Motive is extremely complex and difficult to assess properly, largely because each person is motivated uniquely. While evaluating the motive of a customer almost seems impossible due to lack of intimate knowledge of that person, evaluating employees is much easier when you or your management team takes a personal i9nterest in the wellbeing of each worker.
This does not mean that you should pry, be intrusive and act overbearing with your staff. Instead, you should care. Understanding your workers leads to greater opportunity to increase productivity, develop bonds and make your business more human.
Similarly, the more you know about your regular trades that visit your business, your suppliers and your delivery or sales connections, the better able you are to minimize opportunity for loss.
But while preventing loss is much more cost-effective than catching it, knowing your outside contacts will facilitate catching loss, too.
Motive is the most critical component of the MOI Inventory, even though understanding opportunity reduces risk. If opportunity is the most volatile of the three, a person with lots of opportunity and no motive is very unlikely to steal. Therein is the inherent financial value of knowing your staff and your suppliers.
However, even universal motivation, such as financial need (which seldom is the reason for theft or fraud), does not impact each person the same.
One couple—shoppers at an international grocery chain—demonstrated this dilemma. They were a newly married, new parent couple with very limited finances. On one shopping trip, they purchased a large quantity of groceries then pushed the shopping cart home, a three-block distance. They did so routinely, returning the cart to the store promptly.
On this trip, they had placed a case of baby formula on the lower rack of the cart, but neither they nor the cashier noticed it at checkouts.
The husband noticed it, at home, as the two went over the receipt to make sure they had been charged correctly for each item.
Immediately, he pointed it out to his wife, who was overjoyed at the windfall.
He, though, insisted that he had to go back to the store and pay for it, even though they were so short of cash that they would have to return a luxury snack item to which they had treated themselves. In order to have sufficient funds.
His spouse was adamant that it was the store’s error, and that that store had “cheated” them on pricing more than once. She emphasized that they were an extremely large operation that would not miss the shortage.
Still, the husband returned and paid for the item, to the surprise of the store manager.
The two—husband and wife—experienced precisely the same motive to steal: poverty. Yet, each reacted differently.
This illustrates the individual nature of motive, requiring that you understand your employees very well to deter loss in your business. At the same time, it shows how it is virtually impossible to understand each of your customers, even if you have a basic knowledge of their personal situations.
Instead, you should focus more on macro- conditions, such as the general socio-economic status of the shopping demographic, the prevailing attitudes and beliefs or values of your clientele.
Motive, though, is the best predictor of fraud. Theft often is impulsive, while fraud must be carefully staged and carried out. Since much of the opportunity that thieves see is actually a loss or reduction of risk, these opportunities frequently are fleeting. The fraudster generally has to arrange the situation to enable fraud and devise an effective coverup.
Motive also fluctuates with each individual, day-to-day or even moment-to-moment. Since motive and emotion both originate from the same Latin word, “emovere,” meaning to stir up or to move out, the two logically are connected.
Motive is something which causes us to move on an initiative or action (or refrain from that action). Emotion is something which stirs up internally in each of us, and often words in conflict with logic. So, we may act on something out of an emotional reason, even if it defies logic. Thus, motive may not seem logical.
One tenant in a large apartment complex had a dispute with another tenant. The first was well-educated and intelligent but, driven by the emotion of the conflict, began dumping human waste outside the other tenant’s door periodically and somewhat randomly. Logic would have told him that he would get caught and that there could be criminal repercussions. But emotion drove him, providing enough motive to overwhelm what seemed like common sense.
The power of any motive may have been detected in this person by someone who may have known him well, as he was a reactive individual, who complained of persecution and displayed a bitter, vindictive temperament.
This demonstrates the value of knowing the people who may place your business at financial risk.
Another person had been dismissed by his employer, a large food distributor. He also had engaged in conflicts with fellow staff members. We were hired to monitor the premises; in case he made good on his threats to “get even.”
On the third night of observation, we noticed a vehicle approaching the remote side of the building. There were no entrances here, and no employee vehicles. Instead, it was the access point for the building utilities.
The person parked near the natural gas main shutoff, took out a 16-pound mallet and began swinging at the connection. We were able to intercept within seconds and prevent serious damage. If he had succeeded in breaking the valve, he intended to set the gas alight.
