Alternate anecdata:
Having met people like this the initial incidents are usually to try and right a perceived wrong. Being slighted on a bonus when another employee was over-compensated (from the perspective of the embezzler). An earned sales commission that was unpaid or underpaid. Things like that.
The embezzler spots an opportunity to get back some of what they are owed, they strike, and are successful. Then it spirals from there. Sometimes they get 'forced' to continue, the initial fraud case involved a fictitious vendor, or a subscription, or some other thing that is expected to be ongoing and would raise suspicious to suddenly stop.
In other cases I've seen the root cause just be straight up drugs and gambling addictions. An employee needs fast money, and probably need to hide it from family members, so a little embezzlement gets the job done. Then of course that never goes the way they intended, and they wind up doing it again and again until the whole thing implodes.
> Alternate anecdata: Having met people like this the initial incidents are usually to try and right a perceived wrong. Being slighted on a bonus when another employee was over-compensated (from the perspective of the embezzler). An earned sales commission that was unpaid or underpaid. Things like that.
Altnernate anecdata (N=1): One person I knew intimately enough definitely used a perceived wrong as a pretext to start something they had been looking to do already because of other issues.
I agree. It might not be that the person was truly wronged, only that the perception that they were slighted can be used as a pretext to excuse their own slights (getting progressively less slight).
> embezzler spots an opportunity to get back some of what they are owed, they strike, and are successful. Then it spirals from there.
This strikes me as the typical fraudster more than embezzler. Making up the gains versus having actual profits that they then steal. Madoff was a fraudster; Bankman-Fried more an embezzler.
The embezzler spots an opportunity to get back some of what they are owed, they strike, and are successful. Then it spirals from there. Sometimes they get 'forced' to continue, the initial fraud case involved a fictitious vendor, or a subscription, or some other thing that is expected to be ongoing and would raise suspicious to suddenly stop.
In other cases I've seen the root cause just be straight up drugs and gambling addictions. An employee needs fast money, and probably need to hide it from family members, so a little embezzlement gets the job done. Then of course that never goes the way they intended, and they wind up doing it again and again until the whole thing implodes.