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Former Rock employee stole £220,000 of stock
Author: Tim SmalleyPublished: 9th May 2008
Rock's former head of sales, Paul Bicknell, was in "something of a fantasy world" after he stole computers to fund a lifestyle of fast cars and gambling.
In the statement issued on its website, the failure was partly blamed on a former employee who was involved in stock misappropriation. Today, it's come to light that 24-year-old Paul Bicknell, former head of sales, stole more than £200,000 worth of computers over a period starting in 2005 and continuing through past his resignation in July 2007.
Bicknell was hired by the firm at the age of 16 and worked his way through the ranks to become head of sales and the main contact for CFA Trading, one of Rock's regular customers.
CFA said that it found Bicknell to be "helpful and always willing to assist" with its purchases, however in 2006 the company noticed that its payments weren't making it through to Rock's accounts.
At the same time, the former head of sales started driving expensive sports cars and became addicted to gambling online, living in "something of a fantasy and unreal world," according to his solicitor.
Bicknell began to chase losses and a month after he left the company in July 2007, he broke into Rock's warehouse and stole computers worth £11,497 – he then sold these machines.
The total loss to Rock is reported to be in the region of £220,000, but when courts attempted to recoup some of the losses, the court could only make a nominal £1 payment because Bicknell was penniless. Bicknell is now serving a three-year sentence after admitting to nine charges of theft brought upon him in court.
Although this is a massive amount of money—and it was enough to cause Rock to lose its credit and cause cashflow problems—I don't believe it's the only thing that caused the £5 million turnover-per-year company to crash. Custom PC reports that people close to Rock have said not all the blame should be placed on Bicknell, although no allegations have been confirmed.
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Comments (22)
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Yeah, it is an even larger amount of money to not realise has gone missing over a 2/3 year period!
It's not like it dissapeared at once... It cumulated over the years I recon... Stealing 200000 at once is noticed by everyone, stealing 1 a day is much more... subtile...
Its a real shame they have died. On the bright side it does show this guy up and make him look like a right *******.
they are probably all asking the same question and wondering how it never got detected, hence their faith in the company gone. quite plausible really...
if their turnover is only 5 million, 200,000 is ALOT in terms of profit.
Especially when 11,000 odd of that is in computers that were stolen but presumably insured.
Whilst £200,000 doesn't sound like a lot on roughly £15million turnover (over 3 years), when you consider how tight the margins are in the PC business it isn't actually all that surprising.
200K is therefore a lot to lose in this sort of circumstance. The main killer, however, seems to have been with the company's credit. Can't secure the parts for a reasonable cost, can't make the profit...
It is a shame that Rock has gone down, but at the same time, gaming notebooks are still very much a niche thing and therefore by its very nature a rather turbulent sector... (possibly going to explain the tight margins)
It's a PLC, so shareholders wouldn't have bailed since there are no 'public' investors.
That's very true. Turnover doesn't equal profit and margins are incredibly tight in the IT sector (thanks to people like Dell). The lack of credit will be a killer, but I think there is more to it than just Bicknell's thefts.
(just don't ask where half the components in my last pc came from...)
Far more serious is the fact no-one on the internet can spell lose!
hmm I have heard of other companies going bust because of massive emplyee stealing to fund gambling habits before. Quite often if somone is very high up in a medium sized company then no one is checking up on them. Suddenly the company has £1m missing they thought they had which can put them in the red.