What he had ignored was the risk to his own safety. It was unlikely that the explosion or fire that might have resulted would have damaged the building, since it was a concrete structure and the blowout force of the fuel likely would have dissipated outward, but he would most probably have been seriously injured or killed in the blast. His motive for revenge was so strong that reason had been ignored.
A final example of subjective motive involved the nephew of a partner in a large independent pharmacy chain. The nephew had few qualifications for the profession and o was employed as a general cashier and floor worker in one of the stores. He resented that his father, a pharmacist and employee of his brother (the young man’s uncle), had not secured a better position for him.
We found that the nephew was stealing over $1,500 per week from the store (mostly cigarettes). A later investigation found that the father also was stealing and committing fraud exceeding $4,000 per week. Both were resentful of the uncle’s position and wealth, instead of being grateful for decently paying employment. While the young man’s motive was easy to discern, the owner/partner was flabbergasted that his own brother would steal from him, given the substantial salary he was receiving, without the risk associated with ownership.
These and scores of other examples reveal how subjective, emotional and often unpredictable motive can be, but also how critical it is to attempt to understand this element of the MOI Principle.
The idea that motive is driven by emotion also reinforces the key to understanding motive.
Every toddler begins his third year with an endless stream of “why.” That word is at the heart of motive or reasoning for everything: Why does it happen, why does it work that way, why now, and so on. Ask “why” to know motive, as “how” to know opportunity. Ask “when,” “where” and “who” to follow the indicators.
Let us begin by examining the negative motives that drive people to steal. Unfortunately, almost all of the emotions that precipitate acts of deviance, from theft and fraud to violence, are negative. Just a few include anger, jealousy and revenge: the three heads of the green monster.
Those emotions don’t even need to be caused by the store, business or the employer. They can be redirected away from a spouse, or the customer’s job, a family member or a neighbour. In our thousands of apprehensions for theft and fraud, we have seen almost endless “reasons” having to do with these three negative emotions. Each also has a root intent: to rebalance a part of one’s life that is out of balance.
Anger
Anger can be directed at the store or business, and arises from what the suspect personally feels, not necessarily what is real. One customer began shoplifting immediately after the store manager refused to allow her to get the sale price on an item that had been on sale the prior week. She felt that she was entitled and so shoplifted to get the saving she would have experienced on the one item. However, once she began, she continued to steal until we decided to apprehend her. That store’s policy was that we allow thefts under $5 to pass, unless they stole more than twice. They had such an expansive regular customer base that they did not want to severely disrupt it by arresting everyone that took part in very petty theft.
Anger can happen entirely unrelated to a business. One individual spray painted the side of a business manager’s car, in the company parking lot, every year on or very near to the manager’s birthday. At first, it was assumed that the perpetrator must be an employee who knew the manager’s birthday but also knew where he worked. None of the ten employees that we assessed seemed to fit the profile and had no motive, since he was very well liked. So, we looked elsewhere to his personal life. Eventually, we caught the person, by observing the vehicle (which was extremely challenging) but also by watching our suspect during the day. It was a neighbour who had been upset years earlier because the manager had had a particularly joyous birthday celebration and the neighbour, who called the police unsuccessfully, was anger and bitter.
Anger can happen when an employee is disciplined and feels it was unfair (which they very often do). It can happen if an employee didn’t get the raise he wanted. Anger, like a very many negative emotions, often is misdirected or misplaced.
Anger can be generalized. Road rage often begins at home or involving some other incident that triggers the rage attack. It is the typical “straw that broke the camel’s back.
Anger frequently is the root of other negative emotions, like revenge. If a person is both angry and prone to seeking revenge, or is “sneaky,” the anger more often will manifest itself somehow.
Thus, it is important to understand who is angry, why they are angry and how they are likely to react to anger. Not all angry people react aggressively. Some act passive (or passive/aggressive), but their intransigence acts as an impediment, fulfilling their need for revenge. Others redirect their anger elsewhere or learn how to place it where it is more appropriate. Anger without the corresponding drive to act in a negative manner is not cause for judgment in itself, but if it also combines with strong opportunity for deviance, it may be problematic.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-20
Jealousy
A purportedly very devote customer of stores in a neighbourhood was apprehended six times for stealing. On the last occasion, he revisited a store where he had previously been barred. He did this often, and would cite the Bible, cursing the stores for their “greed.” He claimed he was stealing to give to charity. At first, he was somewhat believable. On this sixth apprehension, I personally opted to demand to search his vehicle, a battered old station wagon. It was easy to identify. It was plastered with religious stickers. In the car we found over four hundred dollars of items he had stolen, some from a break-in. However, the most interesting items were the collection of pieces he had stolen from the church that he attended, where he claimed he was donating his stuff. After unravelling the false narrative, we found that he had been turned down as a church leader, with three other people in the church assuming the positions he wanted. The three had connections to over half the businesses from which he was stealing. He was jealous, and wanted to make them look bad by being uncharitable. He claimed to the church that he had purchased the items he donated, but he offered no explanation for the items he had stolen from the church (including eight of their Bibles).
