Cheque fraud case brings $4000 fine

Press, 18 January 1986, Page 8

Cheque fraud case brings $4000 fine

PA Invercargill A Queenstown man was fined $4OOO in the District Court at Invercargill yesterday for his part in a $663,000 forged cheques conspiracy. Barry Stephen Shirreffs, aged 37, a builder, was one of three persons facing eight charges of using a document to obtain a pecuniary advantage. He was also sentenced to six months periodic detention and ordered to pay $852 reparation.

His cousin, Trevor Alan Lee, of Invercargill, and Lee’s girlfriend, Kay Linda Kennedy, of Christchurch, have been remanded for further appearances in Christchurch.

Judge Reid was told Shirreffs was a courier in the fraud masterminded by Lee, who had apparently found a “gap in the financial system” of a big national financial organisation. Using false National Bank cheques personalised to the Trustee Executors and Agency Company, Ltd, Shirreffs committed or was a party to the offences in

Dunedin, Oamaru and Timaru on December 20.

Shirreffs’ counsel,' Mr Maurice Coughlan, said Lee “absented himself physically from the offences” and, it seemed, meant to implicate Shirreffs and Kennedy if things went wrong. Mr Coughlan said that the planning; and execution of the offences were so poor it was almost inevitable the three would be caught. Two of the false cheques had the same serial number, he said. ' ; ■

By the time Shirreffs reached Timaru the authorities were ready with a trap, which he walked into.

The Judge said the aim of the conspiracy was to obtain gold. 1

“One can only wonder how far you would have gone,” he told Shirreffs.

Had the offences been committed before the Criminal Justice Act came into force, Shirreffs would probably have been sent to jail. But the act required the Court to stand back from imprisonment for crimes against property in most cases, the Judge said.