Embezzlement Study: a Report on White Collar Crime in America
Hiscox, an international specialist insurer, recently released the 2016 Hiscox Embezzlement Study, a comprehensive study of employee theft in the United States. The 2016 Embezzlement Study incorporates employee theft cases that were active in the US federal court system in 2015. While the report tends to focus on companies with fewer than 500 employees—which according to the study accounts for 69 percent of all federal cases reviewed, many of the lessons would apply globally.
A closer look at the specific retail aspects of the study revealed that while retail employee theft cases accounted for only 5% of the cases reviewed in the study, those retailers showed a high median loss of $475,876.
“The impact of employee theft can rock an organization to its very core,” said Doug Karpp, Crime & Fidelity Product Head at Hiscox. “There is of course an obvious financial impact, but the ripple effect of employee theft threatens the trust employers place in their teams and damages morale.”
Perpetrators are often people who are smart, well-liked, and those whom you’d least expect. There are, however, four driving factors that can turn a trusted employee into a criminal:
- Pressure: An employee is put into a situation which, seemingly, can only be relieved by additional funds.
- Opportunity: Employers should be particularly watchful of employees who have greater access and the opportunity to embezzle.
- Capability: Embezzlers are also often the ones who have the skills and knowledge to commit fraud.
- Rationalization: Perpetrators often rationalize their crime by convincing themselves they are providing for their family, feel underpaid or that they were not treated well, or think others are stealing, too.
“Understanding the reason why employee theft happens and the psychology of a potential perpetrator are the first steps to mitigating fraud,” said Karpp. “Once you understand that, enacting controls will help manage exposure for businesses of all sizes.” [Source: Yahoo Finance]
Report: Credit card skimming increased 546 percent last year
Every day, more credit card skimmers are out for your card number. Authorities are finding more credit card skimmers installed on places where you swipe your plastic—like gas pumps, ATMs, and self-checkout lanes. Skimmers record and store all of a credit card’s information from a single swipe. The cyber pickpocket then either later retrieves the device or records remotely via bluetooth.
According to FICO, a company that tracks credit card fraud, skimming incidents were up a whopping 546 percent from 2014 to 2015. The crime continues to grow because it’s easy and profitable. Investigators are now urging gas stations to increase security, use unique keys to open pumps, and install security tape, so employees and consumers can see if a pump’s been tampered with. So how can you protect yourself?
- Don’t use your debit card at the pump–if you use a credit card, your bank will cover the loss.
- Check your accounts regularly.
- Choose a pump near the front of the store, it’s less likely to have been tampered with.
- Pay inside. Tug on the card reader, if if pops off, it’s probably a skimmer.
[Source: Fox News Memphis]
LP Worldwide: Portuguese ORC gang stole £50k of designer clothes in raids on Oxford Street shops
A Portuguese crime gang involving up to 50 people stole almost £50,000 in designer clothes by “swarming” high street stores. The group, dressed all in black, raided a series of luxury brand name stores near London’s Oxford Street in under an hour. They got away with £2,000 worth of jeans from Levi’s, £5,000 from G-Star Raw and £40,000 worth of ‘black label’ items from Ralph Lauren. Police rounded up some of the group outside Hamley’s Toy Store in Regent Street but many remain at large.
Judge David Tomlinson said: “Members of staff knew quite well what you were up to but the sheer weight of numbers and the speed of your offending meant that they were overwhelmed and quite unable to intervene and prevent what you were doing…Between each event you regrouped and then executed the next raid in a calculated way. But for police intervention this offending may very well have continued.”
The court heard that some of the group are from Portugal with others originate from Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony. Between those arrested there are a host of previous convictions including for heroin and crack cocaine possession, possessing offensive weapons in public and attempted robberies. [Source: The Express]
How the future of fit could spell the end of retail returns
In retailing, buyers aren’t necessarily keepers. According to a study by the Retail Equation and the National Retail Federation, total merchandise returns accounted for more than $260.5 billion in lost sales for U.S. retailers last year, meaning that if merchandise returns were a corporation, it would rank No. 3 on the Fortune 500 list. That’s a staggering statistic, and one many retailers are struggling to change. Per the same NRF report, most send-backs are due to customer satisfaction issues: Jill Standish, senior managing director, retail, at New York-based consultancy Accenture, cites product defects, a lack of personalization and, notably, poor fit as major factors related to return activity.
While stores can work more closely with manufacturers to solve quality control issues, and personalization is becoming increasingly important, helping customers find the right fit has proven vastly more challenging—and more costly. To that end, some retailers have begun exploring next-generation solutions, such as fit technology. In the simplest terms, fit technology leverages new data science that aggregates consumer information regarding size and fit in apparel and footwear, and applies that information to potential purchases with the intention of matching customers with items that will best suit them. The idea is that if shoppers can make more accurate size and fit decisions when buying apparel and footwear, the number of fit-based returns will be vastly reduced.
Experts say that these tools are game-changing when it comes to returns. Retail technology is helping to improve the front end and make sure the customer is buying the right product for them. As this new technology is more widely embraced, developers hope to see it expand out of online retail and into brick and mortar, too. With the kind of information available through fit technology, a sales assistant could have exactly the right items for a customer the instant he or she enters a store. Ultimately, though, it’s not about the technology, but about the product return problems the technology solves. [Source: Retail Dive]
There ought to be a law, but there isn’t: Upskirting not a crime in Georgia retail stores
The lewd practice of “upskirting” — the surreptitious videotaping of a person’s private parts in a public place — cannot be prosecuted as a crime in Georgia, the state’s Court of Appeals has ruled. The court recently arrived at that conclusion when overturning an invasion-of-privacy conviction against former grocery clerk Brandon Lee Gary, who took videos up a woman’s skirt while she was shopping. The Georgia court found, as have other courts across the nation, that decades-old laws simply did not envision criminal acts committed with modern technology. “It is regrettable that no law currently exists which criminalizes Gary’s reprehensible conduct,” Judge Elizabeth Branch wrote.
The ruling throws out the felony conviction against Gary, 24, who in June 2013 used his cell phone to take videos from under a woman’s skirt as she walked the aisles of a Publix grocery store. Chuck Spahos, head of the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, said Houston County District Attorney George Hartwig has asked DAs across the state to support a legislative change that would solve the problem. Spahos also said his group will draft legislation and look for a sponsor to carry the bill in next year’s General Assembly. In recent years, legislatures in Massachusetts, Texas and New Jersey have enacted new laws that specifically criminalize “upskirting” — today’s version of a peeping tom offense.
Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor who has written about “upskirting” laws, said he believes the court’s majority got it right. “This was obviously bad, bad behavior and it’s behavior that can be criminalized,” he said. “But under Georgia law, it’s not a crime because it didn’t occur in a private place. A private place could clearly be a closed stall inside a restroom or somewhere inside someone’s home. But it’s not a public grocery store.” [Source: Atlanta Journal Constitution]
Brian Flannery Named Director of Loss Prevention for ULTA Beauty
Brian Flannery has been named Director of Loss Prevention for ULTA Beauty. Brian most recently served as Director of Loss Prevention for Dollar General, where he worked his way from Corporate Manager of Loss Prevention and Director of Investigations before becoming the Director of Loss Prevention in 2007. Brian has also held positions in both the private and public sectors in security and loss prevention, primarily as a consultant providing investigative, physical security, crisis management, and guard force management services. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology-Criminology from North Carolina State University.
Congratulations, Brian!
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The post Breaking News in the Industry: July 20, 2016 appeared first on LPM.