Former Cumberland Farms workers speak out against company > Ex-employees say management forced false theft confessions

CAMDEN, N.J. — Former employees of a convenience store chain have been coming forward with allegations that the company forced them to sign confessions of theft and repay money they never took.

In two recent letters to employees at its 1,100 stores, Cumberland Farms Inc. denied what it called “misimpressions and false rumors.”

A U.S. District Court lawsuit filed here in 1986 by 12 fired Cumberland Farms cashiers accused the company of extortion and conspiracy. The 12 charge that the company had a longstanding policy of recovering legitimate inventory losses by randomly accusing employees of stealing.

Eugene Epperson, a former Cumberland Farms loss prevention specialist, said in a court deposition for the plaintiffs that he randomly selected employees who worked at stores with poor inventory reports and accused them of stealing.

He said he was instructed to “threaten” employees in order to gain a signed confession. Epperson said he questioned one woman simply at the request of her supervisor, and that the woman had not been suspected of anything wrong.

“I remember that she at first denied doing anything wrong, but that she was easily manipulated into writing anything I wanted her to write,” Epperson said in court papers. He said he quit the company in 1986.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, which published reports on the case this month, said at least 138 people have come forward to tell of incidents as recent as last month and as old as 1963.

One Rhode Island police department refused to prosecute complaints filed in 1985, 1986 and 1987 by a Cumberland Farms store, saying written admissions from workers were so alike they were probably dictated to them.

The Canton, Mass.-based company says the allegations are false.

“Cumberland Farms has not had and will never have a policy of coercing or intimidating our employees,” said Foster G. Macrides, a vice president.

“The lawsuit is at least 4 years old, and the allegations with regard to activities that are alleged to have occurred go beyond that time frame.”

The lawsuit is expected to go to trial by December, a court official said.

Forbes magazine in December listed Cumberland Farms as the nation’s 35th largest privately held U.S. company with an estimated $3 billion in revenues.

The company has more than 9,000 employees. It is one of the largest convenience-store chains in the East, operating in every New England state and in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Florida and Ohio.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the 12 employees by attorney Fredric J. Gross, alleged that Cumberland Farms’ loss prevention specialists used back-room, strong-arm tactics and threats to falsely accuse employees of stealing.

Six of the plaintiffs were prosecuted. One plaintiff, Beverly DeBiase of Egg Harbor, was placed on five years’ probation and ordered to pay $5,480 in restitution in 1986, according to court documents.

“Over 100 of the people who talked with us were prosecuted, and that’s the tip of the iceberg,” said Harry Abraham, a legal assistant to Gross.

Employees said that in some cases, threats involved prosecution, public exposure, the loss of other jobs and even the custody of their children, the lawsuit contends.

Stephen Salhaney, 37, of the Boston suburb of Weymouth, said Cumberland Farms security officials used “strong-arm Gestapo” techniques in 1973 to force him to sign a confession saying he stole $1,900. Salhaney, who at the time was a college student, said he was told a blemish on his record would jeopardize his aspirations for a law enforcement career.

“They came down on me so heavy,” Salhaney recalled in a telephone interview Tuesday from his West Roxbury insurance agency. “I was scared … so I signed it.” He said he was considering joining the lawsuit.

From 65 percent to 80 percent of losses in company-owned convenience stores result from employee theft, according to Sheri Aquirre, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Convenience Stores.

But she said her 1,300-member, Alexandria, Va.,-based association knows of no other case in which workers said they were accused falsely by a company.

“We’ve never heard of that — ever,” she said.

Complaints filed by Cumberland Farms in Charleston, R.I., against three employees in 1985, 1986 and 1987 were never prosecuted, Police Chief Michael T. Brady said Thursday. Investigators believed confessions attached to two of the complaints were obtained by coercion, Brady said.