Facing the Realities of Internal Theft in Retail

Retail theft is nothing new. Popular tactics for retail theft, however, are shifting. Turns out that nowadays internal theft is more prevalent than consumer theft.

The U.S. retail industry hit a record-high employee theft rate in 2015 with a 43% overall revenue loss resulting from such theft. This amounts to $18 billion in retail product.

So why the surge?

Stealing often stems from a lack of conscience – that’s obvious.

But there’s another factor frequently at play in these types of scenarios – lack of loyalty.

U.S. retail employees tend to have less loyalty for their employer compared to retail employees overseas. Internationally, loss stemming from internal theft is about half of that in the United States. In fact, outside the U.S., loss from internal fraud recently totaled just under 30%.

Oftentimes, offenders carry out internal theft through cash register tampering.

Cash register tampering involves various adjustments and alterations to transactions.

Such alterations may include fake voids, also known as building the bank, false returns, and sweethearting. Without cash automation, these types of tampering are easy to execute.

Evention is fighting the fraud with our automated cash management. By providing complete visibility that combines POS responsibilities with each cash transaction, retailers can easily ensure complete cash reconciliation.

As part of its solution suite, Evention offers automated cash recycling. With every till dispense, safe drop, cash pickup, and till return tracked and audited, Evention provides a powerful tool that can greatly reduce cash theft.

Each transaction at the safe is automatically verified and secured. Daily reports generated by Evention’s SecureDrop software allow retail management to detect variances. As a result, one can instantaneously identify employee fraud.

What are you doing to protect your retail business from internal fraud?