employer had me arrested after I brought tribunal case

[cantcarryon]

This has upset me so much, I am having suicidal thoughts.

Basically, I was accused of gross misconduct and dismissed because me employer alleged that I claimed for false overtime hours. This despite the fact that he signed all the payments off over several years. His motivation is that my job is to make financial reports to head office and I made a report which showed a deal he had put together had achieved really appalling results. He threatened me and ordered me to change the report and I refused.I am bringing a tribunal case against him and have been advised by my solicitor that I have a really strong case.

I received a call out of the blue from the police. They had received an allegation from my former employer, they wanted me to make an appointment to go down and talk to them about it. I went down, was promptly arrested, put in a cell for over an hour waiting for the duty solicitor, then spent over 4 hours consulting solicitor and being interviewed. Solicitor says case a load of rubbish but police are obliged to investigate all complaints. So basically, anyone can walk into a police station, make a completely false allegation against you and have you arrested and detained for hours, even days, and you can do absolutely nothing about it.

I've now been bailed and have to return in a month. I now have to worry for weeks that I may go to prison, i may lose my family. I feel so powerless, I can't even leave the house, never mind look for work. I feel my life has ended and don't know how to carry on.

Why are employers allowed to destroy people's lives and get away with it?

Please, can anyone offer me any comfort?

You don't have to prove yourself innocent, they have to prove your guilt if it ever gets as far as court.

But what a horrible experience for you and what a shit he is.

How awful!

While you can't 'prove' that you did the hours, he can't 'prove' that you didn't. His signature means he approved the work - he can say he trusted you, but the fact that he signed something without being 'aware' of what he was signing makes him look flaky and sloppy, imo.

Would also think any investigation/tribunal would connect the facts that your professional relationship with this man was fine until you produced a report that reflected badly on him. When he couldn't intimidate you into retracting the report, he set out to sabotage your reputation.

I have no HR expertise, but it all seems very suspect and I think people can and will see through it.

As far as i can see, it is his word against your evidence. If he is now saying, 6 months after the event that you claimed fraudulently, then he would need to prove it, not just claim it. If he did not see the claim sheets, that is his own fault for not checking properly . He should not have signed anything without checking, but he did, thus confirming the hours were correct. People cannot just come along and say, oh by the way i changed my mind, it was not correct afterall i think she is committing fraud and then have you found guilty of that. If it ever went to the CPS which i doubt, they would throw it right out. Honestly. I have seen actual criminals with no evidence on their side get away with actual crimes because it could not be proven. He cannot prove it.

And, the fact that you already have a tribunal case ongoing against him, this will be taken into consideration - does he have any motivation to accuse you now? yes he does. You wrote a report he did not like, he has accused you of claiming for hours he signed off but alleges you now did not work. All of these indicate he is a twat and a liar.

Honestly. Have faith in yourself despite all of this.

Thanks all, I was getting myself into a bit of a state trying to think how I could give detail of what I did in the hours.

The policeman kept saying, tell me exactly what you were doing in those hours, I said I can't remember exactly it was a long time ago, basically i was doing my job! He wasn't satisfied with that and kept pushing for me to give details.

I guess that is what they do, their motivation is to get evidence to justify a prosecution and they will carry on pushing until they get it. My fear is they will repeat the whole process when I go to answer bail and they will keep me there for hours until i give them some kind of answer that they want.

But you must have evidence of your hours in the form of you work output. I have to sign off hours and I also look to see whether the work produced is in line with the hours claimed. I think that given your boss signed off the hours he does not have a leg to stand on - he would be guilty of negligence if he now wants to change his mind. What caused his change of mind - did you fall out over something else?

In this country, you are still innocent until proven guilty. The police are there to find out whether there's a reasonable chance you might be guilty. In your case, they aren't going to find any reasonable evidence, so they'll have to let you go. Try to be nice & polite with them (they get enough crap during an average shift) but don't let them bully you.

That last part is the difficult part, OP, because you are being bullied - by your boss - and it has knock-on effects where you feel 'got at' by everyone & everything. It's called hyper-vigilance; it's a symptom of PTSD. If the police need to question you any more, it would be a good idea to tell them you're under severe stress because of the way your boss is harassing you. Ask them to put on record that you may not be in a fit state to answer questions because of it. Still, though, try to answer calmly. Good luck

Unfortunately, yours is not the only boss like this! Unless, that is, yours could be known as "Peter the Russian"?? One chink of sanity during my ordeal was the website, BullyOnline. Have a good read around it, it really helps you get the picture.

Wishing you a swift & positive outcome!

