's spare key post from earlier today. I thought I would share this story of when I caught an uncommon thief in a rather bizarre way. While I certainly don't condone the actions of the perpetrator, I have to give him some credit for ingenuity and sneakiness.Looking back on it now, I think it's a kinda cool story and I'm proud of myself for solving the puzzle.
I had only a few months before started working at this particular office so was still finding my feet when I received a fax from a section of head office stating "Mrs xyz please phone Mr uvw urgently regarding the phone bill."
Unfortunately I was in the middle of a work crisis that morning so I only got around to phoning Mr uvw a few hours later. He was very grateful that I was calling him and enquired why the phone bill for the office was in the tens of thousands of rands. I incredulously said that it was impossible and I wondered out loud if someone had perhaps tapped into the phone line and was using it illegally. Weirder things have happened, so it didn't seem that far fetched. He dismissed it as a possibility but said that if I was 100% sure that the phone calls were not originating from my office and my staff members, then he would send correspondence to the phone service provider claiming that the calls were fraudulently made and did not originate from our office. I thanked him for his help and for bringing it to my attention and thought nothing more of it.
About two months later I received another fax and an email from this same Mr uvw saying "Dear Mrs xyz - contact me urgently today regarding high phone bill." with a few pages of an itemized phone bill that showed very high outgoing phone call costs. To various phone numbers in various COUNTRIES around the world.
I was shocked as I read through the lines. I immediately phoned Mr uvw and explained that none of these phone calls were ours. They were all after hours and we left the office at the same time each day. Most of these calls were from 8 or 9pm onwards but they stretched all the way through until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. He and I were both flummoxed. He told me that this was the third month that these calls were being placed and the phone bill was on average the equivalent of +-$1000 USD per month. He had requested itemized phone bills for each of the three months which I requested he send to me as well so that I could inspect them. He was very kind and understanding although he was also extremely concerned at the expense and how it would affect our operational budget.
He sent the pages through to me : there were so many of them! I sat in my office that day and went through page after page, each line item, one at a time. I crossed out all of the calls that were legitimately ours and then I had a better picture of the crime that was occuring. I was still stumped as to HOW it was occuring but at least now I could without a shadow of a doubt see that the phone calls were all occuring outside of our office hours. Whoever was using our phone line must have been an international celebrity because they were talking to people in USA, Canada, Germany, Uganda, Nigeria, Norway, the United Kingdom and even Switzerland. Because of the vast array of countries, I couldn't really use that as any kind of indicator as to how this was taking place.
At the time I was living a 90 minute drive away from my office and every morning that I got to the office everything seemed more of less as we had left it the day before, the doors were locked, the security gates were locked, the windows were closed. For a couple of days I racked my brains trying to figure out what was going on. It came down to two options - someone was either tapping into our phone line off site or somebody was accessing our phone line on site.
That afternoon before I left the office and without telling any of my colleagues, I tidied up the desk around the phone station, I put a stack of pages in a particular way and then I placed one of my hairs across the handset of the phone. I locked the office and went home.
The following morning I entered the office and instructed everyone to not touch anything until I gave them the go ahead. I inspected the phone handset. The hair was gone. I inspected the paper and noticed that it was not exactly as I had left it. Now I knew that someone was somehow gaining access to our offices, but I had no idea who it was or how.
I sat down with each of my staff members and asked them if any of them were accessing the office after hours, it was their opportunity to tell me. Each of them categorically stated that it was not them. I believed them as none of them showed any signs of deceptive behaviour. I ruled them out of the equation for the time being.
That evening while I was eating supper (spaghetti bolognaise) it hit me
A HUNCH
It wasn't very late in the evening, around 7:45pm. I took out my phone and I dialled the office phone. It rang until the answering machine took the call. I hung up satisfied. If someone was sitting on the phone making a call, the line would be engaged for however long their call lasted.
8:15pm rolled around and I dialled again. It rang. Then voicemail. I hung up.
8:45pm I dialled again and it didn't ring. I got an engaged tone. I hung up and waited.
8:50pm I dialled. Engaged.
8:55pm I dialled. Engaged.
9:00pm I dialled. Engaged.
I phoned my manager who lived a short distance from the office. He was much closer than I was and I explained what I was doing and I thought that it was our opportunity to find out if someone was using the phone on site or if it was being accessed from elesewhere like an exchange box. He understood how we were now narrowing it down to the two options and this could eliminate one or the other.
He got into his vehicle, called Law Enforcement as a back up and drove out to the office. He and Law Enforcement got there at the same time and they found the office security gate open and the door unlocked. Hmmm that's strange because there was an on site security guard that had been hired to ensure that this kind of thing didn't happen. So where was he?
My manager called me and said "Andy there's definitely someone in your office using your office phone. I can hear him talking on it. I've called the police and they are on their way. Law Enforcement and I are going to wait for them to arrive but in the meantime we've locked him in. He hasn't noticed"
I remember the feeling very well. It was a feeling of "Yes! We got the fucker". Then the questions started. How had he gained access to the office? Who was he? I put the questions aside knowing I'd finally get the answers to this three month mystery that was costing us thousands of rands. I told my manager "Wait for me to get there, I'm on my way". "Righteo, you're running point on this one".
I drove fast and as it was late at night, there was no traffic. My normally 90 minute communte took me 20. I put my headlights on low as I drove down the road to the office. I walked up to greet my colleagues who both were rather chuffed knowing that we had solved the riddle finally. This perp was so ingrained in his conversation that he hadn't even notice that three cars had pulled up and that he had been locked in, he was now essentially in custody.
I went looking for the security who was nowhere to be found on site. I called the depot manager who was actually the head of a different department that we shared the premises with. He was very confused but I gave him an open invitation to come through if he wanted to. He did. We then started piecing together what was actually transpiring. The person making long distance phone calls was the hired on site security guard. He had somehow worked out that we left a spare set of office keys in the key lock up box in the offices next door that belonged to the other department incase they needed to access the office for emergency purposes when we were out.
This guy had found out that if he moved across one of the floating ceiling squares, that he could then gain access to the office adjacent to the security cubicle through THE ROOF. He would then jump down in the office next door and get the spare set of office keys from the key box, climb back up into the ceiling, crawl back to the security cubicle. Walk out of that section of the depot to the adjacent building and unlock the security gate and the door. There wasn't an alarm at that stage. He would then make himself comfortable and start his phone calls for the night.
As soon as the police arrived, the Law Enforcement officer ran a batton along the security gate bars and the guy inside got such a huge fright, he almost shat himself. He then tried to escape which was impossible because he was locked in and came face to face with about 8 of us standing there looking at him through the security gate bars.
He saw his manager standing there who was clearly very disappointed and he saw the police. He found me, the only female and thought I would take pity on him. He knew that I was the manager of the office he was essentially breaking into every night. He clasped his hands together in a pleading fashion towards me and asked me "Can I please just have one phone call". I almost laughed at the audacity as I replied:
"You've made quite enough of those thank you very much"
He was taken away by the police for booking and I had to make a statement. I think that my employer decided to not lay charges as I was never called to testify in court, but from that day on, I didn't trust spare keys anywhere other than in my or my 2nd in command's possession.
Our phone bill returned to normal after that and Mr uvw was very happy with our level of detective work and how we solved the case. I never heard from him again which in this instance; was a good thing.
Moral of the story? The ingenuity of criminals knows no bounds. If you have a spare key, make sure that it's very well squirrelled away.
Image is my own
