Undercover Operatives Help Employers Expose Criminal Activity At Work

When you shake hands with a new employee, don’t assume he or she is just another friendly face.

More employers are hiring undercover operatives when they suspect there’s a theft or drug ring operating on company time. The investigators, posing as employees, try to get the scoop by working side by side with employees and hanging out with them after work at bars and on the softball field.

“Undercovers are a lot more common than people think,” said Rob Kimmons, president of the Information Bank of Texas, a private investigation and research firm. And often, the problem is much more serious than the employer originally thought.

“We’ve never put someone inside who didn’t come up with other things,” said a police administrator who oversees internal investigations for a government agency. Investigators looking for drugs or stealing often discover employees sleeping on the job or leaving work early.

The administrator, who asked not to be identified, said undercover operatives have found employees selling drugs while they were supposed to be working. They have discovered small rings of employees stealing tools and selling them to pawn shops.

If the investigator is doing his job right, the new employee shouldn’t arouse suspicions, said Kimmons, a former Houston police officer. But it’s tough to introduce a new employee during a time when a company is laying off workers or has a hiring freeze. There are ways around that problem, however.

One company that hadn’t been hiring put its operative to work painting a warehouse, Kimmons said. After all, the building needed a paint job.

At one hospital, Kimmons installed a spy as a housekeeper. In that job, he could roam the entire hospital and meet a variety of employees. “We didn’t need to put a doctor in there,” Kimmons said.

Some companies routinely bring in undercover operatives every six to 12 months, Kimmons said. Others use private investigators when employees have been threatened or workers have complained about on-the-job harassment.

Companies are “getting the heck sued out of them when they don’t do anything,” Kimmons said. They will spend money to take precautions.

Some companies even hire investigators when an employee is being harassed by a spouse or friend, Kimmons said. They may even paste photographs of the harasser throughout the building and instruct employees how to react if the harasser shows up at work.