Employee Theft

[tirengolf]

1. I just felt I had a reason to tell this story if it helps 1 person in here. I was a frequent user of Auto shop Owner 2 years ago, I have been absent for a while dealing with another issue for the first time in my 40 years. I have been in the situation with a 16-year assistant manager who I would have trusted with my last dollar. I thought i ran a pretty tight organization, I am fortunate enough to have a brother who spent 25 years in the business do a lot of the hard CPA type stuff and works very closely with our CPA. Anyway, some issues came up on Quickbooks at the year-end my CPA was not ok with. He called my brother and looked at some of the data issues, my brother in turned told me we need to come back up here tonight and look at a few things. After doing audits for 1 year, long story short my trusted employee thought he had figured out a way to beat the system until it all collapsed on him. It has been the most trying 1.5 years of my life. After a 1 year investigation, they arrested him last week, 2 felony counts with more to come. Trusted employee, friend,  church-going guy. Not a drinker or druggie, Law Enforcement says it is a disease, guys it is rampant in today's business world. What are people thinking today, the computer will catch you. If I could prevent just 1 guy from going through this it is worth my time to write this. It is hard to catch a guy that you trust like family, in a way it was bittersweet although the scheme and coverup is what just gets in my craw. I was not my computer program " Quickbooks"  or anything like that it was just a good guy who turned bad. I beg you guys to watch everything and run the business like a big corporation. As we all know and here the trusting guy or gal is always the one to get you. It happened to me, we turning the page now. See ya 

[gandgautorepair]

So sorry to hear this happened to you. Thanks for talking about it, it is a good reminder for the rest of us. I have a very key employee that I trust. This is a good reminder to have certain communications with him to help avoid the possibility of a good person going bad, or just taking too much advantage of a good situation. Thankfully, my current setup he doesn't write checks or pay bills, and someone else does all the Quickbooks entries. Still, something important to be mindful of.

[bantar]

Wow.  You see potential in people often that goes wasted and in this case destroyed.  

Can you elaborate on how he did it?  I'm especially curious on how it went undetected and how you will be monitoring it going forward.  It had to be big for the CPA to be the first to pick up on it.