I was hanging out with an old friend yesterday. He owns a lawn maintenance company for the last 25 years. He built it on his own from nothing more then a push mower back when we were 17. He does 7 figures a year (I presume gross). Anyway he does not work anymore. Pretty much retired when he hit 32. He has had the same girl working for him for 14 years running the office. He owns a large garage a few miles from his home where he keeps everything. Last saturday night the alarm goes off and he runs over with the police. Turns out it’s a repo company trying to take all his trucks. Ten tow trucks waiting for guys to start the trucks and get them out of the garage so they can hook them up an leave. He finds out the girl was stealing from him and not paying his truck payments for the last 6 months. He had a book keeper come in an go over everything from the last 10 years. He was able to track down what and where she was stealing, but he is not 100% he was able to find out everything. The girls husband was my buddys forman so he was helping hide the stolen cash. At this point her total take is looking like $163,000.00 over 10 years.
Now my friend is very upset because he feels he should have been looking closer at all times. This girl is the god mother of his 1st kid so I understand he really trusted her. But it just goes to show you, you can’t trust anyone. She and her husband are now sitting in jail and can’t make bail.
I worked for a small company that was doing great about 3 years before I got there. Turns out their own son was stealing from them. They owned a lawn care company and he was using their money to buy equipment for his business. Since he was the face that all of the customers knew he went around telling their customers that the business had changed names to his business. They almost went bankrupt from it and were starting from scratch again when I came in. I can’t even imagine doing something like that to my parents.
I asked him how she was doing it. He said she would write out a check in the exact amount of certain large bills to herself. But on the books it looked like she paid the bills. What she would do is cover the “missed payment” over the rest of the payments. So he never knew. When the letter would come in that he missed a payment, being she ran the office she would toss it out. He has found payments missed over the last ten years with increases on the remaining payments for all sorts of stuff. He did not even calculate the interest he had to pay for the late payments so he is not 100% sure how much was taken. But heres how stupid these two are. The husband being the forman would collect all the “CASH” from jobs the guys did on the spot that they normally dont do like gutter cleaning etc. He said he the guy could have just kept 1/2 the cash and he would never have known being there was no paper trail on those on the spot gigs. He said the guy would average $1000 to $2000 per day with on the spot work, come home and give him the cash directly. He figured the guy was prob skimming $100 bucks off the top and really did not care much about it. He said he averages $200k per month so he would never miss $1000 or $2000 for that matter. He said his overhead bills are so large hiding $1000 or so of cash from stealing would not be hard at all. He said the guy could have taken the whole thing and he would never have known. Most of this is his fault for letting himself get that far away from his own business. I told him the guy prob was skimming more. But either way just goes to show you.
He said now he is going to hire two book keepers to watch over each other and the office staff.
Me either, but I grew up with some pretty rich kids and their mindset when it comes to money is differant then most people. I have a neighbor who stole over 1 million from his old man in business. He was a 50% partner with his dad in a communications company. Sold off 25% of the business without his dad knowing. Now not a big issue if it’s HIS 25% but he sold off 12.5% of his and 12.5% of dads. Crazy thing is, now he is broke pennyless and dad still lets him live in his house. Guy goes from being a great businessman to being a 45 year old drug addic loser.
This stuff seams to be happening alot more these days. I do audits of my company accounting all of the time. Checking hard copies of what my guys turn in versus Whats on the computer and what I have written in my deposit ledger. Everything can be cross referenced to that ledger. Its a real pain sometimes to hand write it down but well worth it. I absolutey make it a point to do ALL deposits to my bank. Everything is documented in a separate book so If something looks shady, I’ll know right away.
I remember hearing about a company in my area that fired a guy for stealing checks from customers. Basically this guy would show up to a job, do the work, collect payment and tell the owner of the comapny that the homeowner cancelled the service. He would then take the check to his girlfriend that worked at a supermarket and she would cash the check. The finally caught this guy after it started happening frequently and the owners knew something just didnt seem right. I would suggest that a background check is also beneficial for the office help. A credit report is also a good way of weeding out any potential problems in the future.