A son of a business owner stole tens of thousands of dollars from his father’s business. Why? He was jealous of a more competent fellow employee who had been promoted over him.
A manufacturing business defrauded one of his key suppliers of almost $100,000 in supplies and materials. The supplier was his cousin who the manufacturing business owner said, “was always getting the attention for being successful at all the family get-togethers.” Oddly, the manufacturer produced items with the raw materials that he either sold at rock bottom prices or donated to needy causes. He didn’t care about the money. He wanted to deserve the attention that his cousin had.
Although I am loathe to admit it, I caught one of my own employees stealing from a client, in a very strange manner. He arranged for a couple of friends to pilfer from my client, then he made a point of “recovering” these items as they were being fenced in a nearby bar. He hopped it made him look like a hero. It did, until we uncovered the plot.
Jealousy is a purely irrational motive, yet the act is labelled “the green-eyed monster” because it causes such extreme and unfathomable responses in people. Very often, the victims are in no way connected to the cause.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-20
Revenge
I discussed elsewhere about a fellow who, for many years, slashed the tires of a store owner at Christmas, driven by revenge. I also mentioned the x-employee upset with being let go who was willing to blow up an entire warehouse and the people in it. We read of disgruntled and fired employees who shoot up a place of business. However, revenge doesn’t need to be as overt as that incident, or even targeted toward whom or what we assume should be the target.
Revenge may be intangible, such as the many school shootings by kids who felt they were unfairly left out or rejected.
Revenge often springs from rejection and the resulting feelings of inadequacy. Seeking revenge and making the target regret their actions work together. My younger brother committed suicide after being rejected by his current common-law partner on the same day that he received his decree absolut from the courts for his prior marriage. He emphatically stated to a few people prior to committing suicide that “they are going to regret it when I’m gone.”
Revenge, regret and feelings of rejection may arise from veery innocuous causes that we may not understand as even being significant, except they are significant to that person. They can become motives for all sorts of deviant or abhorrent behaviour. It is more important to understand how a person will react to rejection or how revenge will manifest itself in that person than it is to understand “why.”
Scoring (Low to High) 0-20
Compassion
This is one of the few “positive” emotions that motivate some people to steal. One cash counter in a grocery store stole precisely $1,600 from her employer, even though she loved her job and was very trustworthy. When I interviewed her, she readily confessed to the exact amount, which I already had verified. We were close friends, and it was a very difficult interview, partly because she expressed no remorse. She acted almost clinically. After the interview concluded, she agreed to compensation in full, but did not have the money to pay. She agreed top sign over her car, pay the difference in cash borrowed form her mother the next day. I was heartbroken that she seemed so implacable about it.
The next day, she returned to the store, signed her Transfer of Ownership documents, provided the bank draft and gathered her belongings, as she had been terminated. She apologized to the store manager for betraying the trust in her. Then she asked if she could speak to me outside. She stated, “I understand if you never want to talk to me again.”
We went outside, where she apologized profusely and broke down in tears over the loss of our friendship. She explained that her boyfriend desperately needed the money (the reason does not matter), and that she had taken the money to help him. She then explained that the reason she had not offered an apology at the time of the exit interview was that she did not want to use our friendship to influence me, as I had a job to do.
Later, this person got a job at a large multi-national company and did very well. Better than that, she started a charity with the company that provided last wishes for dying children and special holidays for impoverished families. In five years, her group helped nearly a thousand needy people, and she was lauded by the company, receiving international attention for her compassion.
