STATE FUNDS STOLEN

Taranaki Daily News, 10 June 1932, Page 9

STATE FUNDS STOLEN

TWO MEN CHARGED.

SUMS OF £6OO INVOLVED.

diaries Barton Stoughton, a clerk in the Tasmanian Public Health Department, and Thomas Joseph O’Shea, a State Treasury officer, pleaded guilty in the Hobart Police Court recently, before Mr. H. B. White, P.M., to charges of having stolen Government funds. Both men were remanded for sentence at the sittings of the Supreme Court. The charge against Stoughton was that at Hobart, between October, 1931, and April last, he stole £6lB, the property of the Government of Tasmania. O’Shea was charged with having, between January, 1930, and April 30 last, stolen £600; the proceeds of the sale of revenue stamps. The prosecutor read statements made by each of the accused men. Stoughton had said he had used some of the cash in his keeping to go to the races. He lost and continued to lose. He then took to, drink. He covered up . his tracks by false „entries. O’Shea said he was' in charge of the issue of revenue stamps. In 1930 he found a shortage of about £l2O in the stamps and cash in his possession. He sold £3OO worth of superannuation fund bonds of which he had the custody to recoup the stamp money. With the balance he began gambling. His deficiency increased. Bail was granted to O’Shea, but not to Stoughton.