Will had attended. Will found himself unable to work anymore so he retired and returned home to Omaha Nebraska.
Ruger completed an after action on the initial internal theft investigation and followed up with Sammy then they completed a de-brief of the entire investigation. Sammy said he was pleased with the results of the investigation but he was not a fan of Ruger collecting stolen items from the homes of employees or from other locations. Sammy yelled at Ruger that recovery of product is not how the company does things. Ruger reached out to Brandon to discuss the situation. Brandon had his own story of how Sammy had yelled at him related to case work as well. Brandon and Ruger knew that they were blazing a new path for the company. They knew that they had to stick to their guns and remain true to who they were while moving the company forward in new ways.
In talking with Brandon about the case, Brandon updated Ruger on his case in Los Angeles. Brandon had been working as an operations manager in Glendale when Sammy recruited him to come on board his new team that would consist of Sammy, Ruger and Brandon. Brandon realized that he and Ruger were a true test cases and could be released from the company at any time – no pressure to be in place with a multi-billion-dollar company.
Brandon began to describe to Ruger that the Los Angeles operation was a total train wreck. He found that third party guards and guard dogs roamed the L.A. facility. Brandon thought he was in the most hostile work environment between management and employees that he had ever seen. The previous distribution center director had been promoted to vice-president and relocated to the corporate office. Brandon began to engage the employees in an effort to build trust. He removed the guard dogs and limited the security guards to performing exterior perimeter patrols of the facility. Brandon and Ruger both hired loss prevention agents as a way to improve the safety and reduce losses.
Brandon discovered several odd practices in the distribution center almost immediately. Brandon had no one at the local level to talk to and Ruger was the only person who would give him the time of day. Brandon and Ruger were both good guys who understood Sammy’s vision and they were able to demonstrate a real value that could be added to the supply chain. They shared cases and best practices and worked well together. They also competed against each other in every area available. It was an on-going battle to see who could reduce the greatest percentage of injuries and who could close the most internal theft cases. Brandon would win some months and Ruger would win other months. They created an entirely new company matrix system but most importantly many people began to notice the positive changes that were happening in their facilities. Anyone who has every worked an investigation understands that sometimes cases start very strangely with a small inquiry and then lead to bigger things. Brandon’s started with a new coffee machine in the breakroom and led to him taking down the former distribution center director who had been promoted to vice president of distribution.
Brandon was in the breakroom one morning getting some coffee when the Human Resources Manager asked him how he liked the new machine. Keep in mind this particular HR manager was not the brightest bulb in the bunch. Brandon asked her how she made the purchase and she informed him that she paid for with the pallet money. People who have worked in the supply chain and specificially in distribution centers know that tons of pallets are used and shipped every year. Apparently in the L.A. facility sold the used pallets which is a normal and acceptable practice. Typically the sale of used pallets is a line item element that is used to off-set the purchase of additional pallets. L.A. did not follow time tested practices or procedures. L.A. would sale the pallets and place the money in the human resource manager’s office. The term “slush fund” originated in the mid-19th century and was a nautical term used to describe the money collected to buy luxuries from the sale of water food called “slush”. Flash forward to L.A. and this was the term used to describe the handling of pallet sales. Brandon knew something was real wrong with this picture and what he was hearing so he set out to discover how much money was being generated from these sales and what the money was being used for – in addition to the new breakroom coffee machine. Brandon gave Ruger a call to share with him his discovery before he called Sammy to share the news with him. Ruger shared that in Dallas the money was collected with official receipts, the money was turned over to accounting who placed the money in an official company bank account and tracked via the company profit and loss statement. Brandon informed Ruger that he and the people in Dallas were stupid Texans and that the L.A. folks had found a better way to do things. He shared with Ruger that they simply locked money in an office and used the money to buy cool stuff. Ruger responded in his familiar Texas drawl, “whaaaaattttt”?
Brandon opened an official investigation and made more discrete inquiries concerning the process for pallet sales. The human resource manager actually had a ledger where she carefully tracked the income amounts and disbursements of this money. Most the purchases from this money were made by the former DC Director. These off the book transactions included a set of golf clubs, a trip to Vancouver, a hotel stay at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego and other business requirements. Additionally, the new DC Director has been casually expressing concerns over some of his predecessor’s general handling of business. The new guy had to be careful since he was a direct report to the former director. Brandon took the director to lunch and learned that there were some real problems with accounting practices at the facility. Distribution centers are at their heart a cost center for the company. Their purpose is to handle and transport goods while keeping costs low and minimizing losses. The director told Brandon that there was approximately $100,000 in damages that had not been recorded on the company books by the previous director. The previous director had been floating the expenses from month to month without booking it as a loss. In fact the previous director had been promoted to his new Corporate Vice President role as a direct result of his profit and loss record in L.A. The new director was unsure how to raise or report the issue to company leadership given the current reporting structure. Brandon was able to attain all of the records related to the losses from the director. Ruger received a call from Brandon one night. Brandon was whispering and sounded like he was in a metal cage. Brandon was in the filing room and had found some damaging information on the former director. The hour was late and Ruger knew that the L.A. facility was closed so he asked Brandon why he was whispering. Brandon told Ruger to shut-up and listen. The next day Brandon covered his finding with Sammy. Sammy was furious and flew to L.A. to take a look at things personally. Brandon picked Sammy up at Los Angeles International Airport and briefed him on their way to the facility. Brandon did not let others know that Sammy was in town. That night Sammy and Brandon collected more information from the company computers and files in L.A. They finished their work around three in morning and Sammy said that he would be flying back to corporate to interview the vice president. There are difficult dynamics that face loss prevention professionals in doing an interview or interrogation on a senior employee especially a vice president. If the loss prevention professional does not get the confession then he or she has accused a senior employment of a crime which could result in immediate termination of the loss prevention professional. Sammy was a former Las Vegas police office and a man of few words. Brandon had done a superb investigation and it was time to put a stop to the problems in L.A. Sammy was able to attain a full confession including financial pay backs from the guard company and guard dog companies. Turns out the former director was a board member of the guard companies and was benefitting financially by not only giving them the contracts but by allowing the companies to charge more than the fair market share for the work. Sammy also was able to get a restitution agreement so that the stolen and ill-gotten money would be returned. Brandon phoned Ruger to provide him a conclusion to the case. The case gave them an overwhelming win in the view of the employees and was a big win for Sammy’s new program. They were not able to relish in the win as there was still work to be done. Ruger’s parting words to Brandon were, “got to go, time to look at markdowns before Sammy calls.” And the adventures continued from there.
Chapter 3 Tracking a Crook
Ruger’s in-laws owned a 200 acre ranch in Winnsboro Texas which is roughly two hours East of Dallas. The family custom was to spend most weekends in Winnsboro where Ruger would do his best to assist his father-in-law with various jobs around the ranch. Some days the job would be fixing
