For years, Macy’s Inc. touted its ability to boost profits by cutting delivery costs and trimming other expenses on calls with Wall Street analysts. Then on Monday, the department store chain surprised investors by revealing that those very costs had become the source of an internal investigation into what the company has described as a multimillion-dollar employee plot to manipulate the metrics.

The retail giant delayed the results of its third quarter earnings after discovering that an employee hid millions of dollars in delivery expenses over the last three years.

Macy's announced an employee has "hid" up to $154 million, prompting the U.S. department store chain to delay the release of its third-quarter earnings report.

Macy's disclosed Monday that an employee had hidden up to $154 million in expenses through false accounting entries over more than three years.

Macy’s announced Monday that a single employee was responsible for so many accounting irregularities that the company was forced to delay its quarterly earnings report, which the retailer had planned to release Tuesday.