At the company where I work, an assistant in the finance department had been taking the Finance Director's company credit card from her handbag during the day and using it to make cash withdrawals before putting it back. Part of the Finance Assistant's role was to oversee the credit card statements, that were paid each month by direct debit, and she covered her tracks through allocating the cash she was stealing to various plausible expenditure codes. The FD wasn't concerned about not seeing her card statements each month as she was not using the card herself and believed there was nothing to be looking at.

The FD uses the same PIN for a number of personal cards, admittedly not the wisest thing to do but it's not illegal. We think the assistant watched over the FD's shoulder one day at a cash machine, and when she took the company card for the first time she tried the same number. It must have seemed like Christmas had come early when the number worked, and this employee went on to steal thousands of pounds and pay some household bills with the card details.

When finally challenged about this, the employee admitted to theft from the card totalling over £12,000, and was dismissed.

We have contacted the bank that issued the card, Allied Irish Bank GB, to reclaim the money. The bank has declined to make good any loss on the basis that the employee knew the card PIN number. Clearly she did in order to use it, but she only knew the number because she had initially guessed it and got lucky. The number was not written down on any files she had access to, in fact it wasn't written down anywhere in the office.

AIB, as I said, have declined to credit our loss back to the company. As an opening response I think most banks would say the same in order to get rid of the faint-hearted. We are going to challenge the bank's reason for not paying us back the money. What do you think are our chances, have you any advice for me on how to proceed, and are there any related cases you know of that could be referred to as having set some sort of a precedent?

Clive Reffell

Interesting question! I’ve looked at the advice on this on the APACS website and I suspect the bank could also point to the fact that the Finance Director left her handbag unattended. You haven’t mentioned involving the police at any stage and I wonder whether pursuing criminal proceedings might be a sensible course of action. As the bank has refused to refund the money, your company is certainly the financial victim here and therefore at liberty to involve the police. A criminal prosecution and an order to repay the stolen money would certainly teach this former finance assistant a valuable lesson.