It really is a bright start to the day when not only the sun shines, but there also is a five-person squad from the criminal investigation department, holding a search warrant, is waiting for you at your company in the morning. And our somewhat shocked office manager standing next to them.

It was clear that this case did not concern us - who has ever heard of someone being arrested for offering good service (haha), and the cover girl on our catalogue is neither naked nor underage.

What actually is appalling, however, is the scale of the crime because of which they are investigating at our and five further companies. A longtime employee of one of our vendors actually sold goods worth about a million euros - during a period of three or four years - without his employer knowing. And he sold to distributors who thought they were buying the goods directly. By the way, this is not information from the investigation, but from the deceived company itself, that informed us months ago.

As for us, we placed our orders directly with the vendor via e-mail, while the goods often came from a company that was owned by the fraudster. The pretended reason for this was a lawsuit against a former "exclusive distributor" of the vendor, which required the detour. Accordingly, payments were made to this company.

That did not work out well, because, at some point, we needed to return goods, which we sent to the vendor directly. They, however, wondered about devices with dubious serial numbers and started investigating.

Incidentally, the vendor is owned by an investor, and if I were him, I would have dismissed the CEO, first thing. Fraud is nasty, but falling for it is not that clever either - especially considering the huge sum.

Well, we were able to contribute a fair amount of documentation, that has been seized by the criminal investigators (who were very friendly and constructive) - although all the effort might be for naught, as the accused man has... disappeared.