Through all her actions, she was driven by compassion: for her partner, for me, for those in need. That, though, is a rarity in the world of theft and fraud.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-20
Family and people close to us
Sometimes our motives are driven not by compassion but by duty (or perceived duty). We may want to help a family member and may sacrifice our moral values to do so. In my book, “Wild People I Have Known,” I write about a guy that killed a baby, a toddler and their mother on Christmas Eve, as part of a drug matter. He was helping a friend whose wife was hooked on drugs. The friend had warned the supplier about selling to his wife, and when the dealer did not stop selling, they went to his house to kill him. He jumped out the bathroom window and fled. They shot his family. Horrible. Reprehensible, you say. True. No redeeming value in him, you say. Wrong.
This fellow served 25 years, and when he was released on mandatory parole, another friend asked him to help smuggle cigarettes across the provincial border. He did so, knowing it was a parole violation. He was arrested and re-incarcerated, because he helped a friend.
I knew Jon when I was a bouncer in a seedy hotel. Every night there were at least three fights. I also had to control the “rowdies,” of which Jon was one, but I did it in a way that was not demeaning to him. Anyway, he was a skilled kickboxer and could easily had decimated me.
He took a liking to me and would tell me that I shouldn’t fight because I might get hurt. As his friend, he wanted to take care of me. I was not a large fellow, so he was right. He insisted that he would take care of the rowdies for me. I insisted, equally as adamantly, that it was my job.
One evening, I had already had three altercations when he arrived, and one of his other friends told him about it. He came over to me, grabbed me by my shirt front, lifted me off the floor and held me against the wall.
“Bob, if you don’t start letting m protect you, I’m going to kill you.”
“Jon,” I said, “Did you think about what you just said?”
He hesitated, then grinned, lowering me to the floor.
“Yeah, I guess that’s pretty stupid, eh, Bob?”
He wanted to keep me safe and would kill me if I didn’t let him look after me. Twisted thinking, but he would do anything for his friends.
Many people will do anything for their friends or family, including breaking the law.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-20
Need versus perceive need
Less than 2% of the people that I or my company have apprehended did not have the financial resources to pay for the items they stole or the money they took, including the less than 1% that constituted “professional thieves.” Yet, there is a prevalent perception that people steal through need. The old lady surviving by stealing and eating cat food is one urban myth that, even on the surface, seems ludicrous. If she can steal, why steal cat food?
I interviewed one person who was part of the McShane Noonan psychological study cited elsewhere in this project. She had $150 on her, and she stole $10 worth of makeup.
I asked why she had not paid, since she had the money. Her response was that she didn’t have the money, because the $150 was for the country music concert she was buying tickets for that afternoon. The concert was not for another three months. In her opinion, she did not have enough money because she had other priorities that she wanted to use the money for.
I asked her why she did not wait until she had more cash to buy the makeup. Her response was that she had only a couple of days of mascara left and she couldn’t afford to not look good.
In other words, she was convinced that she had real need and that it was immediate.
Most people will claim they didn’t have the money, when they did. They have perceived need, not real need. I prefer to say they have greed, not need.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-10
Gambling & Drugs
There are two primary types of theft: theft for profit and theft to enhance one’s self image. Addictions fall somewhere in between the two. With drugs, the person’s world is so distorted that it is critical to get the money for another fix, regardless of the consequences. With gambling addiction, sometimes it is the compulsion to recover the losses before family members find out, or a home is foreclosed because of debt.
A friend refuses to go to the casino, because he knows he has an addictive personality. He nearly died when he was a young man, because he was addicted to alcohol. He also fights food addictions. Addictions overwhelm the senses.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-20
Mental illness
Even seemingly benign disorders, like OCD, hypersensitivities to sounds, the environment or conversations can contribute to deviant behaviour. One woman had voices telling her to steal, while another was upset that the cash drawers were unclean and disorganized, so she needed to have them aesthetically balance (not fiscally). A third wanted to keep other people from being infected with germs from the prior customer. To us, irrational behaviour, to the person suffering, completely justifiable.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-10
Health
When one’s health suffers, we may feel overwhelmed, beleaguered, unfairly treated by life. We may steal as a form of retaliation or compensation. Others steal because they feel that they need a nest egg as their health fails. One older woman, with what I perceived as lots of money, was so worried about her financial security that she attempted to cheat every business and store to collect enough money to feel secure.
Then there are those people who steal as a means of displacement for problems they have privately. With health issues, they blame the world but take it out on the business by stealing.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-10
Inequality in social circles or society
I have apprehended a few First nations people for theft who say that it is their right because “white men” have treated Aboriginals so badly. I have apprehended women who say that men make more money than women for the same job, so they are entitled.
