member of staff has extorted money from another staff member

S

samanthajane

Registered User
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Hey guys, hoping someone can give a bit of advice.

It came to our attention last night that a senior member of out staff has extored €450 from another member of staff. It was €700 bt so far only €450 has been paid.

We have no solid proof but we did over hear a phone conversation between the 2 people, after the member of staff came to us about this situation.

The guy was young and worried about losing his job so he agreed to pay for this so called damage that was done to someone property.

We went to the guards to make a statement and was told there was no point there's nothing they can do!!!! I'm amazed by that but anyway....

Obviously we dont want this person working for us anymore, but are worried about possible come back ( i personally dont think the accused would take things any further but my partner is very worried )

we have thought up a number of ways...get him to quit instead of sacking him, but would he sign anything to say he was quitting? He could come back late and say he didn't resign.

Threatner to call the police and hope he doesn't realise that nothing can be done. And we'll never hear from him again.

Tell him straight out why we are letting him go, and hope he's that ashamed he'll just leave without a fuss.

I'm so shocked by what has happened, this guy has been working for us for nearly 4 years...as far as we are awre this is the first time anythng like this has happened but there is no way of finding out for sure as the nature of our businee we have a high turn over off staff and they come and go a fair bit.

I feel terrible for having to let him go 3 weeks before christmas and he has a young son a wife and another baby on the way.....maybe why he resorted to doing this in the first place but still no excuse.

If he was really stuck for money he could of come to us...on sereval occassion we have helped him out in the past..we have actually bent over backwards to help him a we classed him as a friend not just an employee.

Were just still so in shock at the moment this has happened. He has also been behaving very badly towards this young lad as well, which is how we found out. We told him who he was working with for next week and he said he couldn't work, after talking to him a bit more we found out that he had i suppose in a way been bullied by the other member of staff, and he said with what happened with the damage he didnt want to say anything incase he lost his job....obviously we were like what damage?? And then it all came out.

He rang the other member of staff and put him on loud speaker to say that he would have the remaining money for him this friday when he got paid. The other guy replied saying that was fine to give it him and he had spoken to us and his job is safe since he has paid for the damage and to just be careful in future.

If it hadn't of been for that call that we heard i dont think we would of believed it. A friend who has worked for us for years compared to someone who had worked for us for a month.

Sorry rambled on a bit....any advice anyone has i'd be very grateful. We've been trying to get hold of our solicitor all day but he's ben unavailable. We manage to make up a story of why he didn't have to work today so we could try and sort things out, not sure we can use that again for tomorrow, but the last thing we want is him coming into work with us knowing what we know now.
 
If you've got proof, stop pussyfooting and fire him immediately. Let the court, if he so wishes to sue, sort things out.
 
Thats the thing we dont have any solid proof.

We know 100% he has done this we heard him say it, but if it came down to it is that proof enough?

Other wise it's just one person saying this has happened and someone else denying it ever took place.

At the moment he doesn't know that we know, were trying to figure things out before we do anything or say anything.
 
I agree with Arabella. It seems you have solid evidence of bullying (at a minimum) so the employee concerned has breached employment law, inhouse employee guidelines, health & safety requirements, his employment contract, etc.

You need this guy gone. What are your procedures in relation to suspension / termination proceedings?
 
We have no procedures, we've never had to fire anyone before.

Staff come and go all the time, it's the nature of the business. If he had only been working for us a few months it wouldn't be an issue.

The only person we have recived advice from was our accountant, who said it could come back on us, and to be careful.

He is an indepentant contractor so he has no contract as such.

The only thing they sign when they start working for us, is a mini contract i suppose that our solicitor drew up for us saying that they are fully aware they are independant contractors, and they are responsible for their own tax and prsi contributions, work is never guaranteed things like that. It's pretty basic....maybe we need to sort that out and have another contract draw up to including things like this.
 
If the guy is an independent contractor then he has no rights as such
 
This is what i thought but our account said to us that even though he is an independant contractor, because he has been working for us for 4 years and he's always had work from us that because it's so long he now has rights.

Have no idea what these rights are...but still.

If he did take us to court and won, our business would go under, were managing to pay the bills and the staff but were making no profit at the moment at all...althought in this climate were delighted to be able to still have a business and people still have their jobs.

Yeah your right, we should just tell him out straight, i dont think the anger has set in yet, were we so shocked by what has happened.

Another thing are we legally allowed to not give him his wages this week and give it to the other young lad. If not then were going to give it back to him anyway, but i'd much prefer it doesn't come out of my pocket.

I'd love not to give him any of what he's owed, but that would get us into trouble.

I think he must of got himself into trouble else where...for the job he does he is payed very well, we've not cut his wages or his hours once during this recession. He's on €500 + a week for driving around and supervising a team of 4 lads. He earns more a week than what i bloody do!!!
 
Why don’t you speak to him, say that the younger guy has owned up to the damage & ask him when you can expect to receive the compensation/restitution that the younger guy has informed you that he kindly collected on your behalf.

Alternatively you could just ask him in the event that he witnessed anyone damaging company property, what steps, if any he would be likely to take.

Or you could ask him for advice as a long standing friend/employee. Tell him that it has come to light that someone has extorted money from another employee, that you were hoping that they would return it to them very soon, but in case they don’t what advice would he would give you on how to proceed without involving the Gardai. Then you could suggest that he think about it & get back to you if he had any ideas.

Any of the above might result in him quitting, or at least returning the money, after which you could find a way of dispensing with his services.
 
Samanthajane,
Is he independent as a contractor or are you paying him a fixed wage each week for work?

