Embezzler Found in Shandon

EDINBURGH EVENING NEWS, THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 1957

BANK TELLER EMBEZZLED £2980 ON WEDDING EVE

A 26 year old bank teller who embezzled £2980 two days before his wedding day went to London for a period of ‘highly riotous existence’, the Procurator Fiscal, Mr Robert MacDonald, said in Glasgow Sheriff Court today.

A month late he was found penniless and dressed like a tramp near his fiancee’s home.

The teller, Ian Kirkton, of Cripps Avenue, Clydebank, was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment after he had pleaded guilty to embezzling £2980 between June 10 and June 13 while acting as a teller at the Wellmeadow branch of the Bank of Scotland.

Mr MacDonald said that Kirkton had planned to be married on June 15. When he did not report for work on June 14 an examination of the cash at the bank disclosed that £2980 was missing. The cash had been extracted in notes from various bundles in the safe.

APPEARED UNAWARE

‘It would appear as if the work had been quite a studious one, because the extraction was such that any official making a rapid check of the cash would be misled’ said Mr MacDonald.

When found in Shandon on July 14, Kirkton appeared to be in a collapsed state, and he professed not to know anything about his previous actions. He appeared to be unaware of the marriage arrangements and that the bank had made arrangements to settle him in a house.

It was discovered that Kirkton had been in London for a period ‘living what can only be described as a highly riotous existence. The ladies who were interviewed there said he left London towards the beginning of July in order to go to Dublin. He seems to have spent some time in Dublin’.

A doctor who examined Kirkton concluded that the amnesia from which he was said to be suffering was bogus.

HANDED DOCUMENT

Mr Robert Martin, defending, said a doctor had found that Kirkton was suffering from hysterical amnesia.

Kirkton’s father had handed Kirkton a document on the night before the embezzlement.

‘I think on the verge of matrimony as he was, while greater men that he might not have been swept over the edge, it contains information that might place him in the state that he found difficulty in facing his fiancee’.