Everyone wants to always label employer's and business owners as evil, but my experience has been the same as yours Lyrical....no matter how well you treat your employees, there are always bad apples in the bunch. For every shitty boss, I feel there is like 100 shitty employees. I hope none of my top people ever steal from me the way they have for you, I would feel so betrayed after all I have done for them.
One of the biggest problems with owning a company is that unless you are there to run it first-hand, you will definitely lose money due to theft....sad but true. I had an interest in opening up some franchises, like Subway or Togo's, just to help build more passive income, but my financial advisor told me not to unless I could be there on a regular basis checking on the business and my employees (which I don't have time for).....otherwise in his experience, your employees, even your managers, end up stealing enough as to not make the enterprise profitable or worthwhile.