It’s not often I’ll do a case study on the work we carry out however, this one highlights a few issues I want to speak about. This is how we captured an employee fuel theft to the tune of up to £600 a night!
The Background
Our client, a medium sized logistics company came to us after noticing some discrepancies in the receipts for fuel from one particular employee. This was only highlighted though after months of fraudulent receipts had been accepted and the operations managers heads quickly began spinning!
A huge highlight for our client was that their systems and processes were letting them down, in not noticing this issue much, much sooner.
For any businesses reading this please take it as a warning to implement and keep up with systems of tracking receipts especially with things like fuel, as it is easy to swipe!
The next stage
With the employee fuel theft being clearly evident and happening nightly, our client wanted to move swiftly and effectively in gaining video evidence through covert surveillance. This enabled our client to dismiss the employee immediately without any worry of wrongful termination. The extra factor removed the worry of false accusations which can have huge impacts on current employees. This can affect their performance and their trust in their managers.
Planning
I sat down with the operations managers and the HR department to go through everything from Legitimate Interest Assessments, GDPR policies and what the employee was doing ready to formulate a plan of action. We concluded cold hard surveillance was the only way.
I assessed the history and movements of the employee with the operations managers and it was determined his routine was to stop at a large motorway services and fill up there despite starting his route with around 3/4 of a tank full.
Showtime
We began by carrying out the surveillance starting at the service station ready for the employee to arrive, fuel up and the belief at that stage was the employee would likely pass the fuel on to a buyer in suitable containers. On the first surveillance deployment this was clear we were all wrong.
On the next shift we began at the depot where the employee’s route starts. This is where we evidenced from multiple angles the employee stopping at their personal vehicle and loading 8 fuel containers into the lorry cab! With the cab ready the employee carried on to the service station.
Without breaking any speeding laws of course, we raced over to the services to be ready for the employee’s arrival. Here we recorded the employee filling up the containers and then paying with the company fuel card.
There's more
With the employee fuel theft evidenced, we then wanted to evidence what the employee did with all that fuel. There was nothing to suggest that the employee was selling the fuel along the route so we set up back at the employee’s personal vehicle.
Once back after their shift the employee arrived directly back at their personal vehicle and then unloaded all 8 containers into their boot! Whilst not strictly illegal carrying that much diesel in the boot cannot be safe, maybe just me..
Soft Sting
During our operation I was in constant communication with the operations manager of the shift letting them know exactly what was going on.
With what we had evidenced, it was decided a soft sting was to be done. On the employee’s arrival back to the depot, they were marched to their personal vehicle to show the operations managers they were innocent.
As it happened the employee feigned that the boot of their car was locked and would not open due to a faulty latch! That is some excuse given 10 minutes before I evidenced them loading the boot, ha!
The result
Despite the excuse the employee was dismissed on the spot unable to prove innocence.
I prepared and delivered the full report and surveillance video evidence to the ops managers and a meeting with the employee was arranged.
At the meeting the employee admitted to theft by employee which falls under The Theft Act 1968 and said they had been doing it for 5 months!
All in all whilst stressful for our clients this proved systems needed fixing but that they can stop and prevent further theft from their business with our evidence.
As always, thanks for reading. Dan
