Office Manager Steals $280,000 From Dealership Over 9 Years

A dealership employee kept a scam going for nearly a decade. When it was all said and done she had taken hundreds of thousand of dollars from the dealership where she worked.

Renee Ann Zinnecker, 51, former office manager at Lithia Chrysler Jeep Dodge of Billings, Montana has confessed to stealing $288,000 from the dealership from 2005 until March 2014. In March 2014, Zinnecker was approached by the dealership GM, asking why there were so many delayed deposits. She didn’t answer the question, instead she left the store never to return. Zinnecker was in was a dealership bookkeeper, however in addition to her accounting she embezzled large amounts of cash.

Zinnecker used booking schemes to hide her theft, including account lapping. According to the Accounting Tools website Account Lapping occurs, “when an employee steals cash by diverting a payment from one customer, and then hides the theft by diverting cash from another customer to offset the receivable from the first customer.” This type of fraud can be done on a continual basis as new funds are used to pay off previously debts, when never seem to be overly old.

After Zinnecker stole cash, she would hold checks until she had enough to cover the amount stolen and continue to do so over and for years. According to the Missoulian, the dealership reviewed the total amount of money coming in on a daily basis but Zinnecker was able to cover up amounts and names of funds actually received on the general ledger in order to avoid detection. Zinnecker also using floating deposits in which a deposit indicated in the dealership ledger not be in the account because it was allegedly received too late in the month for the bank to credit the store’s account with the deposit for the month.

Speaking to a judge on October 6, Zinnecker said that she used the money for household expenses. Zinnecker is taking a plea deal for prosecutors. She is being ordered to payback $288,254.

Do you think that there is more that this store could have done to catch this theft sooner? Do you feel catching theft from within can prove to be a particularly difficult task for dealers? What does the audit and review process at your store do to combat potential theft?