Credit Card Skimming

I realize that employees who skim credit card information from customers is a big issue with regards to the brand image. But in reading articles about Skimming, it "sounds" as if this is a major problem financially as well....or...is this just a "newsworth" topic that the media picks up on? Would like to have input from industry perspective....

Rolling Deposits

If a manager takes deposits to the bank each day, check to make sure that the deposits are being posted to your account the day or the day after they are removed from the store. "Rolling Deposits" is a term to describe how some managers will steal money from a deposit and not take that deposit to the bank until they can replace the money...usually with money from the next day's deposit.

Example:

Monday - Manager removes Monday's deposit of $3,000 from the store to take it to the bank. The manager steals $400.00 from the deposit and does not take the deposit to the bank.

Tuesday - Manager removes Tuesday's deposit of $2,000 from the store to take it to the bank.
The manager removes $400 from Tuesday's deposit and does not take the deposit to the bank.

The manager takes the $400 from Tuesday's deposit and uses it to replace the money taken from Monday's deposit. Then Monday's deposit is taken to the bank...a day late. (Usually longer.)

This scam is basic and could go uncovered except for greed...instead of just shifting the same $400 from deposit to deposit to cover the initial theft of $400, the manager will steal more money from another deposit making the amount to replace even larger...and it grows and grows until the theft is larger than the amount of a single deposit! That is when they report a missing deposit...and it wipes out the need to play the shell game each day...and greed makes them start all over again! (A grocery store in Tampa reported a theft of $54,000 by store bookkeeper who was rolling deposits...for just under 2 months.