The perception of inequality, real or imagined, is a very strong motivator for people who feel they need to level the playing field, or correct unfairness. The company does not have to be the perpetrator of the injustice for them to rationalize why they steal or commit fraud.
The most common issues regarding perceived inequity, though, are peer group pressures: the need to steal so that one can have the same status symbols that other members of their group have, whether it is a gang, a school friends’ group or a quilting group of elderly ladies. No one wants to be seen as “the poor cousin.” This even applies in internal work circles.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-10
Family problems and abuse
A woman in her early 60s, Virginia was allotted a very meagre shopping budget by her abusive and domineering husband, who made her shop and do all the chores while he did nothing. Although she pleaded with him for more money, he would not yield and regularly beat her when she could not buy what he wanted on the budget he provided.
I arrested her many times. One day, the grocery store manager at one of the stores where she shopped (and shoplifted) asked me about her. I would ban her from the store; she would return and shoplift. We talked with her after one of her arrests and got her to admit to the abuse that was happening.
She was so fearful of her husband that she would face our wrath rather than his. She also stole infrequent items for herself, in a pathetic attempt to feel better about what she had.
We didn’t let her know of our actions. We visited the husband, and I made clear what repercussions he would face if she ever was injured again, or if he ever physically abused her. We also introduced him to the punishment he faced, so he knew we meant business. Occasionally, I followed up when Virginia was in our store, dropping by to reinforce the consequences. He never harmed her again and died of a heart attack two years later.
At the same time, we agreed to let Virginia shoplift the $10 or so each time she visited, to give her some peace. After her husband died, she stopped theft entirely.
Not family, but family problems can drive someone to theft and fraud.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-10
Justification
One of the most common excuses given for low level theft simply is “they won’t miss it. They’re big enough that it doesn’t matter.” What this does is allows the thief to ignore that what they are doping is both morally and legally wrong.
One well-paid electrician employee of a mall began by stealing a package of screws, but occasionally also stole lightbulbs and other sundries. None of the items were worth more than $5-10. He declared that what he took wasn’t much, compared to how much the mall owners made. He estimated, at first, that he had taken less than $100 in total. We calculated that over the prior year, based on what we had observed, that he had stolen over $500. It alarmed him that he had been taking that much, and he admitted to doing it for the past five years.
Perhaps even $2,500 over five years isn’t much for the owner of the mall, worth nearly $100 million.
However, we interviewed another employee of a store in the mall, This young person was helping themselves to a soft drink and chocolate bar every day. “Only $2 or $3,” he stated. Multiplied by 5 shifts a week, it actually totalled $22.50 per week, $1,100 per year. The business had thirty employees. If each stole the same amount, justifying it by saying, “they won’t miss this small amount,” annual losses would be $33,000, or almost one employee’s salary.
There is no small theft. There may be tolerable theft, but it still is significant. An employee who has that lackadaisical attitude about someone else’s possessions may view theft from your business the same way.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-5
Status
Young people are particularly prone to seeing the want for status to be the same as need. Whether it be designer clothes or high-end phones, they want what they tell themselves that “everyone else has.” They want to be recognized. So name-brand items become target theft items. This is the purest example of ego item theft.
But young people are not the only ones who fall prey to this image trap. The biggest and best vehicle, the most expensive watch, the most elaborate vacation, the most prestigious house, all become “needs,” rather than wants, and a need has to be fulfilled now!
A friend bought an upscale house in an upscale neighbourhood, stretching his budget to the limit. He could not afford furniture, but it was less important than having his associates see the expensive neighbourhood in which he lived. Two doors down lived a neighbour who we caught shortly afterward, defrauding his employer of over $130,000 a year for three years, to pay for the needs that he could not afford.
It doesn’t matter if it is upscale makeup or fancy foods that they can’t afford, or million dollar RVs. Large or small, the need for status is almost as powerful as the three negative motives I discussed at the beginning of this section, because the need for status often blends jealousy, greed and resentment of what others have.
