I came across a story on X that got me thinking about people, trust, and how much damage the wrong people can do to you when you give them access to your life. It was about a business owner whose two female staff members had allegedly embezzled over ₦10 million, roughly $7,000, in just two months. According to the account, their activities went beyond simply taking money from the business. They were reselling tickets their boss had already paid for at higher prices, taking products that were supposed to be sold for themselves, and allegedly diverting about 40 per cent of the fuel purchased each day. Eventually, the business failed and had to shut down.

What made the story even more crazy was how everything came to light. Apparently, another staff member who had worked there for only a month before the business shut down eventually confessed to what had been happening. Imagine that, a business owner could spend years building something, investing money, making sacrifices and trying to keep everything running, only for the people he employed and trusted to become part of the reason it all came crashing down. I kept thinking about how painful that must have been. It is one thing to lose money because the economy is bad, customers are not buying, or business expenses have become too much to handle. Those are challenges that come with running a business but it is an entirely different thing to discover that some of the people you trusted to help you grow that business were actively contributing to its destruction.

And funny enough this is not the first time i am encountering such tales from business owners, i have always felt that it is unreasonable to tell people not to trust anyone. We trust people every day, sometimes without even realising it. You cannot do everything yourself, and you cannot be everywhere at once. At some point, you have to allow other people to handle things on your behalf, reminds me of the post @tarazkp made earlier this week on trust.

The problem, however, is that trust gives people access, and access can be dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands. When you employ someone, you are not just giving them a job. Depending on their role, you might be giving them access to your money, your customers, your business secrets, your reputation, and sometimes the future of everything you have worked for. You expect them to do their job, get paid, and help the business grow, so that they will in turn also grow but then greed and dishonesty kicks in. They probably did it the first time and got away with it , then another time and another till they start feeling they have mastered it but as the popular saying goes, one day for the thief another day for the owner. When they get away with it, they become bolder and say they are wise or smart.

I wonder whether these women ever stopped to think about what their actions could mean for the business. Did they consider the possibility that the money they were taking, the products they were removing, and the fuel they were allegedly diverting could eventually affect the business's ability to survive? Or were they so focused on what they could gain for themselves that the consequences no longer mattered? Now they are in the hands of police men and they are also automatically unemployed, in fact the business man said almost every weekend the lock people up for one crime or the other. Crazyy

What also got me was the fact that the business apparently shut down before the full story came out. Think about the other people who might have been affected. There could have been other employees who depended on that business for their livelihood. There could have been customers, suppliers, and family members who depended on the income it generated. When a business fails, the consequences rarely stop with the owner. Other people who had nothing to do with the wrongdoing can end up paying the price. I saw a comment in the comment section and someone was like "girls!!!, never expected women to be deceitful". I just chuckled because crime knows no gender. At the end of the day i believe character is an individual thing, and i think we should judge people by their actions rather than the category they belong to.

But beyond the gender conversation, what really interests me about the story is how people sometimes mistake getting away with something for being smart. There is a difference between being intelligent and being dishonest enough to exploit a situation without getting caught. If you steal from your employer and nobody notices, it does not suddenly make you a genius. It simply means you have not been caught yet.