Fraud at work.

[PannickAtTheDisco]

I've seen fake employees on payroll, CCTV of directors walking out of the office with their work computer the night before they were to get done because they'd been tipped off, amongst other things.

 

[stonerblue]

I also fondly remember the days when 4 made up payslips would get you a mortgage no problem.

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

What's interesting about TMT's story is that it's the whistleblower who gets punished. The outsider. Maybe there were more people in on the scam than you even knew about, @Trevor Morley's Tache
This may seem like a laughable comparison, given the sums involved, but it reminded me of that fine film, Serpico. The new boy rocks the boat, everyone hates him for it.

There were certainly more people involved.

The warehouse manager, one of the accountants, the HR manager all knew and were instructed to keep quiet. It subsequently turned out the Operations Manager (and company shareholder) was taking backhanders from the sales manager to turn a blind eye.

 

[denislawsbackheel]

I bet they paid themselves dividends instead of salary as well...

 

[Saddleworth2]

Just generally interested if anyone has had a similar experience to mine?

I've left out the details as the individuals may be members of the forum, or may know someone who posts here.

Nearly 30 years now, as a youngster I worked for a small computer supplies/office furniture company as an assistant purchaser. I started as a sort of YTS trainee and after about 4 months was taken on full time.

We held some items in stock, but mainly we sold bulk paper, and printer supplies, as well as other office consumables on demand. An order would come in from the sales team, and we would process the purchase orders to satisfy the demand.

Now the sales team were on a weekly/monthly target, set by the management team. Often, the management team would sanction incentives in order to keep the sales department 'on their toes'.

The sales manager (let's call her Barbara) was in charge of the incentives, and would drip feed them into the working week. Barbara was also eligible for incentive bonuses as she also had customer accounts to tender, which was a huge conflict of interest. One of the sales team (we shall call her Doris) was particularly good at getting late afternoon/end of week sales, which generally meant she had more than her fair share of bonuses; at the time, I just figured she was good at sales.

One of my other tasks involved printing out account reports, which included customer account (sales figures), orders, related purchase orders, delivery of orders, invoicing and payments. Generally I just filed these away in the archive, but occasionally I would glance over them.

For some reason, when I was flicking through the reports, something caught my eye, and I noticed a particularly large order which jogged my memory from a couple of weeks before. It was on a late Friday afternoon, and it was from Doris. The order was for a pallet of paper by one of her regular customers. It stuck in my mind because I remember she'd got a fairly substantial bonus for that order, and Barbara also got a bonus for making the Monthly target.

The reason particular order caught my eye is that The following Monday after the order was entered on to the system, the delivery date had been pushed back 2 months, and that entry had been made on the account before 9am, before anyone would have contacted the office (remember, this was before email). This caused me to investigate further, so I dug in to the archive.

What I uncovered was systematic abuse of the accounts where there were multiple accounts of Doris and Barbara doing essentially the same thing, taking fictitious orders, claiming the bonuses, shifting the delivery date, then dropping the order off the system about 6 months later over about a 2 year period. I showed this evidence to a trusted colleague, who confirmed that I wasn't going mad, and that this essentially looked like fraud.

I then took it to my line manager (Kevin; obviously not his real name), who at the time I didn't realise was part of the social circle of the Sales Manager, Barbara and that his wife was a good friend of hers. Kevin seemed to take my allegations seriously at first, and demanded to see my evidence. In the mean time, I'd gone to the accounts department and managed to see the bonus payment record, which corroborated my finding from the customer accounts records.

The next week I came into the office as Doris was being led out of the main conference room, clutching a tissue to her nose looking very red faced, closely followed by Barbara. I will never forget the death stares that I got from Barbara. When I got back upstairs, the atmosphere in the office was very different. Doris and Barbara were still at their desks, and my desk had been cleared in the purchasing department. No of the other sales team members would even look at me, let alone talk to me. At that moment I was told to report to the warehouse where I was to assist with the annual stocktaking. I'd had my report reading privileges account removed from the computer system, and no longer allowed access to the archive room. I was 'let go' from the company some 6 weeks later, as my job was 'no longer needed'. It was, but I found out they got another trainee to cover it.

I subsequently found out that Barbara had been informed of my findings, and that she basically blamed Doris for making a mistake and not reporting it. Doris had to pay back about £200 of bonus that she shouldn't have had (I'd presented evidence that she'd scammed a whole lot more than that, probably £8,000 -10,000 between Doris and Barbara). Both Doris and Barbara continued to work for the company long after I left, and Is far as I know, still getting their bonuses.

I never took it any further, but knowing what I do now I would have taken it further and at least pushed for constructive dismissal, possibly even gone to the police. But life is full of experiences, and I'm definitely wiser for it.

I worked in Banking for all of my career and saw my fair share both externally and (much less often) internally. what you described is 100% fraud. Anyone involved in it should have been instantly dismissed and the police informed.

 

[Sky Blue Thinking]

I'm a counter-fraud and investigation consultant and your tale is a very familiar one. One thing I've found over 37 years is that companies that tolerate fraud, and there are many of them, have a culture of fraud which ends up biting them on the arse. You were better off out.

Funnily enough, I have a similar story from around 40 years ago when I got a summer job in the order department of a prestigious bookshop in central Manchester. I was actually replacing a guy who had broken his arm and who, for the sake of discretion, we'll call John Smith. The job involved taking deposits on books, ordering books and, when the book came in, notifying the customer who collected it and paid the balance. Most transactions were in cash.The (to me) old ladies in the office kept saying "John Smith didn't do it like that" or "John Smith did it that way", to the point I got thoroughly sick of this god-like figure who did everything pefectly.

