Fraudulent employee given 3-month suspended sentence and ordered to repay
An electrician has been given a three-month suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to 6 counts of fraud. He has also been ordered to pay back the £2960 he stole, along with costs of £85 and a victim surcharge of £115.
Paul Hayden, 60, submitted multiple fraudulent timesheets to his then employer, the contractor Apex Engineering. In total he claimed that he was working for 58 hours more than he actually was.
Suspicions were raised when it turned out that the manager who had apparently signed Paul’s most recent timesheet was actually on holiday, and then the records from the biometric fingerprint clocking systems on site confirmed that he hadn’t worked the hours that he’d claimed. Sometimes he wouldn’t turn up at all, and sometimes he would only stay on site for a few hours.
Prosecutor Justin Espie said: “He (Hayden) was described as having a poor work record and when records were cross-referenced with the time sheets it became apparent he had claimed for work on a number of occasions that he was not entitled to.
“It was a total amount of 58 hours and the loss was £2,960.”
Hayden had since become homeless and suffered from alcohol problems, but he did not offer an explanation of why he had committed the offence.
Bethan Jones, defending, said: “There doesn’t appear to be any connection between his drinking and the offence.
“He has worked all his life and there must have been a catalyst.
"There have been certain things including the loss of his father and the breakdown of his marriage that might have had an effect. But this was an unsophisticated act and he was always going to get caught.”
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This is a fantastic example of what we have been saying for a long time (see this recent summary and check out the #abolishpapertimesheets hashtag on Twitter). Paper timesheets are incredibly susceptible to errors and outright fraudulent activity, due to their existence as an entirely manual form of record-keeping.
An important thing to remember about timesheets is that they remain susceptible all the way down the average processing method. For example:
- Employee fills in timesheet. Here they could make a mistake, or deliberately lie.
- Manager signs timesheet. Here, a manager pressed for time could sign without double-checking, or an unscrupulous manager could “correct” the timings of someone they dislike.
- Payroll processes timesheet from handwriting into computer data. The chance of a typo here is very, very high, and here too is the possibility for a fraudulent employee to alter timesheets to suit themselves or their friends.
Paul’s error wasn’t caught until people spotted a problem with the manual timesheet process – and only then did they double-check with the biometric system. This is a very inefficient way to handle attendance management, and Apex Engineering would be much better off in the future relying on their biometric records for all timekeeping.
Here at Time and Attendance Wales we can provide you with biometric clocking terminals. These use either fingerprints or hand geometry to recognise workers clocking in and out. The data is then sent straight to the central WinTA.NET software, where it can be exported in a form suitable for all leading payroll programmes, such as SagePay. With this system in place, there is no need to rely on fallible paper timesheets at all.
Don’t risk time fraud happening to your company. Give us a ring or an email and we can discuss how best to help you!