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What starts as petty thievery often grows into multimillion-dollar larceny. The practice of supermarket employees' failing to ring up the purchase of food by relatives is so common that it is known as "brother-in-lawing." But the total cost to supermarkets last year was $100 million. Because of the complexity of modern business methods, Jaspan says, more than 50% of all white collar crimes involve more than one employee. He tells of a rug-department supervisor in a large department store who organized the 16 installers working under him into a gang, set up his own rug business with the store's merchandise and bilked the business of more than $1,000,000 in five years.
The Solution. As to the answer for white collar crime, Jaspan suggests that companies take the basic precaution of bonding their employees so that they can collect on losses. Less than 10% of the nation's commercial retail businesses bond employees. But what Jaspan really wants is for management to try to prevent crime by developing adequate control systems, setting fair standards of performance, and maintaining better employee relations. The best preventive, notes Jaspan, is high employee morale.