BicycleBelle - yes, she evaluates financial performance. She identified a poor result on his work. You're quite right, of course, he'll have to show she faked her timesheets - which he negligently failed to check - and she could demonstrate she did the time by matching it with her output.

Basically, the guy's failed due diligence on at least two counts: the project and the timesheets. No wonder he's shitting himself.

OP - how long had you worked for the company?

Was there any response/repercussions from head office (or other workers) following your negative report on your ex boss' bad deal?

Does your ex boss have someone who protects him and/or gives him 'immunity' at head office?

Bicycle - he says he now thinks I wasn't doing the work quick enough, so can't have done the hours. Despite never raising any problems with my performance. Plus I had several technology problems which slowed the work down and he refused to deal with. Very difficult to quantify what is a reasonable output in my job, depends on so many factors. However, he did not say I was doing work too slowly as that would not serve his purpose of getting me sacked with no warnings. He dressed it up as claiming hours falsely with his reason being that it could not have taken the number of hours I claimed to do the work. But he offers no reasons for this belief.

Its Grace - yes, i do feel that the world is against me at the moment - keep having wild scenarios running through my head that I know are ridiculous but which I can't just dismiss. I convinced myself that the policeman simply doesn't belive me and will make sure i am charged, but maybe that is just paranoia. I think I just need to avoid trying to answer any more questions from the police - I have said enough to justify myself, the rest is up to them.

No, he's not Pete the Russian, there are unfortunately too many of these w**kers around! Thanks for the link, I will take a look at that.

Earlybird - 5 years, and before I made the report nothing but praise for my work. And certainly no formal discussions re poor performance or warnings right up until I was sammarily dismissed for these allegations.

I never heard of repercussions from head office but any criticism of him would not be made known to other staff, they would just have dealt with it with him. I would be pretty sure they would have wanted explanations though, he lost them a lot of money.

Head office just don't seem to want to get involved at all and leave everything to do with this office up to him - despite some really monumental fuck ups by him over the years.

The whole legal process assumes you innocent unless/until you are proven guilty.

As you are not guilty you have nothing to fear.

Take the advice of your solicitor and organise evidence of your past work.

What sort of work did you do? Are there emails/computer documents/phone bills with times and dates that can build up a picture of your working hours?

Did you liaise with third parties who would remember your work and have some documentary evidence of dealings with you?

You need to make some records, note down as much info as you can to defend yourself. Compiling it will give you some confidence and help you to answer police and others clearly.

Good luck.

No advice to add to that given here, except that if your overtime work involved a computer (or sending emails) perhaps that would give indication of the fact that you were busy? eg if you last saved a file before finishing for the night, and haven't resaved it since, the save time would show; or emails would show what time they were sent. Phone calls would also be on record. Obviously you wouldn't be able to do it for all the time that's in dispute, but it would show that you WERE there on at least some of the dates/times; and again the onus would be on him to prove otherwise.

TBH I always understood the responsibility of a boss to be that if they sign something off, they have taken responsibility for those figures/accepting what you've said. That's why people who are in high-up positions sometimes have to resign because of screw-ups further down the line, because at the end of the day they are supposed to MANAGE people, and the ultimate responsibility is theirs. Another point would be that, if he felt there was an issue with your overtime, why didn't he mention it to you before eg did it continue for 6 months? then as 'manager' he should have been aware of it and raised it as an issue much earlier. The fact that he didn't would suggest that it wasn't an issue at that time... so why now?

Sounds like he's a total arse, I really hope you get good support against him.

Polly - difficult to get documentary evidence, some work was done on sreadsheets which I emailed back and forth or put on memory sticks. But i don't have copies of these on my home computer any more. Quite a lot was manual work, making notes, reviewing etc so no computer trail. Not much phone work, my employer not prepared to pay for the cost of the calls so i saved most of this for the office. So no, can't see a way of getting much in the way of independent proof. And after all this time have no idea exactly what i was working on on any given day.

It looks pretty hopeless, doesn't it?

x-post with Polly, obv thinking along the same lines re evidence of being there.

Though I regularly worked in the office for 2 more days than my basic hours due to excess workload. And all staff saw me there. And he claims he can't remember me being in on those days!

Ah - if you emailed stuff back and forth, you can check the Sent emails folder and that will give you dates/times and the original file as it was when you emailed it, will that help? Can you access emails from home? You could call your IT department and pretend you needed to find out about something that was lost a while back.

But as others have said, onus is on the company to prove what you did, not you - at the end of the day your boss signed off those sheets, he's the one who has to do major work now if anyone is going to believe him... and the fact that you've already raised a tribunal against him looks VERY suspicious. And to anyone in head office, surely the tribunal plus the fact that your boss is in effect saying 'I didn't do MY job properly in signing off this overtime' doesn't exactly put him in a good light...

