Spies at Work

Is the colleague you work next to really what he seems? Could he, or she, be an undercover agent spying for management? With workplace theft running at nearly £200m a year, companies increasingly use moles to uncover crime. They have proved to be effective, and the good ones are in constant demand.

Private Investigator Paul Burton

Ex-policeman Paul Burton runs a detective agency specialising in placing moles. They're expensive, and are used only when companies are at their wits' end suffering losses. Says Burton: "I say this to the client, just how much have you lost? The highest has been £10 million, in one company in Kent. The lowest probably £60-70,000, in the Midlands. It is really the last resort. Companies can't go anywhere else." The private investigation business estimates that at any time there are about fifty mole operations going on in Britain.

Where are they most often used? Transport and distribution firms are often plagued with 'shrinkage', with valuable goods like household electronics and furniture going missing in transit or from warehouses. Factories put moles in to uncover the theft of tools or parts. And every office has the potential for fraud - particularly by doctoring computer records.

It's not a pleasant prospect to actually spy on one's own workforce.

Anonymous manager

The client companies are often blue-chip household names - but they will never publicly admit they've used moles, especially if they have recognised unions. Espionage always has to be 'deniable'. And sacked wrongdoers can often be blissfully ignorant that there was a plant among them.

Said the (anonymous by request) manager of one firm that used a mole: "It's not a course of action that we embarked on lightly. It's not a pleasant prospect to actually spy on one's own workforce. If the suspicion is great enough, that there is a need to do it, the ends have to justify the means."

Being a mole calls for iron nerves and acting ability, sustained over months of working undercover. Dominic and Scott are used by Paul Burton. Both have worked in dozens of companies, leading double lives: doing their official jobs as clerks or porters, and meanwhile snooping on their workmates. You may unknowingly have worked beside either - and never suspected it.

"Dominic" the mole

Dominic is a tough ex-soldier. He lives alone. He assumes a false identity for undercover assignments, and never works in the same area twice for fear of being recognised. But he relishes the stress of his work. "You enjoy the fact you're putting yourself in danger," he says. "You're trying to control your breathing in a desperate situation. It's part of the thrill of the job."

His colleague Scott is a married man and highly intelligent, with houses in the home counties and in France. But when working undercover he looks and sounds rough and working-class. He knows he faces extreme violence if workplace criminals found out that he's a plant. "I've accepted responsibility for my own security," he says. "If I'm at risk, then I've made a mistake and I've only got myself to answer to."

Dominic and Scott were part of an undercover operation in two London warehouses of a major British company (which we've agreed not to name). The scams they investigated are estimated to have cost the company half a million pounds. Their true stories give a fascinating insight into their murky world.

Lying to a thief isn't a problem. If the guy's stealing off the premises then it's a small price to pay. .

"Dominic"

Valuable household goods were being systematically stolen from one warehouse. Dominic was inserted ostensibly as a loader. He soon gained the confidence of the thieves on the workforce, who included supervisors and managers, who tampered with computer records. The mole operation was going well when Dominic put everything at risk by getting drawn into a fight. Fighting was a firing offence. He says the others were egging him on and putting him to the test. Says Dominic: "I have to ask myself what would a normal employee do in a situation like this?"

In the event, the warehouse manager kept Dominic on rather than abort the operation, because ironically the wrongdoers on whom Dominic was spying spoke up for him. In his false persona, Dominic had befriended the ringleader of the group of workers responsible for the thefts, a cocksure young Londoner. To find out more, Dominic offered to provide a buyer for some of the stolen goods, who would pay up promptly. The buyer was in fact his own boss, Private Investigator Paul Burton. But the ringleader was so excited by this reliable inflow of cash that he took Dominic on a wild night out in London's strip clubs to celebrate. He was convinced Dominic was his friend. When he ran out of money, Dominic subbed him - all chargeable to the client company.

In the end, Dominic collected enough hard evidence against the wrongdoers for them to be confronted and questioned by Paul Burton's team. Almost all signed confessions, and all were fired. Dominic was treated as if he were one of them, and pretended to storm off - hoping to keep his cover intact. To make sure that he had, he phoned his 'friend' the ringleader. But having been fired, that man had his suspicions. We traced him, and found him embittered about Dominic. "I couldn't believe he'd done it," says the ex-ringleader, "not to me but to a lot of people. He came across as a good friend, but he fisted me."

"Scott" the mole

In a parallel investigation, the mole Scott was tasked to observe another racket: delivery drivers in a warehouse of the same company charging customers cash, money that never reached the company. Scott was hired as a counter clerk, and was gradually accepted by the fraudsters and drawn into their circle. His problem was the lack of hard evidence. The company's management wanted Scott the mole to be exposed in order to testify against the wrongdoers. If that happened, Scott feared extreme violence from his workmates. As he put it: "At a minimum, two broken legs - perhaps concrete wellies in the Thames."

To save his skin, Scott came up with a cunning ruse to nail the miscreants while preserving his cover. Investigator Paul Burton sent a fake letter to the company, apparently from a 'customer', thanking it for its timely cash-in-hand delivery of goods. Armed with that letter, management and investigators confronted the fraudsters. Again, mass sackings resulted. And Scott the mole believes he remained unsuspected.

If they had found out I was a plant, it would have been at a minimum two broken legs - perhaps concrete wellies in the Thames.

"Scott"

What's odd, though, is that despite all the theft and fraud in those two cases, no-one was prosecuted. Why not? Because the police thought the moles could have gone too far and been agents provocateurs. It's arguable that Dominic had instigated thefts himself. Scott took money from his crooked co-workers (which he secretly paid back to the company). That is a drawback of using moles: they can get too involved in the crime. Their work can become morally dubious.

But Dominic and Scott say they're just investigating crime. Their boss Paul Burton goes further. He says honest staff are grateful when moles uncover thieves in the workplace, because they are too frightened to denounce them. The mole is a professional witness. Both Dominic and Scott maintain that if a company's stock is 'shrinking', or there's fraud going on, those crimes will hit the company's profits and ultimately threaten its employees' jobs. They're doing the workers a good turn, they say. But the price is deception and lies in the workplace. That new guy you work next to - are you really sure about him?

Spies at Work was broadcast on BBC 2 at 19.30BST 24th October 2001

Producer: Mark Gregory
Reporter: John Penycate
Researcher: David Lee