How much money is lost by businesses due to coupon fraud?

Here is an interesting blurb about an Arby's employee, who stole $14,524 by using coupons to conceal the fact he was dipping into the till.

NBC10.com (Philadelphia) is reporting:

A fast-food restaurant employee was charged with theft after police said he was skimming the cash register by using coupons.

Curtis Smith, 32, of Coatesville, was an employee at the Arby's store located on Concord Pike for several years, police said.

Police said Smith used $1 off coupons at the register and would then take that money from the register. He obtained between $50 and $150 at a time, police said.

The investigation started because of declining revenues at the restaurant.

Coupon fraud can be a huge problem for companies, who use them as marketing tools. A few years ago, Subway discontinued a promotion because too many coupons were being reproduced and sold on auction sites.

CouponInfo.com has some pretty good descriptions of the types of coupon fraud going on out there. According to the site, there is even an underground market in counterfeit coupons.

They state that coupon fraud costs companies millions of dollars a year.

After reading this, I decided to go on eBay and see if I could find coupons for sale. After going to the site, I was able to find quite a selection. If you want to take a look, click here.

Because everyone always picks on eBay, I decided to see what Google had to say. After doing this, I was amazed at the market out there in selling coupons.

No wonder CouponInfo.com couldn't put an exact figure to the losses caused by coupon fraud. It would be pretty hard to figure out!

Going back to the story about the Arby employee, the article doesn't state where he got the $14,523 in coupons. Of course, it's hard to say, but it wouldn't be hard to find them by doing a little surfing on the Internet.

Maybe this is something that businesses, who issue and redeem coupons should watch a little more carefully?

NBC.com story, here.