SOLICITORS MISSING.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 83, 9 March 1925, Page 11

SOLICITORS MISSING.

VANISHED TRUST FUNDS. SYDNEY, Feb. 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 hus synchronised with the discovery of the fact that trust funds amounting to thousands of pounds are also missing. Several warrants have been issued .in the recent caso, tho solicior named having been an occupant of Chambers in Castlereagh street. He has been missing since February 4, and for days now his ex-clients have been calling at tho detective office Beeking advice of tho officer in oharge. His defection was particularly unfortunate, for the trust funds which are missing are made up of Bmalt amounts, which, from what the police have been able to ascertain, were the life savings of His clients. No final statement has been made yet, but to date the amount the police can trace as missing is in the vicinity of £15,000. Since his disappearance an order of the Court 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 montiis ago a Nevycaetle 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 partnor realised that £15,000 in trust moneys had disappeared, too. The Newcastle case had other features in common with the Sydney one, for there aro 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.