First year we received close to $1200 and in 2004 being a poor college kid this was an amazing bonus.
The 2nd year there was a series of high value thefts so we only ended up getting like $250 or so.
Our Lost Prevention employee who was just some guy who looked at security cameras all day, went out of his way on his own time to research all the same stolen items looking for them in local craigslist/pawn shops and finally e-bay.
He found one account on e-bay that coincidentally was selling all the same items our store kept missing! (Some of these were brand new laptops)
The account name of the seller was firstinitial+lastname+numbers
He took that account name, and cross referenced it with our employees and found a match. He then forwarded all this information to the police.
I remember one day going to our monthly manager's meeting (once a month had a store wide meeting where managers went over everything with all employees)
We did the entire meeting, free pizza and donuts, talked numbers shrink etc, and the best part was that on the last page of the presentation they had the guy running the Lost Prevention department come up to talk shrink. He explained everything above and then flipped the presentation paper to the last page which had the e-bay account giant sized on the paper. He said this is the person who has been caught selling everything and they will be taken care of.
We all turned around from our meeting and there were police offers waiting to arrest the perpetrator on the spot.
Said person was a 20 year old who had everything handed to him on a silver platter. He drove a $40,000 car his parents paid for type of thing where most of us had rusted beaters to drive around.
He was doing it only for the thrill, worked in the electronics department so he was able to steal things from the cages when trucks came in and you are supposed to unload all the pallets.
I just remember that meeting so vividly because they let the kid go through everything, thinking everything is normal and I wish I was able to see his face when his username was shown right away.
I won't forget his face and cries as he was being arrested saying, "You cannot prove that is me!" even though it was his first initial + last name and year he was born in.....
First year we received close to $1200 and in 2004 being a poor college kid this was an amazing bonus.
The 2nd year there was a series of high value thefts so we only ended up getting like $250 or so.
Our Lost Prevention employee who was just some guy who looked at security cameras all day, went out of his way on his own time to research all the same stolen items looking for them in local craigslist/pawn shops and finally e-bay.
He found one account on e-bay that coincidentally was selling all the same items our store kept missing! (Some of these were brand new laptops)
The account name of the seller was firstinitial+lastname+numbers
He took that account name, and cross referenced it with our employees and found a match. He then forwarded all this information to the police.
I remember one day going to our monthly manager's meeting (once a month had a store wide meeting where managers went over everything with all employees)
We did the entire meeting, free pizza and donuts, talked numbers shrink etc, and the best part was that on the last page of the presentation they had the guy running the Lost Prevention department come up to talk shrink. He explained everything above and then flipped the presentation paper to the last page which had the e-bay account giant sized on the paper. He said this is the person who has been caught selling everything and they will be taken care of.
We all turned around from our meeting and there were police offers waiting to arrest the perpetrator on the spot.
Said person was a 20 year old who had everything handed to him on a silver platter. He drove a $40,000 car his parents paid for type of thing where most of us had rusted beaters to drive around.
He was doing it only for the thrill, worked in the electronics department so he was able to steal things from the cages when trucks came in and you are supposed to unload all the pallets.
I just remember that meeting so vividly because they let the kid go through everything, thinking everything is normal and I wish I was able to see his face when his username was shown right away.
I won't forget his face and cries as he was being arrested saying, "You cannot prove that is me!" even though it was his first initial + last name and year he was born in.....