Catching A White Collar CRIMINAL
The true story of how I uncovered a thief at work (screenshot evidence)
The true story of how I uncovered a thief at work (screenshot evidence)
This is the true story of when I found a staff member embezzling funds— I’ll teach you how to find the money and show you the dirty secrets of embezzlers.
LEGAL DISCLAIMER: To ensure the public integrity of the company in question and a fair and just prosecution either currently in progress or in future of the individual facing potential legal action, both the confessed-thief and company’s names will be redacted from this post. I have sought legal advice and to protect myself and the company I will safely mention this could be any of 3 past organisations I’ve worked for and dates will be omitted — with all funds being displayed in both US dollars & British pounds to avoid readers guessing the identity of said thief and/or company involved before official prosecutions will be/have been concluded. I condemn doxxing or publicly revealing who this individual is as that responsibility is with the aforementioned company should they ever decide to publicly do so. An agreement was reached in private between the company and embezzler to pay back all funds in full.
How many people do you know? Not including Facebook friends.
How many of those people would you trust in your house, alone? With access to your hidden cash, jewels and your $32/£25 per tub pistachio butter.
That list got pretty darn small, fast.
Imagine working with someone, knowing them well, their motives, intentions, personal thoughts, financial difficulties etc.
I once had a member of my own family steal £175 from me and I only found out when I defaulted on my phone bill.
You think these people are next to you on one side of the moral line, but they crossed that line long ago. You just don’t know it yet.
The most sinister thing is, the person you’re about to read about today is probably reading this too… right this second.
<<shivers>>
In this article I’ll be covering:
The warning signs.
How to follow the money.
The techniques of embezzlers.
What to do when they are caught.
THE WARNING SIGNS
For the last 3 companies I’ve worked for, I’ve been lucky enough to be in direct contact with the CEO.
Whilst working at the company, one of these CEOs asked me to review the credit card statements of someone that used to work for the company.
An incompetent member of staff that was originally dismissed for proven negligence spanning across 2 years and wasn’t even initially suspected of embezzling funds.
But there’s no smoke without fire. Often intentional incompetence is a smoke screen for more sinister actions.
The craziest thing is, this person was treated so well at the company. Given freedom and power to carve out their own career. They received perks people could only dream of and had the trust and respect of everyone at work. We considered them a friend.
So when you sit back and think about it. It’s worse than theft. It’s a personal betrayal too.
BUT WHAT IF IT’S YOUR BOSS?
Like the food chain, there are levels to an organisation. The lower you are, the more likely it is that your hard work will be absorbed as sustenance by your immediate predator.
Business mimics nature in that way.
That means it’s harder to catch/blame/punish your boss or immediate line manager of lying, negligence or incompetence as they are above you in the food chain. You answer to them.
But you can catch a proverbial snake with a toothpick.
1. Take screenshots
2. Email yourself notes (These are then automatically dated and timestamped)
3. Report findings to your CEO when proven. Just facts. Leave emotion out of it.
It’s impossible to argue with proof.
Suspicious activity should always be documented. Go with your gut and if something doesn’t feel right, or a few red flags pop up, it’s worth trusting your own intuition.
Often a criminal will confide in a friend or colleague. The weight of their indiscretions is too much to bear. These quips and jokes become clear with hindsight, but ask yourself in the moment…
“Could there be something more to what they just said?”
HOW TO FOLLOW THE MONEY
There are only two things to suspect when finances are wrong. Incompetence or embezzlement. Both, in my view are unacceptable in a position of authority, but only one is punishable by law.
If you want to live out your childhood dream of being a detective, I’ll tell you exactly how I caught a White Collar Criminal at work.
This is what I used:
Suspects credit card statements (provided to me by my employer)
Access to suspects work email inbox (provided to me by my employer)
Google (this sounds facetious but you’ll see how it helps)
Social Media
Things to look out for:
Does the suspect pay using paypal? Despite the company having a checkout/invoicing system. Most large companies require invoices & PO’s so a Paypal payment CAN be suspicious.
Do you see duplicate charges across many months?
Have two charges been categorised for the same reason? eg. R&D on one credit card statement and the same R&D on the other?
Do company-bought assets appear as such on ownership documentation? In the last 3 companies I’ve worked for, the business has offered a Macbook pro to work on. It’s important that those items for work are always logged and kept track of. They WILL stray when a ‘W.C.C.’ (White Collar Criminal) is on the loose.
Do their dispatch/shipping notification emails address your company or the suspects OWN company? At the least it’s a mistake. The mid-range could be intentional mis-labelling to aid in tax avoidance. The worst case scenario is potential embezzlement.
HOW EMBEZZLERS SIPHON THE MONEY OFF — THE TECHNIQUES OF THESE CRIMINALS
TECHNIQUE #1 — THE FLIP & DIP
Buying goods/assets and then selling them on an online marketplace.
This one was idiotic. As social media is ‘social’ by nature, you have to ensure you’re not ‘friends’ with the people you’re stealing from.
The accused’s company credit card statement showed him buying goods in January <YEAR REDACTED> from France. 1 month later, it was on a Facebook Buy/Sell group and officially sold for £864/$1,100.
The money it sold for was pocketed by the White Collar Criminal and never disclosed to the company.
