Disciplinary Hearing

Jak1211

Hi,
I am currently in a bit of bother at work. I have recently been invited to a disciplinary hearing for 'Neglect of Duty' - essentially gross misconduct as they have stated.

To cut a long story short, after being furloughed, I was dealing with a client and we were due to pay them £5k. There was several correspondence between me and the customer and to process payment, we request bank details and payment amount on company headed paper. 

After the customer flagging he hadn't received payment, it later transpired that it was actually someone that had hacked into his email account, produced a like for like payment request on headed paper and our accounts team obviously paid it as per my request.

I have now been invited to a disciplinary hearing for gross misconduct. My first concern is, on the disciplinary paperwork it states that for any form of negligence the company can recoup any loss of monies. Is this right? It is quite a big company, so to come for me for £5k seems quite a stretch.

Also, I am currently in my probationary period, so I imagine any gross misconduct is likely to be a termination of contract?

The reason it is deemed as negligent is because when you read the email back, the time zones are different, the grammar is poor and if you look closely on the headed paper you can see it has been photo shopped.

However, my argument would be is that it is easy to see that once you know it is a scam. The email and headed paperwork came from the customers email (his account has been comprised) and was addressed from him to me.

What are your thoughts?

KatrinaWaves

What is your level of seniority? Does your job role and pay level require a higher level of attention to detail and being able to spot those signs of fraud?

Another issue is that whilst on furlough you should not have been doing any work, and this sounds a bit like work to me! Not sure where you can go with that though. Nowhere that will save your job I don’t think but may get the company in hot water. 

TELLIT01

Poor grammar, unless all the communications with the genuine person also had poor grammar, should have started the alarm bells.  The other aspects such as the quality of the headed paper possibly less so as a scanned document can be of poor quality.

You need to clarify what is meant by "after being furloughed".  If you were working in the early months of furlough you should not have been and the company puts themself in an 'interesting' position should you claim unfair dismissal. 

Undervalued

Jak1211 said:

Hi,
I am currently in a bit of bother at work. I have recently been invited to a disciplinary hearing for 'Neglect of Duty' - essentially gross misconduct as they have stated.

To cut a long story short, after being furloughed, I was dealing with a client and we were due to pay them £5k. There was several correspondence between me and the customer and to process payment, we request bank details and payment amount on company headed paper. 

After the customer flagging he hadn't received payment, it later transpired that it was actually someone that had hacked into his email account, produced a like for like payment request on headed paper and our accounts team obviously paid it as per my request.

I have now been invited to a disciplinary hearing for gross misconduct. My first concern is, on the disciplinary paperwork it states that for any form of negligence the company can recoup any loss of monies. Is this right? It is quite a big company, so to come for me for £5k seems quite a stretch.

Also, I am currently in my probationary period, so I imagine any gross misconduct is likely to be a termination of contract?

The reason it is deemed as negligent is because when you read the email back, the time zones are different, the grammar is poor and if you look closely on the headed paper you can see it has been photo shopped.

However, my argument would be is that it is easy to see that once you know it is a scam. The email and headed paperwork came from the customers email (his account has been comprised) and was addressed from him to me.

What are your thoughts?

Whilst hindsight never fails people are usually employed for their foresight so it would come down to whether somebody employed in your position could reasonably be expected to spot some of these issues.

However that is largely moot as with less than two years service you have very little employment protection. You can be dismissed for almost any reason (except unlawful discrimination and a few other technical issues) or absolutely no reason at all.

Whether they have the right to recoup their losses is more complex and you would need proper legal advice if they attempt to go down that route. However, as a general point, if somebody's negligence causes a financial loss they can be held liable.

JReacher1

Poor grammar is irrelevant really. I deal with many professional people who don’t have a good grasp of grammar.  

I would suggest there is a process issue at your company if one person can authorise a £5k payment with nobody else doing any checking. Especially with you being on probation I would have thought someone else should have signed off this payment was correct.  

I would prepare yourself for dismissal but seek legal advice if they try and charge you £5k.

Marcon

Jak1211 said:

I have now been invited to a disciplinary hearing for gross misconduct. My first concern is, on the disciplinary paperwork it states that for any form of negligence the company can recoup any loss of monies. Is this right? It is quite a big company, so to come for me for £5k seems quite a stretch.

The reason it is deemed as negligent is because when you read the email back, the time zones are different, the grammar is poor and if you look closely on the headed paper you can see it has been photo shopped.

However, my argument would be is that it is easy to see that once you know it is a scam. The email and headed paperwork came from the customers email (his account has been comprised) and was addressed from him to me.

The disciplinary paperwork may say that, but what does your contract say? 

Given the prevalence of push payment scams, I'm surprised any company would pay any bills without making more rigorous checks - and that anyone in a position to authorise payments wasn't similarly alert. Does the company have a proper vetting procedure for supplier payments and did you follow it?

gettingtheresometime

This is why I insist on giving our clients a pdf of our paying in slip. I appreciate that this is something a little/medium sized company can do a lot easier than a large company 

Dox

Jak1211 said:

The reason it is deemed as negligent is because when you read the email back, the time zones are different, the grammar is poor and if you look closely on the headed paper you can see it has been photo shopped.

However, my argument would be is that it is easy to see that once you know it is a scam. The email and headed paperwork came from the customers email (his account has been comprised) and was addressed from him to me.

If it is easy to see once you know it's a scam, it is just as easy to see when a suitably vigilant individual is clearing it for payment. 

What does the bank say about reimbursing the payment?

Dox

gettingtheresometime said:

This is why I insist on giving our clients a pdf of our paying in slip. I appreciate that this is something a little/medium sized company can do a lot easier than a large company 

Not sure what the purpose of that would be when surely the clients are paying you, and seeing a pdf of their paying in slip would surely be a better guard against a scam?

Jak1211

Sorry, I should of been more clear. This happened a week after coming back from furlough. The point I was trying to make there I guess, I had been off for 9 weeks and we were back on 30% staffing levels so I was doing 3 times the amount of workload to cover.

In regards to the process, I followed it. It went through my senior and then onwards to accounts who actually overtyped the bank account name when an error flagged up.

I am low rank and in no way considered management/senior. I do however have alot of responsibility and am buying and selling expensive plant/machinery.

The other point I would make is, I have never had any cyber crime training. And considering we deal with large sums of money and work mostly via online systems and emails, I would of thought this would of been implemented?

TELLIT01

Jak1211 said:

In regards to the process, I followed it. It went through my senior and then onwards to accounts who actually overtyped the bank account name when an error flagged up.

If the accounts department noticed an issue with the customer account details but modified it without checking it out I would hope they are being treated the same as the OP.  Allowance does also need to be made for staff who are working under additional pressure because of staff shortages etc.

I once had a situation where very late in the day a team leader came to me and said a claim needed to be completed and money sent out that evening, and stood over me tutting all the time I was trying to process the work.  End result, despite the fact that it was their responsibility to check the details, was the the money went to the wrong account.  When that was discovered, I was the one who was initially in for a disciplinary.  When I explained the chain of event to the office manager it then became an understandable mistake in the situation.  To the best of my knowledge no action was taken against the team leader.