THE SECOND CASE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 53, 4 March 1925, Page 10

THE SECOND CASE.

SOLICITORS MISSING,

VANISHED TRUST FUNDS. (From Oar Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, February 20. Legal circles in New South "Wales are agog at the latest defection on the part of a solicitor from Sydney. He makes the second member of the profession in this State whose disappearance ha 3 synchronised with the discovery of the iact that trust funds amounting to thousands of pounds are also missing.

Several warrants have been issued in the recent case, the solicitor named having been an occupant of Mendes Chambers, Castlereagh Street. He has been missing since February 4, and for days now his ex-clients have been calling at the detective office seeking advice of the officer in charge.

His defection was particularly unfortunate, for the trußt funds which are missing are made up of small amounts, which, from what the police have been able to ascertain, were the life savings of hie clients. No final statement has been made yet, but to date the amount the police can trace a3 missing is in the vicinity of f 15,000. Since his disappearance an order of the Cou/t was executed and his office furniture and fittings were sold up, but the amount realised from that sale barely satisfied his landlord.

Newcastle Case. Three months ago a Newcastle solicitor, a member of an old-established firm, disappeared in a similar manner, and it was not until he had been missing for two months that his partner realised that £15,000 in trust moneys had disappeared, too. The Newcastle case had other features in common with the Sydney one, for there are two or three persons in Newcastle who ■were absolutely ruined by the loss of the trust funds. They had put every penny they owned into the hands of the man -who disappeared, to invest for them.