An employee of a grocery store was charged with felony theft for allegedly stealing more than $6,200 from fraudulent refunds in six months. The news article states that $5900 of that amount had been stolen within the past 30 days. The employee allegedly admitted to watching supervisors log onto cash registers to authorize the transactions. She then used their operator numbers and passwords to create the fraudulent refunds.

Last week I ate lunch at a local quick service restaurant in my neighborhood.Before leaving, I went to the restroom and noticed the drop down acoustical type ceiling.  It immediately reminded me of a very tragic incident that took place several years ago at a national quick service chain restaurant.  Right before closing, a subject entered the restroom and climbed up into the drop ceiling and hid.

Two employees working late at night for a franchisee of a national fast food (QSR) chain decided to post a video of themselves on You Tube.  What they thought was a good idea at the time was videoing themselves tampering with food products.  Disgusting, unsanitary, vile… you get the idea.  It received over 60,000 hits on You Tube and was viewed by millions more on several major network and cable newscasts. The employees were promptly fired and the information flowing out from the location ensured the public that the food was not served.  It was also determined that one of the employees was a convicted sex offender.  The highly embarrassed franchisee admitted that there was no pre-employment screening process in place – not uncommon in the industry.

A Miami Herald headline screams, “Gunman’s Rampage at Hialeah Restaurant Leaves 5 Dead”.  Shortly after the small family-run restaurant’s closing time of 10 p.m., the gunman was fighting with a woman in the parking lot of a strip mall restaurant in Hialeah, FL.  During an apparent domestic argument he pulled out a gun, shot and killed the woman.  He then entered the restaurant and began shooting indiscriminately.  When it was all over, three other women were dead and three more were injured.  Some of the victims were employees of the restaurant.   He then drove away in one of the victim’s cars and was found dead a few blocks away of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot.

The Washington Post ran an article on May 24, 2010 with the Headline, “District Food Servers Charged in Theft of Patrons’ Credit Card Numbers”.   Three Cheesecake Factory workers were part of a larger ring that were allegedly stealing credit card information from customer’s they served in the restaurant.  When handling customer credit cards the workers also swiped the card through a portable electronic device commonly known as a “skimmer”.  The skimmer captured the customer information contained on the magnetic stripe on the back of the card.  The information was then sold to others to steal customer’s identity to make counterfeit credit cards to buy more than $117,000 in merchandise.  The U.S. Secret Service became involved when notified by CitiBank investigators of numerous fraudulent charges on cards that were used by customers at the restaurant.