Employee Fraud Investigations in Florida
Employee fraud can drain revenue for months before leadership sees clear proof. ACFE estimates put occupational fraud losses at roughly 5% of annual revenue, with small and midsize businesses often hit hardest.
We help authorized Florida employers document reported activity, relevant timeframes, connected people or records, conflicting evidence, and unresolved questions. The resulting package can support review by HR, counsel, insurers, or other authorized decision-makers.
Common Types of Employee Fraud We Investigate
Embezzlement & Financial Fraud: Unauthorized fund transfers, check fraud, vendor payment manipulation, accounts payable schemes, and misappropriation of business funds — often perpetrated by trusted accounting and finance employees over extended periods.
Inventory & Merchandise Theft: Systematic removal of inventory, merchandise, materials, or equipment — from retail theft to contractor material fraud to warehouse shrinkage exceeding normal loss expectations.
Timekeeping & Payroll Fraud: Ghost employees, unauthorized overtime, time inflation, buddy punching, and billing for hours not worked — particularly prevalent in businesses with remote or field-based employees.
Workers’ Compensation Fraud: Employees collecting workers’ comp benefits while working elsewhere, exaggerating injury severity, or fabricating workplace injuries entirely. Florida workers’ compensation fraud is a significant problem that costs businesses through increased premiums and direct losses.
Expense Reimbursement Fraud: Inflated or fictitious expense claims, personal expenses submitted as business expenses, duplicate reimbursement submissions, and falsified vendor receipts.
Intellectual Property & Data Theft: Employees copying client lists, trade secrets, proprietary formulas, or confidential business information — often in anticipation of leaving to work for a competitor or start a competing business.
Warning Signs of Employee Fraud
Common indicators include unexplained discrepancies in books or inventory, resistance to oversight, unusual overtime patterns, and sudden lifestyle shifts that do not match known income.
Premature confrontation can complicate preservation or interviews, but secrecy is not always appropriate. The employer and counsel should decide when to preserve records, restrict authorized access, interview witnesses, notify the subject, or involve a carrier or public agency.
How We Investigate Employee Fraud
Lawful Observation: When observation is relevant and authorized, assigned personnel may document activity from lawful vantage points. The plan should define the factual question, permitted methods, time window, privacy constraints, safety limits, and stop point.
Records & Database Research: With appropriate authority, the review may compare employment, vendor, corporate, property, court, or other permitted records. A record match is treated as a lead until identity, date, source, and context are verified.
Evidence Documentation: Reports can organize verified records, dated observations, original media, conflicting information, source notes, and material limitations. HR, counsel, a carrier, regulator, or tribunal determines how the material may be used.
Coordination with Counsel: Counsel should address employment policy, privilege and work-product questions, preservation, protected activity, privacy, interviews, reporting recipients, and any referral before investigative steps begin.
After the Investigation: Your Options
Documented findings may inform an internal review, carrier submission, counsel-directed civil strategy, law-enforcement referral, or regulatory report. Those decisions depend on the evidence, contractual and employment rights, reporting duties, and the receiving decision-maker; an investigation does not guarantee termination, recovery, prosecution, or claim acceptance.
A scoped review may also identify control gaps worth evaluating, but management, HR, compliance, and counsel remain responsible for policy changes and employment decisions.
Separate Workplace Findings From an Official Fraud Referral
Florida's Department of Financial Services provides a dedicated workers' compensation fraud resource and reporting route. Employers should coordinate suspected insurance fraud with the carrier and counsel, preserve policy and claim records, and avoid treating ordinary activity as proof that a medical restriction is false. Private observations document facts; the agency, carrier, and legal process determine the outcome.