I guess this was quite some time back, but really? No four eyes check of the work, disk allowed to walk off site etc etc? But also large IT contractor induction and training procedures need a good looking at.

Induction and training are no use if they're ignored along with the criminal law.

If "Colin" had initially responded along the lines of "the computer is there, but I've removed the disk for secure destruction" I could understand it. Albeit counter to procedures. But trying to cover up the lack of disk to a colleague who is clearly going to find out? No, that's just sheer stupidity.

Customers have request it many times. They are ex-customers!

Those of us with professional qualifications, or chartered status, have standards that we may be held against. I do work across multiple jurisdictions, but the chartered status standards are always (in my experience) higher than those of the laws of the land.

It's like asking a chartered accountant to cook the books.

I'm not doing it - never!

Your customers are not your private shopping center.

Dean was a very, very nice guy.

I would not have fudged the problem, I would have called my manager and escalated, and if Colin got fired (or worse), too bad for him.

You're a professional. Act professional.

I can cover someone having made a mistake. God knows I've made my share.

But stealing ? I draw the line there. You're done.

It was probably necessary to fudge the problem as far s the client was concerned on behalf of the employer - contract at risk. Escalating to the manager would be separate matter.

Yes, Dean was very generous. I guess he also had an eye on the possibility of raising the issue and the company then loosing a big contract - maybe a contract that was the major part of his own job.

I was part of a curious conversation many moons ago where a colleague was 'idly discussing' the thought of theft in the workplace. He apparently was linking this to a film he had recently seen but some of the details were wrong and struck very close to home, he was unaware I had seen the same film.

I laid out how much anyone would need to clear in financial terms to be sure they could have enough money to never need to work again and the likelihood that with that big a theft the chance of being tracked down were very very high. Oh yes, and that I was at the time a Special Constable and on top of my responsibilities to my (and their) employer any evidence of impropriety or laws being broken would be reported very promptly. Not that I have ever reported people for the odd pen or pad of paper which migrated from work to home and I have seen the reverse happen often enough where stationery/tea/coffee is in low supply or low quality or when people are 'expected' to work unpaid overtime to treat this as a balanced book.

We used to buy a lot of genuine IBM XT and ATs. One day I was told that several XTs in a large office were not working. One was showing the well known message "Keyboard not found, Press F1 to continue" - No keyboard. Another wouldn't boot - No HDD. A few days later another room had a PC that didn't work - No motherboard. A few days later one had no screen and Hercules graphics card. About the only thing that didn't go missing was a case - Perhaps they already had one? I, too, had a "dodgy" co-worker, and wondered about him. A few months later similar things happened to several ATs, the co-worker was then working at a different site over 100 miles away. Perhaps he was innocent, and it was a cleaner, or security.

In the end we decided that whoever it was, took them out that way thinking the bits wouldn't be recognised. The irony was that if the whole device was taken, we probably wouldn't have noticed until an audit; as we moved equipment all of the time. I suspect that routinely moving a PC and its monitor by carrying it with the keyboard held down on the top of the monitor with my chin may have contributed to my knackered back.

That reminds me of a story my father told me from his days in the army. One of the REME guys at his camp had been routinely posting Land Rover parts back home to England...he'd got more than half-way to a complete vehicle before he got rumbled and sent to the glasshouse.

Back in the late-1990's, a couple of men in white lab coats walked into one of the computer labs at my local further-education college, and began to transfer the 486 computers off the desks and onto trolleys, before wheeling them out of the lab. None of the students or staff batted an eyelid.

Shortly afterwards, a local police car found itself following a white transit van that had just left the college's premises. By the greatest stroke of luck imaginable, the officers decided to pull the vehicle over and discovered two men in white lab coats with a van full of 486 computers...

The white labcoat - the 1990's equivalent of the 2020's hi-viz vest

.... just when dual speed CD writers came down to about the £500 mark I was one of the first to lay my hands on one. At this time many software manufacturers didn't 'protect' their software because there was no easy way for it to be copied. Of course cheap CD writers were just about to arrive on the scene to change all that. But there was a short period when copying was easy as longer as you could lay your hands on one of these (not so cheap) writers.

I then had a cow-orker seriously trying to persuade me to go into the business of software copying. His plan was to 'borrow' copies of software from work, make many copies, and then flog them. He was mainly thinking of M$ Orifice copies being sold down the pub, but could have included some of the VERY expensive and VERY specialist software that the company had purchased.

I ran the numbers for him ..... the cost of writeable CDs at that time ..... taking about an hour (it was only dual speed write) to burn and check a CD ..... getting a few quid for them down the pub (or wherever) ..... to (maybe) pad my salary by about 10% (if I spent every evening slaving over a hot CD writer).

Then I talked about the clause in my contract whereby I would lose my job, get a police record, lose my security clearance, and effectively be black-balled from ever working in the industry that I was working in for the rest of my life.

In the end I had to tell him to 'depart with extreme fornication', and that if he wished to follow this plan himself I'd gladly sit back and watch the shit show.

In the late 80's, a friend of mine followed that path and all went well... for a time, until a knock at the door at 7AM brought the police with it.

As he was just 17 at the time, beyond losing his computers he only got a rap in the knuckles, but it scared him enough to not repeat it.

Almost 40 years later he is the owner of a successful software house he founded, and not a fan of piracy.