Night manager pleaded guilty to stealing at least $5,000 from cash registers but records showed the amount was more than $70,000
A night manager convicted of stealing $5,000 from his store was ordered by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to pay the store owner more than $70,000 to reflect the actual amount he stole.
Navrab Investments operated a food and convenience store called Rabba Fine Foods in Toronto, where Koshy Vaidyan worked as a night manager. Vaidyan was originally hired in 2002 at another Rabba store, and in April 2006 he was appointed night manager at a new store. As a manager, Vaidyan had an access code to void or overwrite amounts on the cash register.
In 2008, a new accounting procedure was implemented in Rabba stores to measure and track cigarette inventory. It was discovered Vaidyan’s store was showing regular losses from disappearing inventory and in-store cameras were installed to get to the bottom of it.
On Jan. 3, 2009, Vaidyan was seen on a surveillance camera twice taking money from the register and putting it into his pocket. The police were called and Vaidyan was arrested. An investigation revealed Vaidyan had been stealing money by entering sales in the cash register, voiding them and pocketing the money from the voided transactions while other employees were sent to do other tasks. He had taken more than $5,000 from that location.
Vaidyan pleaded guilty to one charge of theft and was sentenced to three years probation and ordered to pay Navrab $4,999 in restitution, which he paid. However, Navrab’s records showed the value of Vaidyan’s voided transactions since April 2006 — the earliest records available — totalled $78,441.64. Navrab factored in a number of voids that would be normally expected in the ordinary course of business and voids that appear to have been legitimate as well as the amount Vaidyan paid back as part of his conviction, which reduced the total of questionable voids to $70,699.93. The investigation also compared void rates of other employees, which was at 0.35 per cent of items sold, while Vaidyan voided 10.04 per cent of his items sold — 30 times more than normal.
Navrab sued for the $70,000 in damages from conversion, fraud and breach of fiduciary duty, plus $25,000 in punitive damages. Vaidyan claimed he only stole $1,190 — despite his pleading guilty to theft of at least $5,000 — and said his void rate was high because he trained new employees frequently. He also claimed he allowed other employees to use his machine with his password. However, other employees had separate logins and passwords.