Well, that's a start, to get written evidence from the staff who saw you in the office.

Will there be a computer trail in the office or on your boss' computer?

I'm sure your solicitor will have some good advice about all this. Does he have the expertise/experience to give you good advice? Or can he recommend an additional professional to help you gather evidence?

It is not "hopeless"! Far from it This is a truly horrible experience, but you just need to work through this step by step and come out the other side.

Oh you poor thing!

It sounds like he's trying to cover his arse by ruining your reputation.

at you being arrested!

Numpty - they sacked me 3 months ago - can't really ring up the company's IT dept and ask for any help!

Numpty - checked sent folder but I think I was transferring most of files by memory stick as i can't find many sent emails relating to spreadsheets. What a bugger.

I guess all I can say is "i did the work, you signed off, I wasn't aware at the time that I was going to have to provide documentary proof of my hours in a court" !

Sorry, hadn't realised you'd been sacked and therefore didn't have access to files (or IT helpdesk!).

If you have ANY emails relating to work, even if they don't have spreadsheets, they will help I guess.

I think most people would find they don't have 'evidence' of what they do from day to day - I email stuff back and forth but sometimes wonder myself what I've done when the day ends! BUT he signed off your overtime. So it's his case to answer, IMO.

So sorry to hear that you're in this situation; hope you're solicitor is able to give you reassurance and support... you could read some John Grisham books to give you that 'all power to the people against the system' boost! If they are trying to bully you, just remember that and stick to your guns.

I agree. I send reports to management each month, analysis, of jobs, work done by the management accountant. but if i had to prove evidence of that now, it would be difficult to prove. BUT you did you job each month, no disciplining from him etc etc,
statement of that, counts for alot.

cantcarryon How are you feeling this morning? I've been think about you and hope this morning you are feeling better.
I just had some thought's I can't make too many suggestions re your case as I don't want to cock it up for you but here goes.
(1) Speak to your solicitor and ask if the police are interested in forensically examining your computer. Nothing is really deleted unless you know a lot about I.T. The examation isn't done the th Police officers but by the lab a la CSI (not as good looking thou )

1. Re DH's mate next time he is over say 'so gald you are here you can take my mind off my problems. Then ban him for talking about the issues & ask about his love life his shed etc...
2. To keep DH on side get him to give you practical help. Clean the hous together so you can get out for a walk good for the soul.
3. gardening together again good for the soul.
4. Give your self & him 45mins airing your problem then. really work hard at putting it away for the night. Please Please do this for your health and marriage.
5. keep a diary of events and your feelings and problems e.g doc appointments phone calls to solicitors, Police, staff you name it put it down. It will help you construct thoughts later. I promise you this will help.
6. Have a cup of tea the world is a better place with tea and a stiff upper lip.

My family are latin and all the drama is only good in small doses. Keep your pecker up love.

Dot - thanks for thinking about me, its nice to feel I am not alone in this.

The problem with proving what work I did at home is that a lot of it was manual work which would leave no trail on the computer, and all that work is at my former workplace so i will never get access to it. There will be some stuff on the computer but as i have no idea now how many hours i did in the office and how many at home I don't have a clue how to justify all my time. It makes my head reel just thinking about it. But it looks like that is exactly what I will have to do or I will be charged and convicted of fraud. It just looks hopeless.

Cannot sleep and I just pace around the house feeling like my head is going to burst. I must see my doctor tomorrow as i just can't carry on like this.

Thanks for the hints re DH, you are absolutely right and I will try them out. I know he is sympathetic and fully supports me, but I am driving him mad. I just find it difficult not to obsess about it all constantly.

I will be in contact with the solicitor who is dealing with the tribunal case tomorrow - he wants full details of what happened at the police station so he can add the details of this bullying to my witness statement. Will apparently substantially increase the damages I receive.

I used the duty solicitor at the police station as I just can't afford to shell out legal fees for this as well. Not sure if i can carry on using them if I am not locked up at the police station though.

I can't think about the future as it looks like i will be in prison for something I didn't do because I cant prove conclusively that I didn't do it. Not sure I can go through that.

You are innocent until proven guilty, he has to prove you commited fraud, you don't have to prove you are innocent!

Cantcarryon,

You really must stop thinking like this. As various people have said, you have NO obligation to prove you are innocent.

In the (ludicrously unlikely) event of this matter getting to court, the prosecution would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you have committed a crime.

On the evidence you have given here, there is not the slightest possibility of them doing so. And no jury would convict.

You are working yourself into a state. It is understandable, and must be extraordinarily stressful, but please don't.