When some people think about inventory theft, they imagine a shoplifter running out of a store with goods stuffed inside a jacket or bag. But thats not what the managers at the Comfy Sportswear store on San Franciscos Lombard street thought. No, they suspected their own employees were the main cause of their unusually high shrinkage. One scam involved dishonest cashiers who would let their friends take a pair of Nikes without paying for them. To make it look like the shoes had been bought, cashiers would ring up a sale, but instead of charging $50 for shoes, they would charge only $2 for a bottle of shoe polish. When the companys managers saw a drop in gross profit, they decided to put the accounting system to work. In just two years, the company cut its Lombard Street inventory losses in half. Heres how a newspaper described the stores improvements:

Retailers Crack Down on Employee Theft

Orange Register Today, October 10, 2014, San Francisco

By Sandra Smith, Orange Register Today Staff Writer

Comfy Sportswear installed a chainwide register-monitoring system to sniff out suspicious transactions, such as unusually large numbers of refunds or voids, or repeated sales of cheap goods.