Every month, I update our personal finance spreadsheet in Excel.
First, I update all our transactions- income and expenses (in accounting terms: statement of profit and loss, or in short, P/L). The P/L helps me calculate our savings rate. In my transactions tab, every transaction has a source column (cash/debit card/credit card) and other columns which are less relevant to this story.
Then, I update the value of our assets and liabilities (in accounting terms: Balance Sheet, or in short, B/S). The B/S helps me calculate what % of our FI number we achieved so far.

As you can imagine, when updating our transactions, I never miss a single transaction on our debit or credit cards. It is impossible to miss anything when you download all the transactions directly from the website.
Cash, on the other hand, is trickier. I can get a haircut or pay for something small in cash, and forget to update it in my file; it happens.

The theft

For a few months now, when counting our cash and comparing it to the previous month’s balance, the decrease seemed too big (compared to our recorded cash transactions), and I mentioned it to Lazy FI Mum. She, understandably, said that I might have forgotten about some transactions or perhaps just counted wrong. Those were my initial thoughts, too, but then it happened again and again.

The suspects

We started thinking about what could be the reason, and we narrowed it down to 2 suspects:

1. The babysitter, who never goes into our room.
2. Our cleaner, who has been with us for 2.5 years. The kids love her, and she loves them.

Identifying the thief

There was a very easy test- we (both Lazy FI Mum and I) counted our cash before the cleaner came, and then we did it again as soon as she left. After accounting for the cash we paid her, we were £200 short.
Just to clarify, we never left our home; this happened while Lazy FI Mum and I were working in our home office and on work calls. We now knew who our thief was.

Initial reactions

It was fascinating for me to see how different Lazy FI Mum’s reaction was compared to mine.

In Lazy FI Mum’s own words:

“I felt shock and disgust. My main question was how a person who consistently brings gifts for my family and me on a near-monthly basis (for holidays, etc.) could steal from us and still act like they cared?

If it were up to me, I would tell her I knew about the theft and that I never want to see her again “

I felt relief.
First of all, I felt relieved that I wasn’t going crazy and my Excel was right.
Secondly, I felt relieved that this was the end. This woman has been stealing from us for months, and now it’s finally going to be over.

What do we do from here?

The discussion quickly went to “what do we do from here?”.
In our view, we had three options:

1. Do we confront her and tell her we know she’s been stealing from us?
   I was against this approach because she could simply say, “I didn’t”, and it’s our word against hers.
   
2. Do we let her go with some made-up excuse?
   That option was reasonable to me, as we had no proof, and Lazy FI Mum didn’t want (herself or the kids) to see her again.
   
3. Do we invite her again and try to get some proof?
   This was my preferred option; I was willing to have her in our home again in order to get that missing piece of evidence that would allow us to decide our next course of action (confront her, go to the police, etc.)
   We decided to go with option 3, but on one condition: I had 2 weeks (or “attempts”) to catch her. If I couldn’t do it in 2 weeks, we would go back to option 2. That was reasonable, as Lazy FI Mum didn’t want her coming to our home for months just so we could get our evidence; I agreed with her.

First attempt

A few days before the cleaner was supposed to come, she texted Lazy FI Mum that she had a medical appointment and would come to our home at 11:00 instead of her usual 08:00. This was perfect for me because I was supposed to get my two cameras around 09:00, this would leave me 2 hours to set them up and test them.

Lazy FI Mum left early that day with the kids, and at 08:00, guess who rang our intercom… You guessed it, the cleaner.
Apparently, she texted Lazy FI Mum at 06:45 (who does that?!) to say she’ll be coming at 08:00 as usual. I was shocked to see her, but I tried to act normal. I knew I just blew this week and had one more attempt left.

Funny enough, we counted the cash again the night before, and this time she didn’t steal anything.

Second (and final) attempt

The following week was my final attempt. If the cleaner could just control herself and not steal from us today, she would walk away with the money and no confrontation.

Lazy FI Mum was abroad, and we called our babysitter to take the kids out at 07:30 so they won’t be here when the cleaner arrived. At 08:00, the cleaner arrived. It was just me and her in our home.

The cash was counted the night before, and the cameras were set. I tried to behave normally and worked as usual. When she left, I paid her and got back to an important work call. As soon as the call was over, I ran to count the cash- another £200 was missing! Woohoo!

I’m sure you don’t know a lot of people who are happy to find out someone stole from them. I know how weird this sounds, but I was happy and relieved.
Now, I knew I had my proof and control of the situation. She didn’t get away with it, and we could decide what to do from here.

The videos

Both cameras took around 2 hours of video.

I checked the first camera- she completely blocked it (by luck) by turning her back to it, but you could see her going to where the cash is and then putting something in her pocket. Not ideal, but that’s why I had two cameras.

The second camera caught it a bit better, but the shot was a bit dark. I started to get worried that maybe I don’t have my evidence after all.

