A casual restaurant recently employed the DIGIOP Loss Prevention team to conduct an audit and review their exception reports. DIGIOP experts were able to expose theft immediately. In the first review cycle, with only 1.5 weeks of data gathered, our experts were able to pinpoint fraud quickly. It was obvious an employee stole money three different times by conducting refunds for cash.
Refunds for Cash
Point of Sale (POS) fraud is when an employee steals money from their employer at the cash register. Employees may steal money as it passes to or from a customer (through a sale or a return of goods by the customer). Or they will adjust the register, after the cash is stolen.
In this case, a trusted employee at the restaurant would scroll through the POS, identify a full meal, and then refund the sale. They would then use the register key to open the drawer and extract cash equal to the meal.
After the first incident, DIGIOP searched the employee’s transactions and reviewed their refunds. In the first review cycle, it was discovered he had stolen money three times.
An employee seldom commits fraud just once. It tends to be a pattern and the average employee will steal $1,900 before being caught. It’s crucial to identify employee theft immediately.
Prevention and Detection
Sometimes loss is unintentional, but too often it’s not. Restaurant owners are learning that simply trusting their employees without the proper technology and protocols in place is not enough.
DIGIOP creates a layered approach to Loss Prevention to prevent fraudulent schemes like refunds for cash. Together, ELEMENTS and DIGIOP CARBON, allow our trained Loss Prevention team to collect, analyze, and report on areas of non-compliance.
- DIGIOP ELEMENTS acts as your daily video management system (VMS), placing video and POS feeds from multiple locations on one screen. Whether viewing live or recorded information, ELEMENTS intuitive interface makes it simple to find just what you need.
- DIGIOP CARBON offers an enterprise-level business intelligence dashboard which delivers synchronized video and data, efficient data mining, and case management. CARBON proactively pinpoints loss and highlights areas of non-compliance in store operations.
- DIGIOP LOSS PREVENTION SERVICES examines your data, assesses areas of non-compliance, and builds cases to share with Human Resources and/or Law Enforcement. A supplemental service, it’s the efficient, final step of a complete Loss Prevention solution.
Stopping refunds for cash and preventing employee fraud can transform your business. Contact us today to learn more about what DIGIOP can do for you.
