CLERK STOLE £2200

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28629, 4 July 1958, Page 11

CLERK STOLE £2200

18 Months’ Gaol Imposed (New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, July 3. A 23-year-old accountant, Richard Edward Still, the former managing clerk of the bankrupt Auckland sharebroking firm of Wallace Gunson, Neale and Company was gaoled for 18 months in the Auckland Magistrate’s Court today for the theft of £2200 in shares and money from the partnership. Still appeared for sentence before Mr L. G. H. Sinclair, S.M., on nine charges of theft. His counsel, Mr R. K. Davison, said Still’s downfall had been his infatuation for a 17-year-old girl who wanted a fully-furnished home and a car before she married him. ‘‘The reason and purpose of it all now seems to have gone,” said counsel. “She appears to be no longer going to stand by him.” Mr Davison said it was an extravagant marriage of a couple who were not prepared to wait until they could afford the luxuries. Though Still did not blame his wife for what happened, it was a sad commentary on human nature that there was a girl, who would make such demands and a young husband would jeopardise his career to meet them. Mr Davison said full restitution had been made and he asked for a sentence other than imprisonment. The Magistrate said the public interest demanded a punitive and deterrent punishment for a breach of trust of this magnitude. If there had been proper safeguards in the sharebroking firm th’e offences might not have occurred An application for suppression of name was refused.