A former employee of Nunn Electric Supply Company is accused of embezzling over $82,000 from the business over three years.

Joshua Lieland Caporale, 37, is charged with theft of more than $30,000 but less than $150,000 – a third-degree felony. He was out of the Wichita County Jail Sunday afternoon on $50,000 bail.

According to an arrest warrant affidavit:

On Dec. 14, 2017, Wichita Falls police received a report of possible embezzlement type theft from Nunn Electric Supply Co., 1300 Indiana Ave.

The chief financial officer said a business audit in November of 2017 revealed that several open bids or quotes in the system were not matching up with inventory shown to be available in the warehouse.

The CFO explained to detectives that an open bid is a document created in the system by a specific employee in which a cost quote is assigned to a specific customer for merchandise.

The open bid, which means the customer hasn't agreed to the purchase, can be changed later to an acknowledgement if the customer authorizes the transaction. Then, the items are removed from the supply warehouse and sold to the customer.

The CFO reported that Caporale was found to be involved in a pattern of behavior using the business system to create open bids that was out of the normal business procedure.

Caporale had been a salesman for the business and was assigned to specific customers to take orders from and make bids and sales.

Between November 2014 and November 2017, Caporale reportedly created open bids in the system, changed them to an acknowledgement and then printed them. The CFO said Caporale would then go back into the system and change it back to an open bid.

When the business began investigating these open bids against warehouse inventory, they discovered the warehouse was short of the items in the open bids Caporale was creating.

The CFO told detectives that the process Caporale was using of changing the bids to a sale and back was not in the normal business operating procedure.

Nunn Electric reportedly found over 125 similar transactions that Caporale created in the system that the business never received payment for the supplies listed on the printed acknowledgement form.

The total amount of transactions created this way over the three-year period was about $82,468.

Detectives spoke to the owner of a business that was listed as the customer on the majority of Caporale's open bids.

The owner said the business dealt directly with Caporale as their salesman when they needed electrical supplies. He said Caporale would provide him with the supplies and invoice.

He told detectives that Caporale asked him to start writing the checks directly to Caporale around 2014.

The owner said he began doing so, and just assumed the checks he wrote to Caporale were being given to Nunn Electric for the supplies he had purchased.

The detective checked bank records related to that owner's business account and discovered numerous business checks written directly to Caporale for electrical supplies.

Those payments were never paid by Caporale to Nunn Electric for supplies he was removing from the warehouse.

Other Nunn Electric employees told the detective it was not normal or approved business practice to have customers write checks directly to the salesman.

When the company became aware of the possible embezzlement, they set up surveillance cameras in the warehouse.

They later observed Caporale removing store inventory that matched open bids and acknowledgment forms he was created and not reporting to the business.