Payroll and Expenses Fraud

If you suspect intentional falsification of expense claims or working hours, our qualified commercial investigators from Frankfurt am Main will gladly support your company in establishing the facts in a manner admissible in court and identifying the offending employee or employees: +49 69 1201 8431.

Motto: “The Main Thing Is to Finish Quickly”

While it is usually impossible for in-house employees to record more working hours than they have actually performed without raising suspicion, field staff face significantly fewer obstacles. Let us take as an example – easily applicable to many other professions – the vacuum cleaner salesman who visits existing customers on a regular schedule to sell his employer’s products. On average, he requires a hypothetical 60 minutes per customer visit including travel time. Consequently, he would be able to visit eight customers during a standard eight-hour workday. But what if he only provides very superficial advice, leaves after just a few minutes, but still records the full 60 minutes? You, as the employer, would then be paying for work that your employee has not carried out.

In practice, fraudsters often tick off their appointments in rapid succession to finish work early. Thus, an eight-hour workday quickly becomes a two-hour short shift (if the work is performed at all). These field workers then often spend the remainder of what should have been their working hours at the cinema, on the sofa at home, doing a secondary job or even engaging in sexual activities – all real examples from the experience of our detective agency in Frankfurt/Main. We have even documented employees driving around aimlessly instead of working; the field worker does not even use the wasted working time for personal objectives – an utterly shameless display of laziness. The vacuum cleaner salesman mentioned in our example will, of course, also fail to deliver satisfactory sales results with his rushed consultations, causing further financial damage to his employer.

Potentially Devastating Consequences of Working Hours Fraud

Another scenario with even greater potential for damage: The employee not only wrongfully receives wages for work not performed and costs you income through poor-quality performance, but also transfers the fraud to your customers. Consider, for instance, a repair technician: Instead of the actual 60 minutes needed for a repair job, he records 120 minutes. You, necessarily relying on this information, charge your customer for the excessive time. The immediate financial damage is therefore borne not by you initially, but by the customer. However, should the customer realise that your company has overcharged them, this could severely damage your reputation and cast doubt on the reliability of your business, leading to customer loss.

Our experienced Frankfurt commercial investigators check your employees’ working time records; through covert client interviews and surveillance of the suspicious employee, the employee’s actual activities can be established. Once our measures are complete, you will receive an investigation report admissible in court. Should you require assistance, please use our contact form or get in touch with us by phone.

Refurbished Private Car, Expensive Candlelight Dinner – Expenses of a Different Kind | Expenses Fraud

Since field staff are not subject to direct supervision by managers or even colleagues during their work, they often exploit not only their hourly records but also their expense claims to defraud their employer. They charge private costs to the expense account: refuelling or repairs of their private car, restaurant visits with family or friends, a short holiday with an extramarital affair disguised as a business trip, and so on. Sometimes perpetrators even create additional expenses artificially to make falsified hours claims appear more credible – the original fraud is legitimised by an additional fraud. Over time, the damage caused by such fraudulent expense claims accumulates significantly, but it does not have to reach that stage:

As soon as an initial suspicion arises, you should not hesitate to contact our IHK-certified detectives in Frankfurt a. M. Through surveillance of the suspicious employee, we can provide you with an accurate picture of their activities and the actual costs incurred. Should the suspicion prove well-founded, we will supply you with court-proof evidence in the form of written documentation of the findings. Please send us an email outlining your concerns at kontakt@kurtz-detektei-frankfurt.de or call us for an initial, non-binding consultation: +49 69 1201 8431.