A group of employees were laid off, including five African-American women.

On their last day, the women’s boss watched them as they gathered their effects and searched their belongings as they went out the door.

His goal: To make sure no confidential company information was being taken.

But the women felt he went overboard. Some co-workers even asked the supervisor if the employees were being arrested.

Also, they claimed a white, male employee was let go the same day and wasn’t subjected to the same scrutiny. They sued the company for race and gender discrimination.

The company tried to have the case thrown out, arguing the monitoring was simply to prevent theft.

But the judge didn’t buy it — as far as the evidence showed, there was no non-biased reason for the manager to treat the women differently than their male co-worker.

Cite: Trustees of Health and Hospitals of the City of Boston, Inc. v. Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination

One in five employers polled last month said employee theft has become a problem in recent months, according to the Institute for Corporate Productivity.

And it’s not just employees taking pens and paper clips home with them. When asked if they’d seen a rise in monetary theft this year — such as fraudulent expense reports or just missing cash — 18% of employers said yes. Another 41% aren’t sure.

Almost a quarter said they’ve seen more employees grab non-monetary items like office supplies and retail products.

An employee was called up for jury duty. He starting serving on the jury, but was excused from duty shortly after the trial began. Instead of going back to work, he pretended he still had to serve and kept taking time off.

Eventually he returned, but tried a similar scam a couple years later, this time by making his own phony court summons to show his boss. During that leave of absence, the employer got suspicious and told police. He was arrested, confessed to making fraudulent court documents and was sentenced to a big fine and some jail time.

All in all, he took a total of 144 days off with pay.

Stopping fraud

Courts take jury duty requirements pretty seriously, for obvious reasons. Firing employees who miss work for duty or coercing employees to refuse jury duty is an easy way for a company to get its own invitation to appear in court.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no way to stop abuse of the system. You can ask for verification when an employee requests time off, normally by asking to see a copy of the jury summons. Also, courts will provide a certificate of attendance to an employee for proof that he or she was serving on the jury.

With employees who will go so far as to make their own verification documents, there isn’t much an employer can do, other than being suspicious and taking a close look at employees’ documentation.