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CLEARFIELD — A man was arrested after allegedly stealing products from his employer's warehouse and selling them on eBay and Amazon.
Nicholas Aaron Klein, 32, was working for a local business, gotyourgear.com, when he was arrested on suspicion of theft March 17, according to Clearfield police. The total wholesale value of the stolen product was more than $11,000, owner Tyler Conlin said.
“Apparently he liked my business idea, and so he tried to do it himself,” Conlin said. “He opened up his own eBay and Amazon store and just was selling the products we had out of the warehouse on his own site. He was just shipping them right out of our door.”
Klein started working with the company in the middle of January, according to Conlin. About a month later, he said Klein created a store on eBay and began selling a few items at a time, before increasing his activities and sending thousands of dollars worth of merchandise to his own home in March.
On the morning of his arrest, Conlin said Klein had launched his own website with gotyourgear.com's entire 1,400-item inventory available for purchase. The company sells ski, snowboard, backpacking and rock-climbing gear.
The company has a inventory system to ensure fraudulent activities don't occur, but Conlin said Klein found ways to exploit it. He said part of the problem was one of Klein's responsibilities was to oversee the inventory errors, so he had inside access to the system.
“He was extremely deceptive about it,” he said. “He’d go in and create fake returns from other customers and cancel my legitimate customer’s orders and email that customer saying we were out of stock, so he could get it out of our inventory system on with nobody noticing.”
Klein never physically took anything from the warehouse, but would ship it to himself after creating fake returns or warranty exchanges, Conlin said.
He said he noticed the potential problem with theft when he noticed the return percentages and canceled order percentages were higher than they should have been. Once he realized the extent of the problem, Conlin said he contacted the Clearfield Police Department.
The company was able to recover about $4,600 in product and another $1,200 with the help of police, he said. Klein mostly stole small, high-valued items like sunglasses and ski goggles, according to Conlin.
Conlin said he wanted to share his story so other business owners can avoid encountering similar problems. He said because he operates a small business, he had never conducted background checks on employees, but that he will now.
The guy was just brilliant, but he used the skills in a wrong way.
–Tyler Conlin
He said he knew Klein had some financial problems when he hired him, but that he wanted to give him a chance because he was impressed by his talent for the job. Klein did customer service and social media for the company.
"The guy was just brilliant, but he used the skills in a wrong way,” Conlin said.
He suggested other business owners could protect themselves by carefully watching inventory and having a computer and Internet-use policy, which let police access information on Klein's computer during the investigation.
After his arrest, Klein was also charged with two counts of sexual abuse of a child from an unrelated case in Weber County, police said. Court documents indicate the charges stem from an incident that occurred in 2008.
Conlin said they are currently hiring to fill Klein's position.
