My Coworker Stole $20k

soo since we're going out of business I figured i'd yap about my wild coworker situation.

*names have been changed for anonymity of course

So, we are a very small business. we have the owner Mary who never comes in store (this is one of her many businesses, and she does not have time to be in house pretty much ever). Then the manager, Olivia whos worked here for about 11 years. I was hired in May of 2023. We've had a couple folks come and go , our average employee count is around 4-5.

In October 2024, we hired a woman named Claire. She was the only other adult (Me and my coworkers being 20, 16, and 21 ; her being in her 40s) in fact her oldest son and i were in the same graduating class. Claire always seemed like the nicest woman ever. I considered her my work mom. She cared for me and talked to me about things our coworkers rarely mentioned. It felt like she always went out of her way to help the younger employees. Her husband is a pastor. we live in a small-ish town (14k population) so Claire and her husband were relatively well known people. Claire's husband and the manager Olivias husband are cousins, so theyre also family. She was kind and surprisingly open-minded for a southern pastors wife.

At the beginning of April, the owner made the decision to close our doors because we had basically started heading towards a net loss because of how many people would rather shop online. Which is totally fair, we take 1-2 weeks to ship something that isnt in store while it would take amazon a few days. 

Right as layoffs started, Olivia stumbled upon some interesting sales. A customer had called, asking if her store credit could be transferred to a gift card. When Olivia went to look at her credit, she found that she had none. After looking into the sale, she found that the entire $300 sale had been refunded to a card that did not match the customer. After looking up the return date, she saw that multiple sales had been refunded, all to the same card. 

It was around this time that Claire told us that Olivia had instructed her to take any unused credit from before 2020 and put it on a gift card. She had done this , and told us she had accidentally put them all on the same card when she was supposed to put them on individual ones. 

When Mary suddenly called and asked me to take Claire's shifts for the rest of the week we were confused, but when the police showed up and started collecting documents, we were more than suspicious. 

From October 2024 to April 2025, Claire had been stealing from the company. She would go back to old sales, and refund everything to her own card. She stole around $20,000 over the course of six months !! She had even used money she stole from the store to buy her uniforms! The police have tried to contact her, to no avail. Calls to the husband have also been ignored. 

I mostly feel bad for Olivia, who's now out of a job and a potential part of her family because Claire wanted more money. Claire was already making 16/h while me and my coworkers make 11/h . It sucks that Mary's first business that was fully hers, and not her husband's, went down because of this dickhead. I've driven by Claire's house a couple times, and the family's cars are not there. I wonder if they fled. 

anyways thanks for reading all this :3c ill probably update once the case is taken to trial