and yelling things at all the people who were present. Ruger began to talk with Matthew so Ruger could determine what was wrong, what had started this situation and what it would take to resolve the situation. Ruger radioed for one of his team to dispatch local police to the building. Ruger and his team knew that this was a fluid situation that could get out of hand quickly. Ruger asked Matthew several questions and attempted to talk Matthew down. Matthew showed that he had no desire to cooperate with anyone and Matthew was becoming more volatile by the minute. This particular facility was old and had several things that the city had “grand-fathered” in as acceptable. Ruger gave one of the security guards a signal to take an action. The guard did as expected and used one of the existing fire hoses to spray Matthew in the chest. The water pressure hitting Matthew caused three things to happen. Matthew dropped the shears which greatly decreased his ability to harm someone. Secondly, the water surprised Matthew to the point that it messed up his plan and he found himself not knowing what to do. Finally, the water bought a small period of time for the loss prevention staff to action and get Matthew to the ground. The police arrived and took Matthew into custody at the same time that the loss prevention team was securing the water. The team was glad that no one was hurt. Ruger was then forced to complete an after action investigation. He found that Matthew had been a problem employee for the past seventeen of his twenty-three years with the company. He found that management would transfer Matthew from one department to another department every eleven months. The facility manager had determined that Matthew was too hard to handle but that no one would fire Matthew. In fact, Matthew’s annual reviews were extremely bland and he was given a minimal pay increase every year. Matthew had two years left until retirement and the managers just wanted him to get to the point of retirement. By transferring him every eleven months not one manager was able to provide a solid evaluation of his annual performance. The managers had found a way to float Matthew in the hopes that none of them had to deal with effects of a problematic termination. Ruger began to interview the witnesses at the scene and employees all seemed to have the same story. None of the employees knew what had sparked Matthew into this erratic and aggressive behavior. Most of the employees said that Matthew had always been a problem and that management just let him get away with it. Employees said that Matthew had been flying off the handle for years but that his problem seemed to have gotten worst in the past year. Ruger and Kathy had a discussion and found a way for Matthew to retire early and they also put together a corrective action plan for the management team. The management team needed to lead in the right manner.
It had been a number of months since Ruger had encountered any major problems. He had been able to get his hands around a number of the issues and had put some practices and procedures in place. Ruger was in his office one day when Will Fortman dropped by to visit. Will was one of the LP managers from Lawson’s specialty division. Will had retired as a Director of Loss Prevention for J.C. Penney’s prior to coming to work at Lawson’s. Ruger knew that Will was extremely good at what he did and Ruger knew that Will had the ability to teach Ruger some new skills. Will explained that he had a problem with a case and needed Ruger’s assistance. Will laid out that his division had a loss of a few hundred thousands of dollars in product. This case became the start of a number of cases where an amount of known loss was one number but reality was that the real loss was much higher – in essence, the first report is always wrong. Will provided Ruger with the address of the Lawson’s facility where the losses were coming from and Ruger asked Will how could there be losses in a building that had been closed for years? This particular location had been built in 1903 and encompassed nine million square feet or warehouse space. The building was a series of five buildings all of which were connected underground by a number of large tunnels. The tunnels were large enough to drive a Ford F350 in the tunnel with room to spare. Will stated that his division had been utilizing this location for a number of years to store out of season goods such as snow blowers during the summer, swim suits during the winter and so on. The known losses were mostly related to home improvement goods but also included televisions, washers, dryers and multiple other types of products. Ruger said he would help but first he would need Kathy and Sammy’s approval. Sammy and Kathy both gave Ruger a green light to move forward and assist with the investigation.
Ruger and Will began to put an action plan together. The building was staffed with two long term Lawson managers, three maintenance technicians and nine Lawson security officers. All fourteen employees had been with the company at least twenty years each and all were now suspects of multiple felonies. Additionally, all fourteen employees were over-compensated for the jobs they were performing. The building was old and was in a part of town where two white guys (Ruger and Will) would definitely stand out. To complicate matters neither investigator knew any of the current building employees, neither investigator had access to the building and neither one had any current working knowledge of the building. The facility manager at Ruger’s building had retired as the maintenance manager at the target facility so Ruger asked John a hypothetical question one day. How would someone get into the target building without being discovered? Ruger did not explain what was going on, he simply asked the question. John told him that John was not sure. The next morning Ruger arrived in his own office to find a set of 30 keys on a key-ring sitting in his office chair. The key ring was labeled with the target building address. Ruger and Will, thanks to the keys magically appearing, now had some form of building access. Ruger and Will knew that they had to get into the building to investigate but since all employees were suspects the two of them were going to have to act alone in order to bring closure to the case. A concern that they shared was the need to know where the security guards were while the two of them investigated the building. The good news was that there were only a few cameras on the entire property. They decided to go shopping. Ruger and Will went to J.C. Penney’s and bought a couple of very cheap suits. They put the suits on and went to the target building. They entered the building and introduced themselves as inspectors who worked for the Department of Occupational Health, Safety and Environment and were there to complete an inspection. Ruger faked a phone call while Will went to inspect the freight elevator. While Will and the security guard were gone, Ruger “borrowed” one of the security radios. Since the radios belonged to the company, and since the investigation was approved by corporate then they did not steal the radio.
Ruger and Will determined that they needed to put some hidden cameras in place to watch the product and see who from Lawson’s staff was stealing from the company. Ruger and Will were able to gain access to building four nights in a row without anyone catching them. They were able to maneuver thru the building quite easily since the guards did not seem to make any effort to watch the product. Ruger and Will did find it interesting that the facility had a brand, new Ford 350 Econoline van. The van was also equipped with official Lawson emblems on each side of the van. They asked themselves, why would a closed facility need a new van? Ruger also uncovered that there was no official inventory record or control log related to the product in this building. Since there did not seem to be any official records this meant that there would be no ability to utilize exception reports as a means to determine exact losses.
The investigators would repeatedly access the facility in order to retrieve the video drives which allowed them to review the previous day’s activities. Given a number of factors the investigators were forced to utilize old school technology such as on-site video footage thus the reason they had to continue to re-enter the building. The video footage revealed a few behaviors that were extremely concerning. The first behavior that was noticeable was that all nine security guards would examine various products while working their shifts. The guards would also drive their own vehicles into the building and load product into their personal vehicles. Two of the guards would load product in the company van and leave the facility. The investigators spent the third week of the investigation following the guards in their vehicles and in the company van. One consistent element of the surveillance revealed that while the guards should have been working at the building they spent time loading company product into the vehicles and delivering the product to their own homes. The hidden cameras also revealed another interesting aspect of the investigation. On at least two days and nights of the week, the guards would take the company van (remember the van had company logos and verbiage on each side of the van) into a couple areas of Dallas. The guards would then pick-up two or three women and take them back to the facility. The women involved were prostitutes and would spend a few hours