These people stand out. They always seem to draw the conversation to their possessions or successes. That behaviour should be a red flag that alerts you to pay attention to any potential for theft that they may experience.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-10
Denied something to which they feel entitled
An elderly woman entered a grocery store and picked up a box of salt (worth less than $1.50 at that time). She proceeded to pour a small quantity of the salt into a Kleenex tissue, which she put in her purse. She took nothing else. For that amount, we would normally not have apprehended her, but I was curious. When I stopped her, she insisted she had nothing. I pointed out that I had observed her stealing salt. “No, no. You are wrong. I wouldn’t steal salt because I am not allowed to have salt in my diet.” I pressed the issue, and she took the tissue with the salt out of her purse. “How did that get there?” she demanded to know. She was denied the pleasure of using salt, so by ignoring the reality, she was able to tell herself that she was maintaining her dietary regimen.
It has similarities to my habit of ordering ice cream and a diet Coke. Self-deception.
This habit of taking something that we are denied allows us to do the deed but deny the reality.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-5
Simple denial
This is very similar, yet distinct from the prior motive.
A woman who was a respected church elder stole $20 of deli meat, hidden in her purse. When I approached her, she vehemently denied having taken anything. We did not intend to call the police, since she was both elderly and the threshold we had established for summoning the police had not been reached. She refused to produce the items, insisting that stealing was wrong and that she knew God would not approve.
We escorted her to the interview room where, in the presence of another female, she was required to empty her purse. When she saw the deli meat, she seemed genuinely perplexed. We documented her, recovered the items, then informed her that she was free to leave.
The lady froze in position, staring at the two of us. Then she turned to leave and took one step toward the door. Suddenly, she collapsed, falling to the floor and wailing. We crouched beside her as she cried. “No, you can go. Nothing more will happen. We aren’t calling the police.”
“No, no, you don’t understand,” she pleaded. “I stole.”
The weight of what she had done hit her as soon as the pressure of the moment was released and, like lifting the lid of a pressure cooker, she vented. Throughout the entire theft, concealment and apprehension, she denied to herself that she could have stolen items. Pure denial is more deserving of sympathy than masked denial or justifying what one does.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-10
Irrational justification
In pharmacies, we seldom apprehend people for prescription theft and only infrequently apprehend them for OTC painkillers. Yet, colognes, cosmetics, personal care and other items are prime targets.
Both in the McShane Noonan study and in our general experiences, the reasons for not stealing the prescriptions they have been given by the pharmacist while stealing the other times they are carrying often are the same and frequently are expressed directly: If I steal the prescription, I might be punished and it might not work.” Even when the suspect has no religious conviction, they fear a supernatural punishment, like a superstition.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-5
Equalling the playing field
For me, one of the blandest food items is tinned lobster. Yet, it is very expensive and difficult to find. For a long time, it was one of the most stolen items in the canned goods aisles, along with canned shrimp. Frozen shrimp was a distant also-ran in the seafood category. So, if it tasted so bad, why steal it? The answer was simple: the rich eat lobster and fancy shrimp, so it must be valuable. Therefore, steal it. It is a way of levelling the perceived socio-economic status gap.
It applies across broad categories. Home handymen steal name brand tools, when there are other, budget-friendly tools that do the job just as well. Gardeners steal heirloom and specialty seed packets, sometimes not even knowing if they will grow in their gardening zone. People steal expensive paintings that to many of us look like a child painted them. It is not the actual benefits of the item stolen, but the perceived benefit of enjoying “what the rich have.”
Scoring (Low to High) 0-10
Need versus entitlement
On one Saturday, I apprehended eighteen people in a grocery store. Five were in one group. One was an extremely wealthy businessman while the five were from a low-income First Nations family, heading to the marshes of Northern Ontario to pick wild rice. They stole $28 worth of mosquito repellent. The businessman stole $35 worth of batteries and a SD card.
The five stole through need. The money they would make rice picking would not be theirs for another month, and they needed the repellent in the bug-infested still waters of the Whiteshell. They were very apologetic for having to steal.
The businessman, belligerent throughout the process, insisted that he needed the items, but, more disheartening, he berated the store for stopping him because he was on a tight time schedule: he was flying to Europe for a holiday and could not afford the delay. He criticized the police who were summoned (admittedly, because of his attitude). He insisted that it would be our fault if he was late getting ready. He insisted that he didn’t have the time to wait in line at the checkouts. He also admitted he was hosting a bon voyage party that night. In other words, nothing was his fault, and he was entitled to do what he did.
