Youth On Charge Of Theft From Bank

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29334, 13 October 1960, Page 11

Youth On Charge Of Theft From Bank

On two Fridays in September Terence McDonald hpd gone to the Manchester street branch of the Totalisator Agency Board and placed doubles bets on every race meeting being held throughout New Zealand on the following days; he had placed a total of £324 in bets, a woman . clerk employed by the Agency said in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday. McDonald, aged 19, a carpet worker (Mr B. J. Drake) faced a charge of theft of £5OOO in notes from a teller’s box at the bank of New South Wales’ temporary premises in Hereford street on August 23.

Of the 10 prosecution witnesses to be called during the Loiver Court hearing of the cose four were heard yesterday, before the case was adjourned io tomorrow morning. Messrs H. T. Fuller and W. W. Laing, Justices of the Peace, were on the Bench.

Andrew John Muir, a bank clerk employed at the branch, said it was his duty each Tuesday, as fourth teller, to collect all banknotes which were, no longer in a suitable condition for circulation and make them out into two bundles of £5OOO each. The fourth teller’s box at the bank’s temporary premises in Hereford street was situated farthest from the door. There ■ was frosted glass in the partitions between each box, he said. | Outlining the procedure for I collecting the discarded notes each week, Muir said he counted lout the notes which had been collected from the tellers, made them out into the £5OOO bundles which were tied with string and wrapped and sealed in paper. On the day of the alleged offence he said two other tellers were absent from their boxes and he had attended about six customers. He said he collected the notes from the other three tellers and made up one bundle comprising £3OOO in £5 notes, £lB6O in £1 notes, and £l4O in 10s notes. “After tying this with string I put it on the shelf behind the box and started wrapping the second bundle of £5OOO which contained £lO, £5, £l, and 10s notes, said Muir. At five minutes to mid-day, after completing the second bundle and making certain the first bundle was on the shelf, he left the box. The bundles were only tied with string at this stage as he had decided to wrap them after lunch. "The number three teller next to my box had gone to lunch a few minutes before me,” said Muir. This teller was not about when Muir returned from lunch at 12.50 p.m. “I returned a few minutes earlier to wrap up the bundles With the first wrapping of paper. I went to take the bundle off the shelf but found it was not there.” The sign: “Next Teller Please,” which he had erected before going to lunch had been knocked over and was lying at right angles to where it had been left. Muir said the shelf on which the bundles had been placed was about 6ft from the public side of the counter. To Mr Drake he said it was not part of his duties to make a record of the serial number of the notes. William James Spencer, number one teller at the . bank, said that on August 23 he was on duty between noon and 2 p.m., in the number one teller’s box, bagging coins of small denomination. At this time business was He had a view of the main door, two chairs and a desk in front of him, but could only see about half of the chamber. He could not see in front of the number four teller’s box, but by moving back he could see part of number four box. The number two teller, who was also on duty at the same time as himself, would be in a similar position. Spencer said that it would not be possible to see the public in front of numbers three and four boxes. Spencer explained to the Court his practice of marking unissuable notes which he received in the course of business. Marking of Notes “On the top of any unissuable notes, I put the figure of the total number of notes handed over by the customer at that note,” he said. “By adding the figures at the end, I get the number of notes given by the customer. “When I get enough unissuable notes, I make them up into bundles and put a blue pencil cross on the top note so that there is no likelihood of their being mixed with my good notes,” he said. On September 9, Spencer said he was shown certain notes at a T.A.B. office in Christchurch and identified one or two as having his blue pencil mark on them. At the Criminal Investigation Branch on September 30, he identified certain bank notes shown to him by the police. “The unissuable notes only go away once a week and are given to Muir on Tuesday morning,” said Spencer. “There is no likelihood of the notes going back into circulation.” Of seven lots of bank notes, in denominations of 10s, £1 and £5,

ot a total of £B4B produced as exhibits. Spencer said that they were all unissuable. Four 10s, eight £1 and six £5 notes produced were recognised by Spencer as being marked by him.

Figures of 2820: 630 and 2650 on one of the £5 notes were figures placed by him at the end of a day’s work and represented 2820 £5 notes, 630 £lO notes and 2650 £5O notes held by him. Spencer produced his cash book for the day ending on August 18, which showed a total of 6820 £5 notes, 5630 £lO notes and 2650 £5O.

He said these figures tied up with the figures on the £5 note, the difference in the number of £5 notes and £lO notes was because the difference was held in his teller’s box in tins. “It is norma! to hold between £15,000 and £30,000 in this box,” said Spencer. Spencer said that all the notes produced were unissuable, and all notes he recognised as being marked by him were the property of the Bank of New South Wales. Cross-examined by Mr Drake. Spencer said that his system of marking the notes was a practice entirely of his own and was not followed by other tellers. Doubles Tickets

Gladys Marianne Orchard, a casual clerk employed by the T.A.B. said McDonald came to her window at the agency shortly after 3.15 p.m. on September 9 and asked for "multiple multiple” doubles tickets on the five race meetings to be held in New Zealand the next day. McDonald’s outlay for each of the meetings was £36, comprising £1 bets on each of the first Six horses listed in the first legs and the first six in the second legs. This system of betting was not an unusual one, she said. The total betting on the five meetings was £lBO which McDonald paid to her in a “whole bundle” of £5 notes. The witness said she noticed that the notes were old. She did not associate them with any crime which had been committed in the city. Orchard said she also remembered McDonald placing similar bets on the previous Friday, September 2. There had been four race meetings throughout the country, and his total outlay was £144. “I remember McDonald when he came to the Agency on September 9 because he asked me to repeat the previous Friday’s bets,” the witness said. The normal practice was to take “quarter doubles,’’ but McDonald had asked for £1 units and she had had to write out new tickets.

To Mr Drake she said it was hard to say the number of persons she would serve in a day. The banknotes handed over- by McDonald on September 2 were in £lO. and £5 denominations, and there was nothing unusual about their condition. “They were different from the notes he gave me on the 9th,” she said.