Cited: Fortune Small Business

five-finger-discountMany businesses do not have the time or manpower to wade through security-camera footage on a daily basis. Because of this inventory losses are on the rise and the culprits are usually the cashiers giving themselves and friends and old-fashioned five-finger discount. It is estimated that $15 billion was stolen by employees from realtors in the last year, at least according to University of Fort criminologist Richard Hollinger. He conducts annual surveys of the top stores in the country. This figure indicates that 25% more in inventory was lost than what is lost to shoplifters. However, there is hope on the horizon to retailers across the country.

In almost all of these cases, closed-circuit-TV monitoring systems failed to spot the crime. “The problem is, you have hours and hours of video to go through,” says Hollinger. In recessionary times few companies have the staff to review all that footage.

So Agilence, a small firm in Camden, N.J., is stepping in with a solution: patented software that scans for likely theft moments and a team of “loss prevention” experts to review the results for you. By synchronizing raw security-camera footage with point-of-sale data, the software takes a still image associated with every item scanned at a checkout stand.

The market is crowded: Plenty of companies, including Vfinity and StopLift, sell advanced video surveillance technology. But few offer point-of-sale synchronization, and fewer still include human video analysts in the price of a subscription, which starts at $300 per month.

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Rather than having to scan hours of video, Agilence’s investigators can quickly review thousands of still images on a computer screen, click on any that appear suspect and call up the full video of the transactions.

The Agilence analysts report likely cases of fraud — which employers can then see for themselves — and note areas in which intervention or improved training might help. “A retailer would have to hire 10 employees to do what we do for them,” says Pedro Ramos, vice president of operations at Agilence.

In particular, Ramos says, Agilence is seeing an increase in conspiracies between cashiers and customers, known as “sweet-hearting.” The employee may bag an item after voiding a transaction, or simply press the price check button on the register and allow his friend to walk past the checkout station as if a sale had been made.

Hollinger and other experts say Agilence is onto something big. The next step is to automate the process and identify common scam patterns. “We’re starting to see the computers getting smarter,” Hollinger says. “They soon may be smart enough to send a text message to alert a manager who’s actually in the store and can do something about it.”

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My Take: Well, I guess the employees that have sticky fingers better start watching what they are doing not to mention the shoplifters. My concern would be employee harassment. Some employees just might be contacting in NY Long Island harassment lawyer. When you measure jobs because of theft, you usually do not get any severance pay. And if you are accused and there is no evidence, you should get an NYC severance pay lawyer to get what is coming to you.

The ones I worry about are the kids. There are so many kids that use the five finger discount to get things at their parents cannot afford or will not buy for them. That means that parents are going to have to get a Pittsburgh family lawyer that can handle a theft case. Then again, the way kids are big on technology today they just might take your way around it. However, these are usually caught eventually and they will still need an Allegheny PA family attorney.

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