Ex-employee charged for missing money at C.W.U.
Earlier this month, missing monies created chaos at the Christian Workers Union as accusations of misappropriation were levied at the organisation’s leadership. But tonight, the C.W.U. bosses have been vindicated as a police investigation into the matter has resulted in the arrest of a former employee. This afternoon it took over an hour for nineteen year old Alex Reed to be read one hundred and sixty-one counts of forgery and related offences in connection with the absence of eighteen thousand four hundred and fifty dollars from the C.W.U.’s account. Up until June, Reed had worked as an office assistant with the union but according to General Secretary James McFoy, the accused managed to get a hold of a chequebook which he used to make withdrawals. Administrators eventually caught on to the scam and immediately confronted Reed. McFoy says when Reed admitted to taking the money the union promptly fired him and called in the cops.
James McFoy, General Secretary, C.W.U.
“The problem is that the bank has ceased to give us cancelled cheques, which they usually used to give us along with the statement. They stopped giving us that, so all we get was a statement. So what actually happened, that is being mailed to us to our mailbox and he’s the same person that goes to the mailbox and withdraw all the mails within the box, so if he sees the statement then he’ll just destroys it. As we said before, the president said that he asked for from February up to May for the bank statement and excuses was being given that he noh receive it. As we’ve said to our members, we all make mistakes sometimes, probably the administrative situation was not that tight, because I said that trust was one of the things that we work under, we believe in you and we trust you, and probably that went too far where that person was concerned because as I said, the person got access to that chequebook because of the fact that we left it in the safe and I think the safe was left open and he—but we knew that we wouldn’t sign that cheque because that was not the chequebook that we were using, that cheque was just put one side, so when he signed it, we didn’t know until we asked. If the bank did not say that please transfer some money from one account to the other account, probably we noh even mi wah know.”
Reed appeared before Magistrate Sharon Frazer this afternoon where he was formally arraigned on charges including forty counts of forgery, forty counts of claiming on a forged document, and forty counts of possession of a forged document. Reed was offered bail in the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars. He could not meet bail and has been remanded to Hattieville prison until his next court date on the eight of October. According to McFoy, Reed had been working with the C.W.U. for just over a year.