Some people feel entitled. Some actually do steal through need.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-5
Condescending
Raymond was a very imposing man. Six foot seven, 380 pounds. Middle 40s. Bearded and barrel-chested. He stole three large bottles of imported Reitmeilter bitters. When apprehended, he was dismissive of the whole process, what he had done and the consequences of his actions. He engaged in a fight with the attending police officer, assaulted the assistant store manager, who was not a small person either. It was not that he failed to recognize that he was stealing. He did recognize it and didn’t care. He was charged and reprimanded.
I caught him a few months later at another store. Same theft items. Same attitude. Arrested, convicted and given a conditional discharge. Still condescending and dismissive.
One of my employees caught him a third time. Charged and convicted. Suspended sentence. His attitude did not change.
Some people steal simply because they can, and they know they will face no significant consequences. Employees with such a dismissive, superior attitude should be monitored. They pose a real risk.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-10
Arrogance
There are more than a few employees, suppliers, drivers and customers who just believe they can outsmart the system. They may not steal or commit fraud because they want the money, but because they want to show they are smarter than the “opponent.” A fellow investigator worked for a large department store chain. I eventually caught him stealing, committing bookkeeping fraud, filing erroneous expenses and allowing outside connections to steal. None of the thefts were significant even though he had access to every part of the store and most of the computer systems. He just thought he was smarter than his employers. Apparently thought he was smarter than I was, too. Maybe. Maybe I just got lucky and caught him, but his arrogance allowed him to make mistakes that brought him down.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-10
Friends in high places
A young lady stole a significant amount of products from a local store. When she as apprehended, her response was, “Do you know who my boyfriend is?” He was the star player for the local professional football team and a regular customer. Fortunately, when she called him to deal with her apprehension, he was extremely polite and apologetic for her behaviour.
People sometimes justify their behaviours with “do you know who I am?” or “do you know who I know?” They feel that they have a position of power because of connections.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-5
Hiding the real truth
We have caught several people—employees, customers & suppliers, as well as a couple of police officers—who desperately needed the money to cover gambling losses so the spouse would not find out or so they would not have their homes foreclosed upon. It is not real need. It is a need that they created because of greed and addictions.
Not voluntary
Fortunately, it is rare, but I have had two women in separate incidents who were forced to steal by their husbands. One took over $35,000, so he could travel back home overseas for several months. Another was forced to shoplift while her husband ran interference, watching for security. When she was caught, he berated her and claimed it was his doing. Our video proved otherwise, and he was charged. A very sad case involved a woman who taught her three kids, all younger than 12, how to shoplift and directed them in the stores in which she was apprehended. At first, the courts were lenient, until her pattern was proven and her children taken from her.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-10
Steal for resale
People who are semi-professional thieves and steal so that they can resell the items are both easy to catch and more difficult. Professional thieves and fraud artists know how to cover their tracks and indicators. Semi-professionals, who steal to support an addiction, are much more brazen and careless. They are easy to spot bit difficult to stop.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-20
Satisfaction
Adeline J, a wealthy woman who liked to show her wealth in most places, declined to wear her very expensive coat when she visited her terminally ill husband in the hospital, which was located in a low- to middle-income area. Yet, she loved to show off her finery whenever she shopped.
I asked her about that habit, and she stated, quite genuinely, that she felt it inappropriate to brag about her money where people were suffering.
The deputy chief of police, a friend of the store manager where she shopped, challenged the store owner to test my skills at catching shoplifters. He told the manager that this woman was well-known in social circles to always be trying to outwit the system but that she had never been caught. I was unaware of the challenge and continued a fairly torrid pace of apprehensions in the store.
There was one woman that I noted who I thought, twice, had shoplifted, but I was not 100% certain and so did not apprehend her. The third, time, however, I did catch her with anti-perspirant and shoe polish—a very insignificant amount. When she was documented, she produced $3,400 in cash (aside from numerous credit cards). I did not call the police for charging, because the amount was under the threshold we had set in the store.
After I released her, the store manager explained the bet with the deputy police chief. I had apprehended Adeline. Although she shopped in several of the stores that I patrolled, I never saw her steal again.
As she said when I interviewed her, she just wanted to show she could do it—not to show off, but to show herself.
I know another person who regularly steals the remnants of a roll of toilet tissue where she works. There generally is less than 10% of the roll left. She does it to test herself. She also routinely misleads her partner about where she goes and where she spends the couple’s resources. The partner doesn’t care about the money, but J. needs to test herself. Deception gives her power and satisfaction.
Scoring (Low to High) 0-5