A DOCUMENT inadvertently left behind on a photocopier led to the discovery of financial irregularity, a court in Dublin heard yesterday.
A man who falsified work documents in order to transfer over €36,000 into his own bank account has been remanded on bail pending sentence by Judge Katherine Delahunt.
Joseph Sullivan (40), Huntsman’s Way, Lusk, Co Dublin, who was a payroll manager with Pioneer Investment Management, admitted to “siphoning” the money from his employer to pay off a €50,000 gambling debt, €13,000 of which he had borrowed.
He has already paid €50,000 to the company to both reimburse and compensate it.
Sullivan pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to dishonestly forwarding money to his own bank account and two charges of using an instrument, which he knew or believed to be false, with the intention of inducing another to accept it as genuine at Pioneer Investment Management, between June 2005 and May 2006.
Judge Delahunt said she was impressed with the manner in which Sullivan had made admissions to his employer before he had been confronted about his crime and that he had both refunded and compensated them.
She adjourned the case to July and ordered a probation service report for that date, when she said she may consider imposing a community service order.
Det Garda Maeve O’Sullivan told Michael Bowman, prosecuting, that Sullivan was in charge of ensuring wages were paid to staff and reimbursing holiday leave to employees who had left.
He was not permitted to sign off on any of these payments and had to send faxes to the company’s branch in France to get the relevant personnel’s signatures to authorise the transfer of funds.
Det Garda O’Sullivan said Pioneer Investment Management launched an internal investigation when an “unusual” office document was left behind on a photocopier. It was a fax that had the signatures of the personnel authorised to sign off on the company’s bank transactions taped to it.
Det Garda O’Sullivan said it was obvious the fax had been doctored and that the intention had been to photocopy it to pass it off as a legitimate signature from these people.
The company was initially unaware that it had incurred any financial loss and assumed the bogus document was simply a short cut to authorise legitimate payments.
Sullivan was interviewed by staff in July 2006 and told them that he had used the doctored fax when the signatory was not available before he openly admitted to using it to steal €37,000 from the company. He was immediately suspended and the company’s accounts were audited. It was then discovered that it was at a loss of €36,587.
Det Garda O’Sullivan agreed with Fergal Foley, defending, that Sullivan had no previous convictions and was unlikely to come before the courts again.
Sullivan had a severe gambling addiction at the time and genuinely regretted his actions which had represented a “gross breach of trust”. His wife had told him that if he started gambling again, she would leave him.
Mr Foley said Sullivan had since got a new job but his wife, who is a temporary teacher, was likely to lose her job in June due to recent cutbacks. His client would then be the sole provider “for this little family”.