect the Dots
Lauth Investigators can help you to know who is actually sitting on the other side of the table during litigation or a potential business deal. You can gain immeasurable negotiation power by identifying who is actually behind a faceless corporation or tying together undisclosed connections.
6. We Can Generate A Historical Reconstruction/Timeline
A historical reconstruction may be helpful in a number of different areas. Perhaps you need to review the history of a family to locate heirs. It could be a corporate history or a chain of title issue in a real estate matter. Whatever the issue, a Lauth Investigator can help to identify and piece together long lost documents, facts and witnesses.
Aaron Snyder — Research Investigator and Blog Writer — Lauth Investigations International
There are a few generally accepted types of employees when it comes to workplace fraud and embezzlement. Social science has done a great deal of research on who commits workplace fraud and why they decide to offend. The three most common types of employee, when it comes to likelihood of committing fraud, are: honest employees, generally honest employees, and professionally dishonest employees.
Professionally Dishonest Employees
Often referred to as “professional fraudsters”, these individuals are more uncommon than the other types, but are important to understand and make note of. They certainly do exist, and there may be more of them than you might think. These fraudsters seek companies with weak controls and the inability to detect workplace fraud. These employees move from company to company in order to defraud them. These individuals generally had no intention of working for said company; their only intention from their initial interview is to defraud an organization for personal gain. This type of planned, calculated, and premeditated workplace fraud is one of the most serious types of fraud, and often times they involve large dollar amounts.
Companies can combat these fraudsters by creating stronger controls and implementing a plan to discover workplace fraud. The mere existence of such of a plan to deter workplace fraud can be enough to denture these fraudsters from ever infiltrating the company to begin with—they are looking for any easy payday. Organizations with weak controls and highly autonomous workers should be particularly aware of this type of employee, and take steps in order to make sure they are never hired in the first place.
Generally Honest Employees
The second category of employees is generally honest ones. These employees took the job and, originally, never planned on stealing or defrauding the company. There are two main risk factors that are used to determine how likely a particular employee is to engage in fraud.
The first risk factor is opportunity. If a generally honest employee is given a large opportunity, or many smaller opportunities, to steal from the company they are more likely to commit workplace fraud than an employee with limited opportunity. Limiting the opportunity for workplace fraud to occur may be the single best preventative measure that can be taken to avoid the issue altogether.
The other determining factor is the employee’s perceived need for the money. Employees who are dependent on gambling, alcohol, or drugs are certainly at a higher risk to offend, but sometimes, all it takes for fraud to occur is any level of perceived need and a high level of opportunity.
Honest Employees
They certainly exist, but far too often, employers estimate that they have more honest employees than they actually do. Often times, victims of workplace fraud become victims by believing that their employees are all honest. Other times, employers are concerned about low-level workers while the most likely individual to commit fraud is a long-term, trusted, knowledgeable, and important employee.
Employees that have been around for awhile have a working knowledge of the company, and in turn, understand the best ways that they could defraud the company without suspicion. Companies can help insulate themselves from fraud by understanding that their most likely offenders are also the employees they might least suspect.
Regardless of the character of the workers that a given company employs, it is impossible to completely avoid the possibility that workplace fraud could occur in the organization. Understanding these simple categories can help avoid hiring the wrong people, but because workplace fraud can happen anywhere, it is also important to know how hiring a Private Investigator can help you discover fraud, recover losses, and prosecute offending employees.
Suspect work place fraud? Call Lauth Investigations today.
So you’ve realized that you are the victim of workplace fraud. What now? For many business owners, it can be frustrating trying to figure out what to do after uncovering fraud in the workplace. Here are five options of who to contact when you suspect that you’ve been duped.
1. Many begin by calling an attorney
You certainly might need one at some point during this stressful process, but not all attorneys are capable of assisting in the same way. Different attorneys have different specialties, and their advice on the proper way to proceed will likely vary widely. Calling your attorney could be helpful, and again, may be necessary. Still, it might not be the best first-option due to the high professional fees that attorneys tend to charge.
2. Luckily there is crime insurance, right?
It’s certainly true—crime insurance can help recover funds lost in workplace fraud cases. However, just like most other types of insurance policies, there are countless factors that play into the decision to approve or deny a particular claim. Far too often, a small error or failure by the policy-holder results in the claim being denied. Not to mention, when approved, crime insurance policies usually only cover a tiny fraction of the overall loss. Crime insurance is great, but it is no substitute for a proper investigation.
3. Contacting the police is also always an option.
The police can certainly investigate; however criminal justice is a slow process, and often times workplace fraud cases can be tough to prosecute—especially if the district attorney feels there is an apparent civil agreement that has already been made. But what if the employee agrees to pay the money back, and defaults on their agreement? For several reasons, the police are only limitedly helpful in workplace fraud cases.
4. Often times a small business owner will contact their CPA.
Again CPAs and other trusted advisors could be needed at some point, but the advice you receive may vary a great deal. Sometimes the actions taken can actually complicate the issue—costing even more in professional fees. Take the wrong step, and you may hurt your chances of criminally prosecuting the employee and having a successful recovery of losses. Although involving a CPA could be necessary, it also may not be the best first step.
5. The correct first step very well may be to contact a private investigator.
Many private investigators have experience dealing with workplace fraud cases; they also have experience working with attorneys, crime insurance companies, police, CPAs, and other professional advisors. Working with a private investigator on a workplace fraud case can yield important results while keeping costs low.
A private investigator can examine the case and determine which, if any, of these avenues would be the most fruitful. Getting a private investigator involved in the case, before hiring other professionals, can help simplify the issue while keeping costs for professional services, like attorney fees and CPA costs, to a minimum.
Most experienced professionals in upper-management and/or HR positions are required to conduct corporate investigations at some point during their careers. It’s just par for the course. Unfortunately, there are certain circumstances in which an internal investigation conducted by company employees may not be the best option. In these cases, hiring a professional is a better choice. Not sure when’s the right time to call in reinforcements? Here are a few guidelines.
First, assess the situation to determine whether it warrants a full-blown corporate investigation. A single instance of employee theft from the petty cash box is probably not impactful enough to allocate money and resources toward a thorough investigation. Theft on a much larger scale, however, such as that carried out through suspected embezzlement, is a different story.
Once you’ve determined whether an investigation is, indeed, necessary, the next step is figuring out whether your personnel is equipped to handle the process internally. Again, this will likely depend on the size and scope of the alleged misconduct. It will also depend on the experience of those tasked with conducting the inquest. If you’re a sizeable organization with a designated investigation team, chances are you’ll be fine on your own. If your company is smaller or if nobody on staff has direct experience with conducting a corporate investigation, it may make sense to bring in a professional.
Another deciding factor is the important topic of confidentiality. It can be extremely difficult to conduct a thorough investigation using internal employees without arousing suspicion. It can also be challenging to keep an open mind and proceed without any type of bias, which is critical to the success of any corporate investigation. This is why most organizations choose to enlist the help of an experienced third-party investigator who can go undercover, if necessary.
Finally, if you’re considering whether to hire a pro for your corporate investigation, remember that completing such a monumental task successfully also involves a lot of time. It could take weeks, months or even years to gather the evidence needed to build a case, and activities may include surveillance, background investigations, data mining and interviews and substantial documentation. Can you really afford to have one of your own employees dedicate this much effort to the cause?
Simply put, in most cases, conducting a corporate investigation is best left to those who do so for a living. The outcome will likely be better, and your company will save time, money and aggravation in the process. If you’re considering working with a pro, give the team at Lauth Investigations International, Inc. a call. We’ve got the experience necessary to help you get the results you need.
