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BROOKFIELD, MINNESOTA - A former Milwaukee Tool employee faces 14 charges, including 11 felonies, after authorities allege he defrauded the company out of more than $1 million over the course of a year.
Court documents state 31-year-old Matthew Yang of Wauwatosa used his insider access to create and delete fraudulent orders. The charges include multiple counts of misdemeanor and felony theft, including one theft of more than $100,000, as well as a computer crimes charge.
A warrant for Yang’s arrest was filed in conjunction with the charges on Aug. 27, according to online court records.
If convicted on all counts, Yang faces up to 98 years and three months in prison and fines totaling $260,000. Yang would also be required to forfeit the money he gained through the crimes.
Yang was employed with Milwaukee Tool for eight years
According to the criminal complaint:
On April 4, at 2:50 p.m., a Brookfield police officer spoke by phone with a representative of Milwaukee Tool, 13135 W. Lisbon Road, who wanted to report a theft of product from the business by a former employee ― later identified as Yang.
Yang was terminated from Milwaukee Tool three days earlier after the company learned Yang had been falsifying records by creating work orders for the delivery of Milwaukee Tool products. Yang would then manually delete the orders from the company's system.
The representative told police Yang had been making the fraudulent orders for a year and that he had stolen at least $1.3 million in product. The company became aware of an issue after a carrier contacted Milwaukee Tool to ask questions about the delivery of 9,000 pounds of product to a residential home in Wauwatosa, which was later determined to be Yang's address.
According to the representative and another employee, a senior vice president for Milwaukee Tool, Yang had been employed with Milwaukee for eight years. He began working in the supply line section of the company before moving into the IT department in 2023.
After being contacted by the carrier and not being able to locate the order in their system, Milwaukee Tool launched an internal investigation. It revealed Yang had placed more than 110 separate orders using his personal customer account number. These orders were sent to various addresses, including Yang's and an address associated with his sister. Yang deleted the orders from Milwaukee Tool's system.
Records that Milwaukee Tool employees provided to investigators showed the number of fraudulent orders rose between January and March 2025, which employees suggested may have been tied to the company’s decision to discontinue its employee discount system in April 2025.
A follow-up investigation determined Yang had sold the stolen product to Milwaukee Tool customers
During a follow-up investigation of the case on May 16, a Brookfield detective met with the two previously mentioned employees and two others, including an accounting specialist and an IT specialist, who were on the investigation team for Milwaukee Tool.
The employees told the detective that Yang's access and extensive knowledge of the company's ordering system allowed him to manipulate the system by creating orders that would then be fulfilled and prepared by the warehouse for shipping. No payments were ever made for the orders Yang placed.
The follow-up investigation confirmed Yang created and deleted a total of 115 orders between late March of 2024 and March of 2025. Of these orders, 109 shipments were delivered. Milwaukee Tool had been able to cancel and recover six of those shipments.
In total, Yang ordered $1.44 million worth of product. Milwaukee Tool was able to cancel and recoup about $358,000, resulting in a total loss of $1.086 million.
In addition to the internal logs showing Yang's ordering history, the investigation team told the detective that they found a separate spreadsheet titled "selling list" on Yang's company laptop after his termination.
The spreadsheet had a full breakdown of the retail costs of various Milwaukee Tool products, the "myconnect" prices of the products and the selling price of the items. "Myconnect" is the name Milwaukee Tool uses for its employee discount program. The spreadsheet also contained pricing and totals for numerous orders.
This confirmed Yang had direct access to Milwaukee Tool's legitimate customer base, leading investigators to conclude Yang may have been selling the stolen products directly to Milwaukee Tool business customers.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/communit ... 871409007/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/for ... 37823.html