Gambling details emerge in alleged tax thief's trial

Wednesday 04 January 2017

A former tax worker alleged to have stolen tax payments totalling over £800 had penned a cheque for £500 to a friend that bounced on the same day that a £475 tax payment went missing, it emerged at trial yesterday afternoon.

Carl Frankum stands accused of two counts of theft - £475 in 2012 and £350 in 2013 - from the States of Jersey during his time working as a Payments and Electronic Submissions Team (PEST) Officer; he denies both charges.

During the first day of the trial held at the Magistrates Court, the jury listened to a transcript of interviews between the case's main investigating officer, Mr Patterson of the Financial Crimes Unit, and Mr Frankum in which details emerged of the defendant's apparent penchant for gambling.

Although Mr Frankum had said in his initial interview under caution that he did not know how to gamble, after signing a document allowing the Unit to investigate his bank accounts, it was revealed in the two subsequent interviews that he had, in fact, used his credit card at betting shop William Hill on several occasions during trips to Southampton. 

During his second interview in November 2014, Mr Frankum said that he had placed bets on football, participated in the lottery and occasionally would "have a go on the horses." Despite being pressed by Mr Patterson, Mr Frankum maintained: "I'm not a gambler, I just do a few football bets like anybody else."

The records also showed that he had withdrawn multiple small amounts of cash from ATMs within a lunchtime period while he had been working as a PEST officer.

In questioning, Mr Patterson had commented: "You did these cash withdrawals during your lunch period at work... It just tends to suggest that you've gone to the bookies."

Mr Frankum responded that the accusation was "not fair", later adding, "you're just picking two and two and making five."

Later referring to the £500 cheque, which bounced due to Mr Frankum's account being overdrawn, Mr Patterson summarised that it appeared "too much of a coincidence" that a £475 ITIS tax payment went missing on the same day in June 2012.

But the defendant remained adamant about his innocence: "If I’ve done weird things at wrong times and spent too much then fair enough…. This is the whole thing that we said in the first place. I can’t remember."

"I have not stolen any money. I am not a thief," he added.

During cross-examination by defending Advocate Ian Jones, Mr Patterson agreed that "the defendant's inability to recall was a recurring theme."

In interviews, it was suggested that this related to Mr Frankum's ongoing cancer treatment, which involved an "aggressive" form of radiotherapy that he said had affected him "emotionally, physically, [and] mentally."

The treatment had not only caused him significant hair and weight loss, but, during its more intense moments had meant that he, "can't recall what I did this time last month."

Three of Mr Frankum's former Tax Office colleagues later provided testimonies.

Dominic Winch, who had previously worked alongside Mr Frankum as a member of PEST, agreed with Advocate Jones that occasionally there were discrepancies between the "ideal versus reality" in terms of cash tax payment processing practices. While PEST employees were usually expected to immediately take payments made at the Cyril Le Marquand House help desk to their line manager, he admitted that occasionally there were "instances where people have forgotten they've taken payments downstairs" and subsequently left the money in a secure cash box behind the desk, rather than taking it to the PEST offices immediately.

Despite this, Christopher Le Breton, Assistant Comptroller at the Tax Office, and Richard Golding, who managed PEST at the time, both stated that they were not aware of any other instances of cash payments going missing aside from the charges for which Mr Frankum is indicted.

"To my knowledge, these are the only two instances where cash has gone missing," Mr Le Breton said.

Mr Golding remarked that after the first incident missing payment of £475 had come to light, PEST formally changed their cash-handling procedure in January 2014. 

"We had to do everything we could to prevent a repetition so that meant getting all the cash upstairs as it’s received, as soon as the contact’s taken place… because it was felt that the only way that the 475 quid had disappeared was that if it had been left on the help desk, which doesn’t have any protection, that the cashier had been distracted and that everything had been swiped… so this was an attempt to remove that risk, if you like, of things just being left out,” he commented.

During the closing moments of yesterday's session, Mr Golding agreed under questioning by Advocate Jones that what appeared to be Mr Frankum's signatures on two retrieved receipts pertaining to the missing quantities "aren't exactly alike", with differences in flourish on the letter 'C', and only one of the signatures ending with a full stop.

The trial continues this morning.