Partly related to poor internal financial controls, we recently learned that a former employee (Bo "Bandit" Darville) embezzled $200,000 from the company over the course of a few years. That employee, who quit on very short notice after another employee noticed some accounts that did not reconcile (and some other red flags), has since moved to Atlanta, GA and started a trucking company called "Bandit One Transport" (apparently that former employee is a big Smokey and the Bandit movie fan !).

Can our company file a civil lawsuit against that former employee to recover the amounts? Under what likely legal theories? I thought I read something about how most crimes are also torts ? I did a quick internet search and found a reference to the duty of loyalty owed to an employer - would that be relevant here? I need some guidance so that I know whether I should even ask the attorney to consider filing a civil lawsuit of some kind seeking restitution.

Basically, is the company limited to reliance on the criminal justice process for restitution? How is the civil standard of proof (burden of persuasion, or "burden of proof" as some sources may refer to it) different from the criminal evidentiary requirements? That incident is a large part of why they created my position here.