Either way you could suspend him without pay pending a result of an enquiry into the alleged extortion of an employee. Inform him the gardai are involved and that it is beyond your hands as you are only aware of the issue through the intervention of the gardai.

Based on what you have outlined, if he is independent I would ask for a meeting in the morning, get all of your files, projects he is working on etc back and inform him his contract is finished and you unfortunately have no more work for him. End of story.
 
samanthajane said:
This is what i thought but our account said to us that even though he is an independant contractor, because he has been working for us for 4 years and he's always had work from us that because it's so long he now has rights.

Have no idea what these rights are...but still.
Click to expand...

samanthajane said:
The only person we have recived advice from was our accountant, who said it could come back on us, and to be careful.

He is an indepentant contractor so he has no contract as such.

The only thing they sign when they start working for us, is a mini contract i suppose that our solicitor drew up for us saying that they are fully aware they are independant contractors, and they are responsible for their own tax and prsi contributions, work is never guaranteed things like that. It's pretty basic....maybe we need to sort that out and have another contract draw up to including things like this.
Click to expand...

Perhaps the accountant is worried that your arrangement of having all the staff as 'independent contractors' may not actually hold up. If this is simply a device to avoid your contractual or financial obligations to employees, Revenue might actually deem them to be employees, and you could end up with a large tax and PRSI bill.

Here's some interesting reading on this issue for you.

[broken link removed]

http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?t=36895

[broken link removed]
 
Complainer said:
Perhaps the accountant is worried that your arrangement of having all the staff as 'independent contractors' may not actually hold up. If this is simply a device to avoid your contractual or financial obligations to employees, Revenue might actually deem them to be employees, and you could end up with a large tax and PRSI bill.

Here's some interesting reading on this issue for you.

[broken link removed]

http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?t=36895

[broken link removed]
Click to expand...



no this is 100% not a problem. We looked into this so that we were doing everything correctly, they are independant contractors, there is no minium wage, holiday pay or anything, they only get paid for how much work that they do. And there is no guarantee of work, hours or anything. And they dont have to work if they dont want to.
 
samanthajane said:
The only person we have recived advice from was our accountant, who said it could come back on us, and to be careful.
Click to expand...

samanthajane said:
This is what i thought but our account said to us that even though he is an independant contractor, because he has been working for us for 4 years and he's always had work from us that because it's so long he now has rights.

Have no idea what these rights are...but still.
Click to expand...

Twice you have mentioned the fact that your accountant gave you advice regarding the position of the blackmailer vis-a-vis contractor or employee.

As long as you keep your head under the radar Revenue/Social Welfare have no reason to question the arrangement you have with the workers.

As soon as a disgruntled worker gets the huff and starts talking to solicitors/trying to claim the social then problems start. You can have all the smoke and mirrors you want but an employee is an employee with associated rights.

My advice therefore to deal with this situation is to treat him like an employee (although do not tell him that) and give something like an immediate suspension of all his work pending an investigation. If he looks to come back to work after say 2 to 3 weeks then the fun and games start .
 
This thread has been reopened after consideration by the moderators.

Samanthajane, you might bear in mind that by posting here you are potentially alerting all the people involved to what is happening, if any of them are reading Askaboutmoney. Please make sure you don't say anything that could identify the individual engaging in the alleged extortion.
 
samanthajane said:
no this is 100% not a problem. We looked into this so that we were doing everything correctly, they are independant contractors, there is no minium wage, holiday pay or anything, they only get paid for how much work that they do. And there is no guarantee of work, hours or anything. And they dont have to work if they dont want to.
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When you say 100%, does this mean that Revenue have confirmed to you that they approve of this arrangement? Because they are the only people who can give you 100% on this. The fact that you don't do all the other things that employers do (minimum wage, holiday pay, guaranteed hours) doesn't mean that you will get away with this. The fact that they have signed up as independent contractors doesn't mean that you will get away with this.
 
Complainer said:
When you say 100%, does this mean that Revenue have confirmed to you that they approve of this arrangement? Because they are the only people who can give you 100% on this. The fact that you don't do all the other things that employers do (minimum wage, holiday pay, guaranteed hours) doesn't mean that you will get away with this. The fact that they have signed up as independent contractors doesn't mean that you will get away with this.
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Why do you say 'get away with something' as though the OP is doing something wrong. As far as the OP is concerned they are independant contractors.

But it is true to say that any business that employes independant contracts needs to be very careful about this as it is a tricky area. Which the OP's accountant has confirmed to her.
 
I may be missing something here but I don't see where you have said that you have asked for and received the version of events from your long-standing member of staff?

Surely this should be your first step. Call him in, advise him of the complaint against him and ask for his side of the story. Then reserve your reaction until you have considered this.
 
Bronte said:
Why do you say 'get away with something' as though the OP is doing something wrong. As far as the OP is concerned they are independant contractors.

But it is true to say that any business that employes independant contracts needs to be very careful about this as it is a tricky area. Which the OP's accountant has confirmed to her.
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Complainer is right, Revenue have their own rules about contractors and chances are the OP does not meet them. We even had an argument with them which we eventually won. As far as they were concerned just because we had desk for someone they were an employee, despite the fact that they had their own company, worked for a couple of other of companies at the same time and was only here for a few half days each week.
 
Well if that is true the OP is in a lot more trouble than with the employee misbehaving.

Can you actually ask revenue if your 'independant contractor' meets the rules? Will revenue confirm it to you?
 
Bronte said:
Why do you say 'get away with something' as though the OP is doing something wrong.
Click to expand...
I'll let the OP's words speak for themselves;

"there is no minium wage, holiday pay or anything, they only get paid for how much work that they do. And there is no guarantee of work, hours or anything"
 
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