On April 13th, 2017, I had the pleasure of listening to Mr. Jeffery Carr from Georgia Pacific. Mr. Carr is a former security manager with Georgia Pacific. Mr. Carr lectured us on timber security in the forestry industry. Some of the topics he discussed included the definition of crime, responsibilities, and prevention techniques. One of the first things Mr. Carr went over stated that up to seventy-five percent of employees will steal at least once from an employer and around half of those people will steal more than repeatedly.
Like most things there is a fraud triangle, which shows what has to be present for fraud to occur. The fraud triangle consists of motive or pressure, opportunity, and desire or rationalization. There are many times of fraud but the one Mr. Carr talked about was occupational fraud. Occupational fraud is when individuals defraud their employers. This type of fraud is usually found in small organizations because of weak or anti-fraud controls. According to Mr. Carr, only 15% of fraud cases are reported in forestry and almost on third of all business failures are linked to employee theft. The average theft loss is around 100,000 dollars. Employees are usually the way most fraud is uncovered in the forest industry.
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Carr, there are many areas of timber theft in our industry that include timber trespass, log rustling, contractor and scale fraud, kickbacks, bid rigging, and more. To prevent fraud from happening you separate duties to your employees, provide adequate training, inspect logging jobs, monitor cameras at mill scales, and be able to identify red flags. You can also implement a security program that includes recording transactions, a independent review, tip-line, audits, anti-theft message, and awareness training for all
This seems to be a very pessimistic technique on the outside, but as I said before, any person can be a thief; an old lady, a religious man, or a student. Controlling from the inside, for example limiting cash, mandating dual signatures on business checks or accepting invoices reduce the opportunity for fraud to happen drastically. 7 Bigger enterprises have delicate areas such as “information security areas; video surveillance of sensitive areas, key control, clear employment policies, etcetera serve to limit temptation; the possibilities are limited only by the imagination and budget” (Larson, 1985).
In recent years, it seems as if there is a new financial fraud being reported any given day. One could even say that fraud has become almost a much a surety as taxes. Given the opportunities and pressures, many will businesses will fall victim to human natures and suffer losses through fraudulent activities. This case study will follow one such fraud, following the crimes of Terry Scott Welch in his pursuit for happiness by indulging his passion of landscaping.
Fraud is usually comprehended as deceptive nature calculated for advantage. And usually this kind of people might be called a fraud. According to the U.S. legal system, fraud is a particular offense with specific features. Fraud must be proved by showing that the defendant’s actions involved five separate elements: 1. A false statement of a material fact; 2. Knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue; 3. Intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim; 4. Justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement; 5. Injury to the alleged victim as a
Hanson, J. R. (n.d.). Fraud or confusion? RDH Magazine, 19(4). Retrieved 3 15, 2014, from http://www.rdhmag.com/articles/print/volume-19/issue-4/feature/fraud-or-confusion.html
The ACME Company manufactures various electronic devices for a variety of well-known brands. Many of these products are fully assembled and stored at the plant awaiting shipment to the vendors, including the expensive components used to manufacture these devices. There has been an alarming problem that significant inventory shortages have been occurring for the assembled devices as well as the stock components used to manufacture the devices resulting in substantial company losses as a result of extensive employee theft. Through discussions with private security leaders from other organizations, about the effectiveness of an administrative search program as an option to address internal theft, a meeting is called by the security team and other company directorate heads, to include the organization’s legal counsel, to discuss possible security options to thwart the reported losses. This meeting centers on the fact that in private industry/business, some employers need to institute an administrative, non-coercive, care taking search programs to address real or perceived property losses at the hands of their employees. While there are issues that must be considered beyond the impact it might have
Ulinski, Michael. "AN ANALYSIS OF SMALL COMPANY FRAUDS AND." American Society of Behavioral Society. Dept of Business, Pace University. 05 Feb. 2008.
The Department of Veterans Affairs and its employees have a long history of mishandling the care, treatment, and information of veterans in their systems. However, when VA employees go out of their way to profit from such abuse of the trust placed in them, it is disturbing. But that is just what an Arkansas man, Phillip Hill, is accused of doing.
Most people consider this crime to consist of CEO’s manipulating their way to making a large fortune. This of course, is true most of the time in high-profile cases. For example, in late 2001 Enron Corporation executives confessed to overstating the company’s earnings. This lead to artificially inflating what the company was worth and deceived the investors. It took some time to unravel all the fraud put behind this devious act but shows how sophisticated white-collar crime can be. Although it’s usually associated with upper management of corporations, people from all different levels and occupations can perform this crime ("How White-collar Crime Works").
· The Retail Industry in the U.S. loses $53.6 Billion a year due to internal loss (employee theft)
Loss prevention and risk management have become an increasing sector for businesses and companies. Loss prevention has gained a larger role on organized crime cases within the field of retail. Experienced groups have been targeting retailers for numerous years, but merchants are just starting to come together to combat organized retail theft, developing crime databases and establishing stronger loss prevention departments. The rapid growth of organized retail theft has affected how retail loss prevention departments handle the large cases.
The goal of a businessman to keep his or her revenue above expenses can sometimes be a struggle. For many store owners, the concept of preventing shoplifting is not heavily concerned and it can lead to be the downfall for a business. The NASP (National Association Of Shoplifting Prevention) researched the cause and threats of shoplifting and discovered that approximately over $13 Billion worth of assets are stolen from retailers every year (about $35 million per day) and out only 10 million customers have been caught shoplifting in the past five years. After one look at the numbers and statistics shown above, it is easy to see it is as far as an epidemic. When thinking of a proper solution for this epidemic, it is not easy. According to the NASP it is stated that approximately men and women shoplift to an equal
For those who do not know what fraud is, it’s basically deception by showing people what they want to see. In business it’s the same concept, but in a larger scale by means of manipulating figures that will be shown to shareholders and investors. Before Sarbanes Oxley Act there was “Enron Corporation”, a fortune 500 company that managed to falsify their statements claiming revenues over 101 billion in a span of 15 years. In order for us to understand how this corporation managed to deceive the public for so long, the documentary or movie “Smartest Guys in the Room” goes into depth by providing viewers with first-hand information from people that worked close with or for “Enron”.
The following memorandum written by a director of a security and safety consulting service discusses a critical issue effecting business in our economy today, that of employee theft. "Our research indicated that, over past six years, no incident of employee theft have been reported within ten of the companies that have been our clients. In analyzing the security practices of these ten companies, we have further learned that each of them requires its employees to wear photo identification badges while at work. In the future, we should recommend the uses of such identification badges to all of our clients." The issue of employee theft is a broad problem and has different labels to identify it, shrinkage for the retail industry and hidden profit loss in the technology sector are serval examples of common terms used for employee theft. The author of this memorandum presents several data points and suggests one recommendation to effect the issue of employee theft based on a sampling of the client population.
For a professional thief to be successful there are many personal traits, skills, and resources they must possess. In this paper, I will be using Darrell J. Steffensmeier’s The Fence: In the Shadow of Two Worlds which follows the life of Sam, a professional thief and fence, as a lens to analyze the skills, traits, and factors that surround being successful as a thief. I will then use this analysis to determine wether or not I personally could follow in Sam’s footsteps and be successful as a professional thief in the criminal underworld.