CHARGES OF THEFT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 279, 24 October 1940, Page 9

CHARGES OF THEFT

! WOMAN LAW CLERK. EVIDENCE BEFORE COURT. - Per Presfe Association. AUCKLAND, Oct. 23. A clerk in a legal office, Pliyllis Olive- Barnett, aged 31, api>e*ured before Mr Justice Fair in the Supreme Court on charges of theft or .two cheques that had been entrusted to her by her employer. The charges were that on April 26 she stole £y96 from her employer, Robert Urquhart, that she stole a cheque for that amount, or that she fraudulently omitted to laccount for that amount; there were three similar counts relating to a cheque tor £220 lis 8d on June 28.

The Crown Prosecutor (Mr V. R. ] Meredith) said the charges were that, instead of paying these cheques into ' her employer's trust account accused had paid them into an account of her , own in another bank. Accused had been in the law office of Robert Uxquhart for three years and last April, she was given tbe banking to do. Un '■ April 26 she was given a cheque for i £996 and £54 in cash to bank, but sh« ! paid in only the cash to her employer's account and put the cheque into her own. She falsified her book by adding £996 to tally with the bank's records. . On the next statement from the bank it would be seen that "£996" had been typed in in different type. Later she paid in to her employer's account £l5O I which she had transferred from her i own account, but a cheque of here for a further sum of £340 which she j sought to pay in was dishonoured, 6aid j Mr Meredith. On June 28 she lodged' a cheque for £220 lis 8d of her em- I ployer's similarly in her own account | and the net result was that there was a shortage of £1146 is 8d in Urquhart's trust account. Robert Urquhart, solicitor, said ho had given accused no authority to put these cheques in her own account. In cross-examination witness said lie i had reported other matters to the Law | Society. An auditor had investigated . his books on behalf of the Law Society. Witness held accused solely responsible for the defalcations.

Witness was questioned by Mr Beckerleg (counsel tor defendant with Mr Aekins) about various entries in his books and said that certain items could not be reconciled. He denied that he had got £IOO from accused for the purpose of cleaning up an overdraft, but he got that sum from her in April to repay a loan. Recently, said witness, he had been paying her £2 a week. Prior to April last she had been betting somewhat successfully- and he had had some bets on information she obtained. He would certainly deny that she had laid £2OO for him on April 26 on a race to be run on April 27. Witness said if a man were to say that witness had given him a cheque for £996 and told him to bank it in accused's account witness would say that was the first he had ever heard of such a suggestion. It was quite untrue for accused to suggest that he had used certain moneys in his possession to recoup gambling losses.

Further suggestions put to him as coming from accused witness described as pure fiction. Accused had admitted from the first that she was entirely to blame, witness said.

The cross-examination wa6 not completed when the hearing was adjourned.