my team has been stealing from the company (2024)

A reader writes:

A few days ago, I discovered that at least seven people on my team have been stealing cash across different sites for months. It was deliberate and carefully coordinated and occurred almost daily. They took an average of $30-40 a day so I can’t see how the risk worked out financially after splitting between all of them.

Lost money aside, I am extremely upset. I see these people every day and work closely with them. I have given them emotional support over personal problems and protected jobs during potential layoffs. We regularly socialized outside of work. One of the ringleaders has a son with the same medical condition as my child’s. I went out of my way to get the family in touch with support organizations and get them free legal advice through personal contacts. I’ve advocated for (and received) better remuneration for many of them, even during tough times last year.

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There are others who assisted with covering up even if they didn’t financially benefit from the theft, and others who knew but didn’t say anything because they didn’t want to get involved or get their coworkers in trouble.

I’m frantically trying to recruit new staff so we can dismiss the seven (or potentially more) who were involved.

I’ve lost sleep over the sense of betrayal. I feel stupid and gullible. It feels personal.

Given this involves so many people, how do I go about firing them? Do I need to do this all on the same day?

I’m certain there are others directly involved, but we just haven’t got the evidence. I’m not sure what to do about this.

I now feel extremely cynical about trusting or helping people at work. Do I just … not trust or help people now?

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Oh no. I’m sorry. That has to feel like a gut punch.

A few things, in no particular order:

* While this feels like a personal betrayal, there’s a decent chance that they didn’t look at it that way. People who steal from employers generally see it as a relatively impersonal crime; they figure they’re stealing from a faceless corporation and it feels entirely different to them than, I don’t know, swiping your wallet or scamming a relative. Obviously this is wrong-headed thinking — they are betraying the trust of a person they work with every day and who has invested in them and worked to ensure they’re treated well. But they might not have looked at it as involving you much at all.

* When someone betrays your trust like this, it’s natural to wonder what you missed and whether you were, as you put it, “stupid and gullible.” But assuming they weren’t leaving obvious clues all over the place, you’re not stupid and gullible to have trusted people who it sounds like you were relatively close to. They’re the ones who broke the social contract, not you.

People who steal money set out to engage in deception; their whole point is make sure you don’t see what they’re doing. Should you have seen something wrong in their characters earlier? Possibly. But prisons are full of people whose friends and family members thought they seemed like lovely people. People are really good at compartmentalizing their behavior.

That said, do you need more checks and balances in place to catch theft? Very possibly! It’s something you should look at rigorously now.

* The logistics of the firings depend on details I don’t have. Ideally you should fire all the people involved ASAP and all at once, as soon as you’re able to, even if it means the rest of the team stretching for a bit to cover the gaps. Even if it’s not large enough to do that, you should look at emergency measures you could take that would allow you to fire them ASAP anyway: can you bring in temps, cut back on non-essential projects, borrow people from other teams in the interim, etc.?

* Related to that, assuming you have HR and/or legal counsel, you should seek and follow their guidance — but you can also make your preferences known. Sometimes HR and lawyers will advise the most conservative course of action but will give you different, better tailored advice if you say, “Actually the outcome I’d prefer is X — is there a way to do that instead, legally and ethically?”

* You didn’t mention pressing charges, but that’s something you should be thinking about as well.

* It’s natural to feel cynical about trusting people now. People intentionally deceived you, and this was a betrayal. It’s okay if you keep yourself at more of a remove as you process this. But the goal should be, in time, to get yourself to a point where you don’t look at everyone you work with as a potential criminal. Your response to this should be about you, not them: be a manager who supports and advocates for employees because that’s who you want to be. But it’s also natural and okay if it takes some processing time to get there.