Dealing with My Employee Who Stole $$$ from 72 Customers

Do you ever get a knock at the door that immediately puts a knot in your stomach?

That was me.

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I was putting my kids to bed when I heard it. It was the weirdest thing, because I knew exactly what the knock represented even though I hadn't thought of Patrick for months.

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Patrick was an employee that stole thousands of dollars from 72 of my customers, and I had to make them whole. That wasn't his real name, of course.

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I found hard evidence it was him, but he denied it. He'd been fired a month earlier for other reasons.

I knew that if I sued him the juice wouldn't be worth the squeeze.

The cops didn't care, and it wasn't enough money for the FBI to care, either.

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So I was on my own, which was ok. I like being on my own sometimes.

A better man would just move on. But I hate hate hate hate being stolen from.

He was working for a competitor and it was only a matter of time before he stole again.

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I really, really disliked Patrick. So I devised a clever plan.

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After running several background checks, I found a couple dozen email addresses linked to him.

One my one I ran them through our customer email database and got 0 hits...until the last one I checked.

Bingo.

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He'd been receiving and opening all of our customer emails for months. he was keeping tabs.

But most importantly, this was an email address that he didn't know I knew about.

So I used that to my advantage.

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I sent a mass email to all of our customers that outed him and his theft, in great detail.

Yep, I outlined step by step how he stole from 72 of them. I called him by name, and I addressed all of our customers in the email.

I told him I was approaching his new employer, by name, with this information soon, so no one else would be stolen from.

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But wait, there's one caveat.

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I only sent the email to him at that anonymous email address. It went sent from our mass email software (Klaviyo), and read as if thousands were reading it, but it was only him.

I'm not about to get sued for libel, even if I could defend my statements. What a hassle that would be, right?

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But he can't sue me for only sending him an email stating how he stole from us. And I could easily prove that no one received it but him.

So I sent it, and waited.

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He opened that email 37 times. He was freaking out, I assumed.

I was right.

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A week later his employer emailed me, wanting to chat. He had forwarded the email to them, effectively telling them he was a liar and a thief.

He was getting ahead of the story.

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Exactly as I'd hoped.

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He was later fired, and then nothing happened for a couple months, until that knock on the door.

It was a courier that he paid to deliver his lawsuit.

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And the lawsuit was hilarious. Why? Because he wrote it himself, and then used a retired lawyer's name and number without their knowledge in the letterhead.

He said I was getting sued for $500k but he MIGHT reconsider if I emailed all the customers again, redacting my story.

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I died laughing.

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A simple Google search proved the lawyer was a phony.

There was no lawsuit. Just a hundred bucks paid to a courier and a couple hours spent typing a typo-ridden document.

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An asymmetric bet for $500k, I can respect that at least.

This was quite a while ago and nothing ever came of it after that.

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Entrepreneurs have no shortage of stories like this, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

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Follow me @mhp_guy for more petty startup stories.