When I left, the manager shook my hand and thanked me for my hard work and "honesty", I actually asked him how he knew and he just laughed.

6 months later John Smith was arrested for pocketing the cash. Turned out, in his absence, the takings had rocketed so they began watching him. That's why, in cases like the one you describe, the first person you look at is the one that's never off sick and appears to be the hardest worker.

Thanks for the info in the last paragraph, once this pandemic clears I'll take a bit of sick leave and develop a lazy streak.

 

[kippax4ever]

I knew a guy,let's call him Peter who ran a shit football team,but had thousands off fans
At the time you could pay on the gate, sometimes no fker turned up & sometimes it was chocker block,
Anyway to get to the point there was nights were you couldn't move inside the ground its was so packed(not like York away)..must off been 40 +thousand in there,but half time they announcer said over the speaker system,thank you for your tremendous support 18thousands who turned out tonight,
I still think today were that money went Peter

 

[feedmpenzaandhewillscore]

Doris was a 'larger lady', and Barbara was old enough to be my Granny. Having said that, some folk on here might be partial to the older, larger ladies.

Sadly, I have no pictures.

That’s a good enough description for me to go lie down in a dark room for 5 minutes.

 

[East Level 2]

I knew of a sales manager who shipped a load of stuff to a distributor ahead of schedule in order to exceed a bonus threshold.
When the distributor complained the sales manager explained why he did it and said "Don't pay the invoice and we'll clear it with accounts, and we'll come over and take you for a meal and get you pissed." The meal and the beer would be on expenses of course.

 

[davek1808]

Just generally interested if anyone has had a similar experience to mine?

I've left out the details as the individuals may be members of the forum, or may know someone who posts here.

Nearly 30 years now, as a youngster I worked for a small computer supplies/office furniture company as an assistant purchaser. I started as a sort of YTS trainee and after about 4 months was taken on full time.

We held some items in stock, but mainly we sold bulk paper, and printer supplies, as well as other office consumables on demand. An order would come in from the sales team, and we would process the purchase orders to satisfy the demand.

Now the sales team were on a weekly/monthly target, set by the management team. Often, the management team would sanction incentives in order to keep the sales department 'on their toes'.

The sales manager (let's call her Barbara) was in charge of the incentives, and would drip feed them into the working week. Barbara was also eligible for incentive bonuses as she also had customer accounts to tender, which was a huge conflict of interest. One of the sales team (we shall call her Doris) was particularly good at getting late afternoon/end of week sales, which generally meant she had more than her fair share of bonuses; at the time, I just figured she was good at sales.

One of my other tasks involved printing out account reports, which included customer account (sales figures), orders, related purchase orders, delivery of orders, invoicing and payments. Generally I just filed these away in the archive, but occasionally I would glance over them.

For some reason, when I was flicking through the reports, something caught my eye, and I noticed a particularly large order which jogged my memory from a couple of weeks before. It was on a late Friday afternoon, and it was from Doris. The order was for a pallet of paper by one of her regular customers. It stuck in my mind because I remember she'd got a fairly substantial bonus for that order, and Barbara also got a bonus for making the Monthly target.

The reason particular order caught my eye is that The following Monday after the order was entered on to the system, the delivery date had been pushed back 2 months, and that entry had been made on the account before 9am, before anyone would have contacted the office (remember, this was before email). This caused me to investigate further, so I dug in to the archive.

What I uncovered was systematic abuse of the accounts where there were multiple accounts of Doris and Barbara doing essentially the same thing, taking fictitious orders, claiming the bonuses, shifting the delivery date, then dropping the order off the system about 6 months later over about a 2 year period. I showed this evidence to a trusted colleague, who confirmed that I wasn't going mad, and that this essentially looked like fraud.

I then took it to my line manager (Kevin; obviously not his real name), who at the time I didn't realise was part of the social circle of the Sales Manager, Barbara and that his wife was a good friend of hers. Kevin seemed to take my allegations seriously at first, and demanded to see my evidence. In the mean time, I'd gone to the accounts department and managed to see the bonus payment record, which corroborated my finding from the customer accounts records.

The next week I came into the office as Doris was being led out of the main conference room, clutching a tissue to her nose looking very red faced, closely followed by Barbara. I will never forget the death stares that I got from Barbara. When I got back upstairs, the atmosphere in the office was very different. Doris and Barbara were still at their desks, and my desk had been cleared in the purchasing department. No of the other sales team members would even look at me, let alone talk to me. At that moment I was told to report to the warehouse where I was to assist with the annual stocktaking. I'd had my report reading privileges account removed from the computer system, and no longer allowed access to the archive room. I was 'let go' from the company some 6 weeks later, as my job was 'no longer needed'. It was, but I found out they got another trainee to cover it.

I subsequently found out that Barbara had been informed of my findings, and that she basically blamed Doris for making a mistake and not reporting it. Doris had to pay back about £200 of bonus that she shouldn't have had (I'd presented evidence that she'd scammed a whole lot more than that, probably £8,000 -10,000 between Doris and Barbara). Both Doris and Barbara continued to work for the company long after I left, and Is far as I know, still getting their bonuses.

I never took it any further, but knowing what I do now I would have taken it further and at least pushed for constructive dismissal, possibly even gone to the police. But life is full of experiences, and I'm definitely wiser for it.

So the cops knew internal affairs were on to them?