After rewatching the two clips a few more times, I finally noticed something very weird: on one camera, she steals when the curtains are open, and on the other camera, the curtains are closed. I felt like the universe was messing with my brain, but then I watched more of the footage and realised – she stole twice!

The first time, she stole when the curtains were closed, and then, after committing the crime, she opened the curtains (because now she had nothing to hide). However, she was stupidly brave and went to our cash again! This time, the whole room was lit, she did it facing the camera, and got caught in HD.

The confrontation- first act

After getting advice from a few people, I messaged her on WhatsApp, saying that I knew she had stolen from us (see below in green), how much she had stolen and that I wanted my money back in 24 hours. I didn’t mention the video.

The reason I mentioned 24 hours was because I was about to fly abroad with the kids on a holiday and didn’t want her to return the money while I was away, because Lazy FI Mum didn’t want to see her again.

Two hours later, still two grey tick marks on WhatsApp – she got the message but didn’t read it.
I sent her the video, one grey tick mark. She either has no reception, closed her phone, or (most likely) blocked me.

I asked someone else to forward my message and the video to her, and to my surprise, he also received one grey tick mark. She had turned off her phone.

After 24 hours with no reply, I called the police. I gave them all the details, including the fact that I have a video, and we agreed to have an online call a few days later, once we were back from our trip. I accepted that I’ll never get my money back as she turned off her phone. If she ever turns it on, she has a surprise waiting for her in the shape of a video, in which she’s the star.

Calculating the amount stolen

The way I knew how much she stole from us is that by this point, I had already compared the cash balances’ movements for the past few months to the recorded cash transactions. Let me explain with an example:

Let’s say we had £600 at the end of January and £400 at the end of February, that’s a decrease of £200, right? Now, the recorded cash transactions are £20 for a haircut and £10 in the corner shop. This explains £30 out of the £200, which means I have £170 unexplained. This means that (most likely) she stole £170 in February.
I did this exercise for the past few months and arrived at the total amount she stole.

The confrontation- second act

I go abroad and have a great time with the kids. A couple of days into our holiday, I got forwarded a message from the person I asked to message her. She obviously saw the video, realised she was in trouble, and messaged that she’s sorry and she’ll return the money next week. My initial thought was “Does she think she’s still our cleaner?!?! Does she think she’s going to show up at 8 am with the money and just clean our home?!?!”

A day or two later, I get another forwarded message on WhatsApp with a picture of an envelope and a message that said “I returned the money, please delete the video and forget me”. That would be nice, but I already contacted the police and have a call booked, and I’m also on a freaking holiday with the kids and really don’t want to deal with this while on holiday!

I decided to ignore the message and enjoy my holiday with the kids.

When I got back, I had the call with the police and told them everything, including the fact that she returned the money. The policewoman asked what I wanted to do. I told her that I wanted two things:

1. My money back- got it (ish).
2. That if anyone else complains about her in the future, it would show this wasn’t her first time doing so. The policewoman assured me that even if we close this case, it will still show if anyone else complains in the future.

That was the end of the story, or so I thought…

The confrontation- third (and final) act

Just as a reminder, by this point, the cleaner still hasn’t contacted me or replied to my messages once. She only replied to the other number.

Anyway, I get a text (because she probably blocked me on WhatsApp) saying that she got a text from the police and that she’s scared. She mentioned she was sorry and that she returned the money, and didn’t know what else she needed to do. She also mentioned this could ruin her life.

Well, she should have thought of that before stealing, but anyway, the case was already closed.

I was very impressed by the police for actually contacting her (finding her), even after the case was closed.

I waited a couple of days and replied to her that I informed the police she returned the money, the case is closed, but it is on record in case she does anything like this again.

The end.

What did we learn?

First and most important, Excel is always right.

Second, Accounting and internal controls are important, not just at work.
There are three main parts in financial statements: the profit and loss (P/L) statement and the balance sheet (B/S), which we have discussed, and a third one: the statement of cash flows.

In this statement, you start with your opening cash balance, you list all the movements, and you arrive at your expected closing cash balance (which has to agree with your actual cash). If I had done that, she would have been caught months earlier. So anyway, accounting matters.

Third, get a safe. This is not a recommendation; this is our conclusion.
It’s funny, but I never even considered a safe – I always thought that if someone broke into our home, they would just take the safe and smash it at their own home. I never even considered a scenario where someone we trusted into our home would steal from us. We now have a safe.

Fourth, which I’m not sure we’ll follow, is to get a copy of the ID of people you let into your home (not one-off visitors, of course). If our cleaner had given us a false name and just changed her phone number, it would have been very hard for the police to find her.

So that’s it, that’s the story of how we caught our thief using Excel (and two cameras).

Funny enough, this wasn’t our first theft; we had a separate incident a month earlier, but this post is long enough, so I’ll keep it for another post.

Anyway, keep updating your Excel files and stay alert!