CASE STUDIES
THEFT RING STEALS OVER $200,000 OF INVENTORY
The Theft
A group of shipping dock workers found a loophole in the company’s procedures for checking outbound product. After a supervisor counted outbound product, it remained on the dock for approximately 90 minutes before being loaded. During this time, the thieves would place extra cases of inventory onto the staged pallets. The additional product would then be loaded onto selected company trucks.
The truck drivers who were involved in this collusion would be contacted at home by one of the dock workers, and alerted that they had extra product on their trucks. The next day, the drivers would sell the extra product for cash and split the proceeds with their warehouse accomplices.
The Investigation
One night, a Danbee investigator who was working undercover in the distribution center, observed two co-workers place extra boxes of inventory onto a pallet that had already been selected and checked. He then watched as the product was loaded onto one of the company trucks. When the investigator innocently questioned one of the thieves about this, he was told to forget what he’d just witnessed. Three weeks later, the undercover operative observed a similar incident take place, but this time the product went onto another driver’s truck.
Over time, the investigator became friendly enough with the dishonest dock workers that they invited him to take part in the theft ring. They told him which drivers to overload and how much he’d get paid for various product.
The Outcome
A Danbee surveillance team began monitoring the dishonest drivers. During these covert surveillances, the investigators documented the truckers delivering product to certain customers on days when they were not scheduled to receive legitimate deliveries.
The entire network of dishonest employees was eventually apprehended. By eliminating this theft ring, the company saw their gross profit increase by more than $200,000 a year.
