Cheque fraud hits the sick and aged

AT LEAST pounds 100,000 held by the Government for the mentally ill and elderly has been stolen from accounts managed by the Public Trust Office.

Cheques with forged authorisation signatures were used to siphon money from 10 patients' accounts and more frauds may yet be revealed. The thefts have been taking place for a year, but were discovered only last week.

A spokesman for the Lord Chancellor's Department, which is responsible for the Public Trust Office, confirmed that police had been asked to investigate. He said that none of the Government's clients would lose money.

Revelation of the scandal is acutely embarrassing for the office, which employs 620 people, manages pounds 1bn and is meant to have an unimpeachable reputation. Staff in its protection division manage the assets of people deemed by the courts to be incapable of looking after their own finances. Its clients include the mentally ill, the senile, alcoholics and victims of crime and medical negligence.

The accounts held for the mentally incapable have a high rate of interest (8 per cent gross at present) and are opened in the name of the Accountant General of the Supreme Court. Each individual has an account in which interest accumulates.

Legal sources said that because the money had been stolen from individual accounts they could not see how the Lord Chancellor's Department could be confident that no patient would suffer.

The fraud appeared to be a highly professional job. Official cheques bore the forged signatures of higher executive officers, who are meant to approve payments. They were listed on the Public Trust payment schedule as being for repairs to patients' property.

The cheques were sent to accounts, set up with false names and addresses, in south London banks and building societies.

They were always for less than pounds 15,000 - pounds 14,500 was the largest payment. This may be because the fraudster knew that as a protection against money laundering, banks and building societies consider informing the Inland Revenue when cheques for pounds 15,000 or more are passed through individual accounts.

The fraud may have been made easier because the Public Trust Office's protection division has been in a state of confusion since it was reorganised last November.

In the past, two officers were responsible for monitoring each case. Clerical resources were pooled last year and the change, it is claimed, has made effective scrutiny more difficult.