TECHNIQUE #2 — THE HEALTHY SNACK SWITCH
Buying goods or services and then mis-categorising them or pretending they’re something else.
This is a doozy. The criminal in question bought services online and categorised them as something else entirely in his/her corporate expense reports.
It could be a mistake, if this technique wasn’t repeated multiple times across many years.
My favourite part, they left a fucking review on the service provider’s product page to prove they worked with them.
Both outrageously stupid and hilarious.
If you’re going to embezzle and misappropriate funds, don’t leave a review with your name on it. Caught, red-handed.
TECHNIQUE #3 — THE DUTCH REFUND
Buying goods or services via split payment. Some on company card, some on your personal credit card. Then refunding the item to your card, thus pocketing the money.
Let’s explain this one further with a completely hypothetical scenario.
Charles (random name) walks into a bar… no, let’s say the Apple store (I am writing this on a Macbook Pro after all). He walks into the Apple store and buys a $5,000/£3,926 iMac Pro and decides to split the bill. Going dutch, if you will.
He pays 60% on his company card and 40% on his personal credit card.
Now imagine that Charles is a literal fucking scumbag and wants some delicious cold hard cash that he didn’t earn. Ready?
He could go back to the Apple Store at a later date, exchange the item for a much cheaper item. For the example let’s just say it was a Macbook Pro. Not literally, this is just our imagination. But let’s say that product cost was now $2,000/£1,570 — He’d be due a $3,000/£2,355 refund for the difference in price.
He refunds it ALL onto his personal card.
If you’re a right bloody Rachel Riley, you’ll know by now that’s a net gain of 1/5th or $1,000/£785 of embezzled funds.
TECHNIQUE #4 — THE CHEQUE’S IN THE POST
Pretending you’ll pay back money that was spent without permission with a non-existent cheque that’s in the post.
As somewhat of an amateur magician, I once spent a prop coin by mistake. It looked like a £1 coin. It felt like one. It even worked in a vending machine like one to get me a bottle of water (Okay, it was actually a Snickers)… A simple mistake to make.
However, I’ve never paid for hotels, first class flights, clothes etc on my Official Frosties Tony The Tiger Secret Agent card.
When pulling your bank card out of your wallet, I find it odd to think you’d consistently not notice using a corporate card. That’s what this W.C.C. did.
He then apologised for the faux pas to the accounting department overseeing the expenses and promised to pay it back in full when it was brought to his attention.
A simple mistake? …Don’t be so naive.
I believe he got out his imaginary cheque book and made it out to FUCK YOU Ltd for the amount of “I’m never paying this back… and zero pence/cents.”
After chasing from the accounting team, he said the cheque was in the post.
With access to his emails I could see that dates and excuses, but the money never came. Given his other indiscretions, it’s safe to assume he never intended to send it.
Accused person banked (pun intended) some company funds for himself.
Didn’t think he would get caught.
Apologised & promised to pay it back.
Made sure that re-payment cheque NEVER showed up.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t forget owing somebody thousands of pounds/dollars.
HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? AND WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
The problem with companies is that they’re busy. When they’re small, staff wear many hats and things fall through the cracks easier.
When they’re big, it’s overwhelming to scrutinise every detail for every member of staff. People can get away with murder. Sometimes literally.
In this instance the White Collar Criminal was caught after the fact. After being fired for proven negligence and a very poor work ethic.
Positions of power are abused and friendships with colleagues are exploited. The word sociopath floated around the office, although no official diagnosis could ever be determined.
I am not a perfect person myself. Here are just some of the things I’ve done wrong in my life:
Pee’d myself to win a pool game… and still lost.
Said yes to appearing on TV with an emo haircut.
Asked a girl (who was interested in me) to meet me on a night out in my early twenties, she caught two busses and a train to do so and in the meantime I’d met and kissed someone else. (Sorry Hannah.)
I regret it all. (Except the pool game. I just regret losing that.)
But I’ve never stolen from anyone. I’ve never bit the hand that feeds and I’ve never intentionally let my colleagues down, by losing them money as I steal for myself.
Let’s be frank. Writing this post isn’t to make me look good, but honestly serves as a cathartic lesson to all of us.
When someone embezzles money, they are taking potential income from other families. If profits become low, or money is frivolously spent, there will be less to go around for others.
People work harder to bail water from the ship, but if you can’t find the hole to plug it, you’ll eventually go down.
Would you go down without a fight?
The money that was stolen could have been used for pay rises, R&D, team building/company moral or hiring a new staff member to grow the company.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Admission of guilt was received by the company in question from the accused. This, from my basic legal understanding (I am not a lawyer, I can’t even spell lwa… I’m proud of that joke.) is all that’s needed for prosecution, although I don’t know if that’s been done/will be right now.
However, a financial agreement was arranged and signed to pay back ALL funds owed to the company for any reason.
I could be wrong, but I believe the final combined total was close to £39,000 / $50,000. (UPDATE: I’m not wrong.)
As the villains in Scooby-Doo always say… “I could have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids” (me in this case).
I hope that you’ve learned something here today and can apply these investigative techniques to catch any potential slippery snakes within your organisation.
People aren’t always who they say they are, especially online. Behind a nice, friendly, caring exterior can potentially be something truly horrifying.
“You just can’t trust… people” — Author unknown.
Geraint Clarke — Private Eye.
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