I stole over £10,000 in my old job (£15,000 ish USD)

I used to work for a well known high street sports store chain in the UK as part of a Christmas temp team. I had to do my induction in the head office then just work in my local store.<br><br>I noticed in the induction that the company used a stock system, and if you were a head office employee, using their laptop, with the right software you could print out T’s (delivery notes) and stock down stock just by using the software. I was invulnerable as I was sat in a back room for the whole of my induction with no one watching what I was doing.<br><br>When I got to my store, I tried it out, using the head office login on a laptop, and I could print out T’s, but they were different. The T’s had a number on each one, and it had to be put into the laptop, or it would just get denied. I noticed the number changed each time you printed one out, and you could print out as many as you wanted, but once you had used it once, it wouldnt work again.<br><br>I dug out a few T’s I found in the store from some head office employees, and used the numbers on them to see what it done. The numbers worked fine, only problem was I had no way of printing out the labels (it was a special type of label and printer). I also found out that if you used the head office login on the stock system, you could sell things out of stock, so if we had 2 pairs of trainers left, if I was logged in on the laptop, and using head office login, I could sell all of them, so people couldnt call me out on it.<br><br>I noticed the stock office had a printer just for printing T’s and some other labels, and the stock office had the exact same labels as the head office. I didn’t know the password for the laptop in the stock office though, so I couldn’t just print them out. One of the guys I got on with in the stock room, and I used to chat to him about different trainers, what he liked, and he used to like showing me the new stock that was coming in, before it got put out, and he used to like giving me a pair to try on. One day I asked him to print out a pair of labels for a shoe he likes, but he said they were coming out in 2 months, so he couldn’t, but he said it was ok, as he only had to get the shoe code, scan the shoe, and press print and it would print out. So I asked him to show me, and he logged in the laptop, scanned the shoes code, pressed print and voila. I now knew the password.<br><br>Me and him were chatting at lunch one day and he went off to the toilet, leaving his login logged in on the laptop. I scanned a shoe code, and clicked print, with the T option selected. Obviously it worked fine, and I now had the label, which is all you need to take stock. I used to take a shoe, scan the label, take the money, and then I just give the shoe to whoever I had made the label for, and then voila, you have the shoe, and it doesn’t cost you a penny. I didn’t get caught for a long time. I spent all my money on random shit, and I still had £1000’s left at the end of it all.<br><br>It got to the point where I just had to take trainers in shoe boxes to the car, as I couldn’t just wander out with 2 bags of trainers on me. I had to stop as the manager decided she was going to do a full stock take, as she thought there was a lot of stuff missing. I quickly made sure I didnt have any labels on me, or anything like that. We were all in the stock room, scanning everything, and she had a piece of paper with a list of all the stock in the store. One of the stock guys I got on with called me over, and I was like what’s up. He pointed to the piece of paper he was meant to be scanning, and I noticed a few things were already scanned, which is odd, as it was all just random codes next to the stock item. I noticed he had scanned the trainers I had taken already, so I said “oh, you better make sure you put them back in stock don’t you”, and then he winks at me. The manager asks me and him what were chatting about. I told her he was just asking me about a shoe. I knew that if she got suspicious, and checked his area, there were loads of shoes missing, so I knew she would just think it was him, as I hadnt touched my area. Luckily she believed me, and that was it, and the stock take was basically pointless, as she never noticed any major issues. I was too scared to steal after that, as I thought if he was going to get caught, he would rat me out, but he didn’t, and he was a cool guy.<br><br>I ended up quitting the job after that, as I was just getting too paranoid about being caught, and I just needed to get out, so I rang up on boxing day and said I’m not coming back, and quit. They phoned me up saying there was a stock take in January, but I told them I was in Australia for a month, and I couldn’t make it. Obviously they didn’t care that much, as they didn’t ring back at all after that. I spent all the money I got on pointless shit, and I still had a few grand left, but I didn’t see the point in spending it on pointless shit, so I saved it, and still have it today.<br><br>Edit: Holy crap this has gone mad. Didn’t expect it to blow up this much. Thank you for the gold, silver and awards people. I’m sorry if this didn’t meet your expectations of what people on chambers confess to. And I’m sorry to the fans who are gutted that I stole. I didn’t know that the fans would be the ones to miss out. I thought it was just coming out my bosses pocket. You’re all right though, I did use a lot of the money to buy sports gear, and I used to buy trainers regularly at full price, so it wasn’t all bad