T wo years ago CM unearthed a scam in East Anglia
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where drivers belonging to one haulage firm were selling diesel directly from their tanks. The drivers would pull into a pallet yard, out would come the owner with umping equipment powered by a forklift uck and suck a few gallons out of the tank. ash would change hands, and the driver ould soon be on his way. If you sat there for whole morning another driver belonging to ie same firm would turn up and the whole rocess would be repeated.
The strange thing about this story was that iv owner of the vehicles—the man paying Ir the diesel—knew nothing about it. When 'M contacted him and told him what the !porters had seen he was amazed. He iought his fuel bills were a bit high, but adn't been able to put it down to any one ctor. The drivers were clever enough not to Ice too much out, and because they all did it rarely showed up in the fuel consumption ;tires.
'uel value
le number one issue for most hauliers today how to hold on to your diesel. Its price has 3 en so much in the past few years that today
old truck with a large fuel tank can be orth less than its full tank. Everyone has !ard tales of drivers selling jerry cans of esel to friends or staff using their company rs in the evenings to run a taxi service—but Av do you stop it?
"What you don't measure you can't mane," is Ashley Sowerby's motto. Soweriay is e managing director of Belper, Derbyshireised Chevin Computer Systems, which 'signs fleet management software.
"Efficient management of vehicles, and deed any other expensive company equipeat, requires good record-keeping and conint evaluation of costs—otherwise light-fin'red employees or dishonest suppliers may ke it into their heads to help themselves," says.
His firm's software enables hauliers to track e complete running costs of a fleet of vehis, including cars, vans and HGVs. though it obviously monitors things like el consumption, it will also measure all amtenance carried out on each vehicle and y parts supplied.
raining sessions
Ve recently ran a training session for one stomer, and found that he was being arged twice by one supplier. The garage in estion would invoice for work done, then a A' days later it would send another invoice 7 the same amount, changing the wording
slightly to make it look like a different job.
We had installed a system to monitor warranty cover for things like starter motors. When it realised it had already paid out for a previous part, it threw up a series of alert messages. The transport manager was horrified when he realised what had been happening," he says.
Other things that systems like these will pick up are drivers putting more fuel into a vehicle than the size of the fuel tank. They can compare distances covered against claimed distances, and show up changes in fuel consumption figures.
But what if your drivers are being clever? One way of catching drivers who
are stealing small amounts of fuel regularly is to change the vehicle they drive without warning. If the consumption appears to get better once a driver is removed, it probably requires investigation. Spend a day in the cab with a driver—you might learn a bit more about how he works. He should appreciate the interest in his working day. If he doesn't, is he hiding something? You might also discover that his fuel figures improve on the day you spend with him.
Common frauds
According to Will Kenyon, such frauds are all too common. He is a partner in the forensic accountancy division of leading city firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, and one of the men called in to investigate how Robert Maxwell managed to spirit away so much of the Mirror Group's finances.
"Statistics show that the vast proportion of staff who are caught stealing from their employers are middle-aged men who have often been with the company for years and are trusted by their bosses and colleagues," he says.
On this basis it's probably a good idea to keep as close an eye on your accountant as on your drivers.
"The most important thing is to remove the opportunity. If you give staff the chance to steal from you by failing to put proper con
trols in place, sooner or later someone will be tempted. Don't put temptation their way and you are less likely to be disappointed," he says.
Kenyon says that although no system is perfect there are certain steps all company owners can take. He recommends putting strict limits on the amounts certain staff can write cheques for, or insisting that the owner of the firm countersigns cheques of a certain size, and casting a vigilant eye over bank statements.
The first thing we look for during an investigation are unusual patterns of invoicing—lots of payments made just below authorisation thresholds or any odd payments that don't tie into normal trading patterns. It is worth examining whether any of your staff have a relationship with your suppliers. It's not unusual for employees to be taking kickbacks or bribes from companies they happen to choose as suppliers. I recently found one man who was siphoning off cash to a company that listed his wife as a director, which wasn't particularly clever, but had not occurred to the owner of the company," he says.
Companies such as his use highly sophisticated IT systems that are capable of making a complete copy of entire networks, or retrieving apparently deleted material from computer hard drives.
"While computer cash transfers have in some ways made the fraudster's life easier, they also leave a trail which can be followed. It's amazing what sort of material can be found in the 'deleted' area of some staff's computers.
"Usually when we present the perpetrators with the evidence they decide to come clean and tell us the rest. We get a lot of training on how to ask the right questions. Often it is a release for them to be caught, and they show us exactly what they have done with the money," says Kenyon.