What is embezzling ?
Embezzling or embezzlement is the act of taking money, which has been placed under your trust, but still belongs to the original owner. A good example of embezzlement is an insurance agent intentionally stealing money, which he should have kept as part of his job for the company. The money he stole belongs to the clients of the insurance company and his actions are considered as “embezzling”.
Unlike stealing, embezzling is an action wherein the “embezzler” has the authority or access to the money. Most of the time, the embezzlers’ jobs require them to handle payments of clients and are trusted by their respective employers to keep the clients’ money. However, unlike theft that can be difficult to prove, especially if not caught during the act of crime, embezzlement is easy to catch. Most embezzlers don’t get caught on their first try, but because they become greedy, they usually raise the stake of embezzlement, leading to their ultimate downfall.
Since embezzlers usually continue their job at their companies, they can be caught through many ways, such as regular financial audits.
Embezzling occurs worldwide; most countries consider this as felony because it usually involves large sums of money. However, it could also involve just a few dollars. Corporations, banks, shops and other companies that are “trusted” with clients’ money are aware of such problems and are always on the look out for such crimes, ranging from different embezzling methods such as taking change from the cashier registrar or hacking a system to steal funds.
Most embezzlers do away with their crimes by falsifying records and documents. Another method is using a phantom employee, wherein the embezzler creates a name, job role, paychecks and documents for a non-existing employee. Both of these methods can be caught through annual audits, but most procedures are not thorough enough to determine if embezzlement has been made.
June 8th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
is it a crime for the owner of a profitable business to continuously take all profit an some working capital from that company to pay back loans he received earmarked for his other failing companies