Corporate Success

Scott Smith, the owner of Wilco, a company located on the Ship Channel that sells over a million dollars worth of parts a month to the oil industry, had been informed by a customer that they saw one of the counter salesmen pocket cash. An undercover agent from Gradoni & Associates was hired to work at the Company. The undercover agent was able to identify three individuals who were keeping the cash from sales and voiding the counter tickets to avoid detection. Armed with this information, two additional undercover agents went to the business on numerous occasions, targeting the three suspects. The undercover agents made cash transactions with the suspects. A review of the Company's books the following morning revealed that the cash transactions were never placed in the system.

Vice President, Carey Wellmaker, did a fantastic job coordinating the undercover efforts keeping the chain of custody of the items purchased and documenting each and every transaction, by audio tape and written report.

When a felony amount was logged on each suspect HPD arrested all three, who gave confessions before they were booked. The very detailed documentation developed by Carey gave HPD the slam dunk.

After the arrest, J.J. Gradoni interviewed other employees of the business. As usual, most of them knew that the thefts were taking place but did not want to come forth and be labeled as "a snitch". Two of the Counter Managers admitted that they were aware that the thefts were taking place. One of the Counter Managers admitted in his interview that he had taken cash, himself. All three were subsequently fired.

During the course of the interviews it was learned that the suspects were aware that there was a good possibility there was an undercover agent working at the Company but they continued to stuff their pockets with money that didn't belong to them. At the end of the day, six "bad apples" were gone and Company morale had been given a huge boost. Each of the three former employees were charged with engaging in organized criminal activities.

Two of the defendants pleaded guilty, receiving 4 years Probation, a $500 fine with restitution to Wilco. The third Defendant pleaded guilty also, receiving 2 years Probation, a $550 fine with restitution.

Our client was a manufacturing company that sold tools in the oilfield industry. The client's product base included thousands of small items. During an inventory it was discovered that a number of items in specific categories were missing. The client had reason to believe that the Sales Manager was possibly selling items to competitors because of an anonymous phone call.

Surveillance Investigators from Gradoni & Associates surveilled the Sales Manager and found him visiting competitors of the client's and delivering product from his car. During the course of the two week surveillance Investigators also determined that the Sales Manager drank heavily every day on the job and repeatedly falsified his daily activity sheet.

Once all the evidence had been put together, the Sales Manager confessed to his misdeeds in an interview with J.J. Gradoni, and was terminated. During the course of the investigation it was discovered that the Sales Manager's brother, who also worked at the Company, was involved in the theft scheme, also and he, too, was terminated. The client elected not to file charges but let everyone in the organization know that anyone engaged in theft would be caught and dealt with sternly.

An international engineering firm hired Gradoni & Associates to investigate a number of irregularities identified with vacation pay on a number of employees. It appeared that a number of vacation checks had been made payable to a payroll clerk who cashed the checks, using her own name and driver's license, although the computer listed the checks as being issued to other legitimate employees.

A forensic review of the canceled checks revealed that the payroll clerk had not only made the checks payable to herself, but also to her 9 year old son. The paper trail revealed that some of the checks had been deposited into the suspect's personal checking account and the remainder of the checks had been cashed at a check cashing facility where the suspect had set up an account in her own name.

Investigators created a spread sheet documenting all of the fraudulent checks. We then obtained Affidavits from individuals who had cashed checks for the payroll clerk. During an interview conducted by J.J. Gradoni, the suspect admitted to the scheme which netted her over $80,000. The suspect/employee, who had no prior criminal convictions and was well respected by her peers at the engineering firm, made the comment that she had used the money for "just living". The employee was subsequently charged by the Harris County District Attorney's office and eventually pleaded guilty, receiving a lengthy term of probation with restitution.

John Rhem, one of our Corporate Attorney clients, asked Gradoni & Associates to look into allegations from employees of a chemical plant that their Supervisor had extorted money from them in return for favorable reviews so the employees could receive pay raises.

J.J. Gradoni spent two days at the chemical plant, interviewing a number of employees who provided Affidavits, documenting that their Supervisor had required them to pay him money to recommend their name to Management for pay raises. In addition to straight cash payments, the Supervisor told the employees that they had to purchase items from him that he either had manufactured on the side with materials stolen from the chemical plant or for promotional items he had received from vendors. Each of the employees who supplied Affidavits were able to produce a paper trail documenting their purchase of these items. The Supervisor did not receive his compensation from the employee until their raise had actually been approved and had been initiated.

The Supervisor, a 20 year veteran employee of the Company, admitted in his interview with J.J. Gradoni that he was taking the money, not because of coercion or extortion, but because the employees had insisted he take it, out of gratitude for all the things he had done for them over the years.

As the result of the investigation the Supervisor himself received a raise - a personal escort out the door. A short time later, the Supervisor sent an email to J.J. Gradoni, thanking him for "ruining his life". As always, J.J. Gradoni was glad to accommodate such a fine example of a "loyal and honest employee". This just shows that people who steal usually never accept the responsibility for their actions.

Philip Hilder, one of our most tenured clients, referred Gradoni & Associates to one of Houston's largest commercial land development companies. The individual in charge of Company signage abruptly quit, taking the majority of the documents at her station with her which caused alarm and concern by Management. Our investigation revealed that the Company signage budget for the last two years had been expended in the first quarter of each year. The investigation revealed that there were two major vendors receiving all of the signage business. After further investigation it was revealed that each of the two vendors were actually "shell companies" set up by the female employee and her boyfriend.

The pair had outsourced the signage work to legitimate companies. They then doubled and tripled what would have been the normal invoice to our client. The female suspect was in charge of approving and seeing that the invoices were paid (to herself and her boyfriend). The whole scheme came to an abrupt halt when the President of the Company just happened to reassign the signage supervision to someone else, thus prompting the female to resign with no notice and take what evidence she thought was the implicating paper trail with her.

Gradoni & Associates Investigators reviewed hundreds of invoices and matched them with the appropriate outsource company. The outsource company cooperated with the investigation and allowed our Investigators to review their invoices in order to discover the amount our client was over-billed. Over a two and a half year period the client's losses exceeded over a million dollars. The client chose to initiate civil lawsuits against both parties which eventually resulted in an agreed settlement.