The thefts involved the following unau-
thorized actions:
Ebay purchases of items bought by
e.thief, shipped directly to e.thief’s home
and paid for by my corporate Paypal
account
Paypal funds transferred out of the cor-
porate Paypal account into e.thief’s per-
sonal Paypal account
Quickbooks direct deposit payroll of
extra unauthorized paychecks directly
deposited to e.thief’s bank account
The use of our UPS shipping account to
ship items sold on e.thief’s personal Ebay
account and paid for by the corporate
UPS shipping account
Elect ronic
Thef t
Elect ronic
Thef t
The alteration of business records to
hide the electronic thefts
The intentional deception in manual
checkbook entries of unauthorized payroll amounts
Protecting your business from a
new breed of criminal
After 14 years of working as a loyal and essential part of my marine elec- tronics business, my office manger quit with no notice on Oct. 23, 2009. She left the keys to the office on her desk along with a note that turned out to be her letter of resignation. The gist of the note was that due to the lack of a salary increase for the previous two years, she was leaving for a job with a better offer. What unfolded in the coming weeks—as we recovered from the shock of having to learn all of the procedures for running my business, so I could train a new office person—was the realization that this woman
had been stealing from our business for more than three years. All of the thefts involved some
electronic method of larceny. For the purpose of anonymity, we will refer to her as “ e.thief.”
As marine electronics dealers, we are on
the forefront of technology in the navigation,
communications and automatic steering technologies; however, most of us grew our businesses in an environment that depended on
paper for existence. Our mentality was that as
long as we kept the checkbook locked up and
no one had access to the cash box, we were
safe. Enter the electronic banking world of
Ebay, Paypal, direct deposit payroll, and electronic money transfers. That was the turning
point in my business where the thefts began.
The balance of this article will identify the
various techniques that e.thief used to steal
from my business. My purpose in writing this
is to help you as a business owner institute
safeguards and auditing procedures that will
alert you to potential losses through electronic methods.
BY CAPT. BILL ALTMAN, PRESIDENT, HAMPTON NAVIGATION, INC.
The Ebay/Paypal Thefts
On the morning after e.thief’s resignation,
I quickly set out to protect myself and my
business from harm by changing all the critical passwords for our email, Ebay, Paypal, and
Quickbooks accounts. Now, my memory is
not as sharp as it was 10 years ago, but the
Ebay and Paypal logins and passwords were
slightly different than I remembered from just
