Thread: Manager Steals From Facility

A woman has been arrested for embezzling more than $65,000 from her employer in Florida. The owner of University Florida discovered the theft after conducting an audit.

Owners: What's your take on this? How often do you check up on your managers? Do you worry about embezzlement? How can other operators make sure this doesn't happen to them?

Managers: Sadly, there are some bad managers out there, just as there are bad employees in every industry. How do you show your owner you're trustworthy? It's stuff like this that makes all managers look bad, especially when it hits the media circus. How can you overcome this?

There are so many ways to cheat the house in the self-storage business the only "For Sure" way to prevent it is with an on-site audit by someone that knows the business AND the software that's used at that facility.
Everything from pocketing late fees to renting units off the books can be picked up by a good auditor.

I wonder why it took so long to find this out... 2 years? Where was the owner?

The news source states the theft happened between Jan 09 and Dec 2010. That's when he did the audit, so it may have been an annual thing. He reported it to the police Jan. 5, but it took until this week before she was arrested. I'm guessing the attorney general's office had to do their own investigation before bringing forth charges.

This infuriates me more than anything! Especially since N. David Highway is my hometown area! Obviously not a real Southerner, musta been one of them snowbird types. Tongue in cheek here gang.

Anyway, this problem will continue as there are bad DMs and bad owners who don't know a thing about running a business and nothing about leadership. If a company has high turnover, the owner should be looking at the staff who does the hiring etc.

Here's an idea; how about open, honest communication and a positive work environment?! If ownership is available to assist and not just beat people down, if a partnership is formed and everyone benefits why would you even want to steal anything?

Mostly potential customers ask about this and cherry-picking of units up for auction and it always catches my ire. I mean seriously; are those old high school baseball trophies, old sweatshirts and toddler damaged household items really going to make you better off than just simply doing your job and collecting a decent paycheck? Or is a $10 late fee really worth pocketing? Are there no reports to the ownership? If so, and the owners aren't paying attention... well... Yeah Amy, it just makes us as an entire industry all look bad! And that stinks of the one rotten apple in the bunch.

It really stinks when someone does something like this! Now all owners (that read this article) will be more paranoid than normal and good honest managers will be treated as though they are criminals.

Owner couldn't have been the brightest crayon in the box either! Two years to figure out this person was stealing???

Link to article>>>
http://www.pnj.com/article/20110621/...text|FRONTPAGE

Our company has a very strict audit policy and procedures in place.

Our Area Managers audits quarterly, District Manager in between that time.

Our billing system is connected into the corporate office and monitored well. We routinely receive emails asking us what this transaction was or that.

In regard to the theft, prosecute to the full extent is my opinion. If you just fire them they can go off somewhere else and do the same thing.

It not just storage which gets hit by embezzlers, any organization that handles money is susceptible to the unscrupulous. Last year our Dept of Motor Vehicle had the same type of problem (two employees) skimming money and just two week ago, a local city clerk. Wouldn’t you think both of these organizations (state & city) would have top of the line audit procedures in place?

What a person takes today, could very likely put that business out of business tomorrow. Then where is their JOB?

Originally Posted by SMSSId

It not just storage which gets hit by embezzlers, any organization that handles money is susceptible to the unscrupulous. Last year our Dept of Motor Vehicle had the same type of problem (two employees) skimming money and just two week ago, a local city clerk. Wouldn’t you think both of these organizations (state & city) would have top of the line audit procedures in place?

What a person takes today, could very likely put that business out of business tomorrow. Then where is their JOB?

Just as you said - it's not just our industry that suffers w/ this problem. In our little town, the local tag ofc had 2 that were skimming and a cable TV company was hit. In both cases, $ assignments were done by 1 or very select few people. Let's nod here, though - Any of us can make a genuine error or encounter unexlpained overages. My philosophy - if there's a descrepancy, tell the boss about it before the boss has to tell you! As for the thieves that lurk among the masses...

In offices where there is more than 1 emp, CROSS TRAIN FOLKS & SHARE $ responsibilities. There may be 1 bad apple, even 2 is possible, but not every emp in an office will likely be a thief. office managers should RANDOMLY trade off $ assignments or limit the time that an individual does a certain $ job. Bosses (on any level) should be checking/double checking figures on at least a weekly basis, but, ideally, daily.

Having automated bookkeeping goes a long way, too - receipts are waaaaay too easy to manupilate. This is what got the cable ofc lady in a bind..she was the only 1 doing the payments which were all manually validated. Then the company was going automated and centralizing the payment intake - she turned herself in and copped to stealing $100K+ over a 13 yr period! It's a long, complicated tale but, just how she kept it all going for so long still has everyone dumbfounded. She turned herself in because she knew she'd be quickly caught once they changed the accounting practices.

Lordy - how I hate a thief or a liar.

Having worked as a site auditor for a property management company about six years ago and as a d.m. for a major auto retailer for fifteen years I was always amazed at the number of people that take from their employers without a bit of guilt or remorse. I guess it's a matter of how one is raised, or should I say not raised? I always cautioned the people I hired that only two things would lead to losing their job, one was to steal from me and the other was to lie to me. As long as a person tried and put in his or her time I could deal with any shortcomings and train them to eventually become useful members of our team. The lady in Florida must have never had a proper upbringing or life lead her down the wrong path, either way it is a terrible waste of another human being. Unfortunately the system that will judge her and award the required punishment does not do a thing to rehabilitate the individual. They are merely warehoused at considerable expense for a period of time and returned to society worse off than when they were incarcerated. The same system has failed at education also. Too bad the promised changes never occurred. Just my normal two cents.