When I prepped you for this series on fraud, I mentioned that some of the tips were going to seem a little obvious. This opening tip should seem head-slappingly “duh,” but you’ll have to believe that the example is nonetheless true.

I was working on a company in Dallas where all the surveillance equipment was kept in one room. Logical, right? But delightfully for those interested in doing wrong by the company, this so-called surveillance room was kept unlocked all the time.

That may be fine in these days of digital data automatically uploaded to secure servers and kept for months, but this was back in the days of video cassettes – a time when the data was in one place at one time and easily destroyed.

As you can imagine, this place had a theft problem. And after people would steal something, he would walk right into the surveillance room, change the tape or erase it; and sometimes before committing a crime the thief would just stop the VCR for the duration of his crime.

So, my Fraud Tip:

Keep Your Security Room Locked.

Do not let this happen to you! Having security equipment is great, but you have to secure the security equipment.

Is your security room kept locked or unlocked? If you don’t know, please go check right now.