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In response to
"She is super fucking lucky that my dad is a soft touch. It's just such a monstrous betrayal, it really pisses me off. nm"
by
ralph wiggum
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And what about the next employer she betrays?
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One of the practices I managed had a doctor that was so nice and so tender hearted that he was an easy touch for anyone. Several times when we needed an employee, rather than let ME interview her/him, test knowledge and check references, he'd hire someone totally inappropriate, like one of the caddys at the golf course or the old lady working at his mini-mart. So one time he hired this 20-ish single mother with 3 kids who went to his church. He swore to me she was smart, nice, she had a wonderful personality, yadda yadda--she also didn't know squat about working for a doctor. She didn't know medical terminology, she couldn't type or do transcription, she didn't know anything about computers, nothing.
After about 2 months I finally got her to learn how to make appoints and enter patient payments, both in person and in the mail. 2 months later I started getting calls from patients raising hell about not getting credit on their bills from payments they made at the time of service and checks they had mailed in. I started doing some checking. Sure enough, anyone who paid cash after their visit didn't have a payment posted in the system. She DID write them a receipt using the carbonless duplicate receipt book (that we only used during the rare times our computer system was down. Then she'd tell them that our receipt printer was down. Then I realized she'd been stealing checks too. It took me a few days to figure it out. We had 2 signature/endorsement stamps, one locked in my desk and the other one locked in the safe. One day one of the docs got something out of the safe, left it open, and she knew about the stamp being in it and she stole it. I went to the bank about it. The branch manager knew her ("oh, she's a really sweet woman, she goes to my church") and said she'd been in several times cashing checks "to replenish the petty cash" or "to go buy necessary supplies at Office Max". We figured it was close to 20k in less than 3 months. The bank manager couldn't believe it "she's NICE, she goes to my church" but he finally accepted it was her. He and I sat the doctors down and told them what happened. 2 didn't believe us, "she's NICE, she goes to my church", and 2 did. We called her in the conference room and she denied it. In fact she said *I* did it. Fortunately I had the bank manager to back me up. The docs decided not to press charges and they just let her go.
Several weeks later a doctor in Nashville called wanting to speak with one of my doctors. Turns out he wanted a reference. Well, doctors aren't trained in business and personnel, so he just opened his mouth and let the whole story came out. 3 weeks later, the sheriff came to the office and served papers on the doctor who had given the "reference". He was being sued for defamation of character, ruining her future earnings potential, and a bunch of other shit. My doctor ended up settling out of court for 6 figures. The other 3 of my doctors were blown away--here she had stolen from them, then had the balls to sue them after they didn't press chartes. They couldn't believe it, "she's NICE, she goes to my church". I reminded them that they could STILL post charges but they decided not to.
About 2 years later one of the doctor's wives ran across a story in the Nashville newspaper about this woman. She had gotten herself hired as the office manager for a construction company and had managed to embezzle over 100k in a little over a year. Evidently she had moved to Nashville and joined a new church. She let it be known she needed a job and the owner of this construction company had hired her. I had to laugh when they quoted him in the paper, "she's NICE, she goes to my church". We kept up with it and she was sentenced to 5 years probation and had to have the money paid back within 7 years. She promptly filed bankruptcy so basically she got a slap on the wrist.
Share this story with your Dad. Make sure he says nothing negative about her to anyone wanting a reference or publicaly telling people what she's done. You don't want him sued. As for not pressing charges, he needs to go for it. I'm betting she won't get any time, especially if your father requests it. But she does need to be told there are repercussions for this kind of behavior and that she must pay the money back. Also, he can keep a clean conscience about her doing it to someone else. Once she has a record, nobody will hire her in a money handling job again.
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