Accountant’s Big Haul

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 570, 24 January 1929, Page 1

Accountant’s Big Haul

ADMITS STEALING £1,238

“It Is All Gone Now”

HAVING made a clean breast of the theft of £1 2<?B R« Victor William Cunningham, accountant and cashier at the Farmers Co-op. Auctioneering Company’s Auckland °fflce, from whose funds the money was taken, was committed at the Police Court this morning to the Supreme Court for sentence.

/“'HARG KS of stealing sums of money ranging from £3Bl 13s Id down to £1 ITS 6d were preferred against Cunningham, the offences being said to have taken place between February, 1926. and the end of last year. According to John Herbert Hurne, manager of the Auckland branch of the Farmers’ Co-op. Auctioneering Co., Cunningham had been employed with the firm since 1919, during the last tour years of which he had been cashier and accountant in the Auckland branch at a salary of £338 a rear. The defalcations were discovered in December of last year. Reginald Percy Hazard, a public accountant and auditor, said that, going through the firm’s books in December, 1928, he discovered irregularities which dated back to February, 1926. Cunningham had evidently received money on behalf of the firm, signing the carbon copy of the receipt book, but failing to put the amounts through the cash-book. Witness discovered false entries made in the books to hide deficiencies, and it was evident that some of the misappropriations had been /nude to cover earlier

deficiencies. The total deficiencies would be about £1,238 Bs. Detective MeWhirter produced statements made by accused, in which he frankly confessed his financial activities during the last two years. At the head of his statement Cunningham had written a number of amounts, 24 in all, which represented money used by him to cover deficiencies which occurred in firm’s cash after he had taken money from it. All these 24 amounts related to cheques paid into the firm’s account by A. S. Paterson and Co. The other three sums —there being 27 charges—were sums paid in by other firms. “I used Paterson’s cheques because that firm always enclosed its own receipt forms, and there was less chance of detection,” continued Cunningham. “I paid the cheques into the firm’s account, but did not put them through the cash book, thus hiding other deficiencies. I wasted the money generally, but it is all gone now. I never took any large amounts.” Mr. R. A. Singer entering a plea of guilty, Cunningham was committed for sentence, and bail was fixed in one surety of £SOO.