A Plea of Guilty

Miles Gregory stood for a moment blinking in the bright sunlight as the old warder closed the prison gate behind him. He was on his own. No other prisoners were being released that morning.

"There's a bus to the City about every 20 minutes from the stop at the next corner. You got your bus fare, didn't you?"

Miles ignored him. Now he was back on the outside he didn't have to snap to attention every time a warder spoke to him. But it had paid off and his sentence was reduced by six weeks 'for good conduct'.

It felt good to be wearing a suit and collar and tie again, even if they were a little crushed and dusty after being in the prisoners' property store. He was pleased to discover that the suit hung more loosely than it had a year ago. If nothing else, prison had made him fitter.

He never felt the crime with which he was charged merited a prison sentence. All he did was move some figures around in the Bank's records and divert some of the funds from accounts that had been inactive for years to a special account he set up for himself. He would have got away with it if it hadn't been for that kid in Internal Audit, who would have known more about computers when he was 12 years old than Miles ever would. As it was, he was caught before he had a chance to spend a cent of the diverted funds. But that was what he intended, although going to prison was not part of the plan.

He had the feeling that the nerd of an internal auditor suspected he was up to something. When the money from his little scheme began to roll in, he decided to give the auditor something to find that might satisfy his curiosity. He began a very amateurish diversion of funds from some old, inactive accounts with the express purpose of being found out and dismissed. He hadn't expected the new and inexperienced head of security would report the matter to the police. After all, the bank had not lost any money and could have avoided the publicity. But that was now water under the bridge or as Miles preferred to think of it, money through the cash register.

The lawyer he hired advised, "I suggest you plead guilty. That way you should get a suspended sentence and a good behaviour bond." So much for lawyers and their advice.

Before releasing him they gave back his wallet, about $30 in cash and two credit cards. He resisted the temptation to hail a passing cab and waited for the bus. He booked into a hotel and arranged for his suit to be cleaned and pressed, then went to a barber for a haircut and shave. Using the credit cards and his PIN he withdrew some cash from an automatic teller machine and obtained the balance of each account. The systems he set up before his hasty departure from the bank were still working. There was nearly half a million dollars in each account.

The lease of his furnished apartment expired while he was in prison. He was homeless but wealthy enough to lease the best apartment in Perth. But that might be a little too obvious.

He now had more than enough money to buy a secluded property near a quiet beach somewhere and live in unostentatious luxury. He had heard that the South Coast of New South Wales was a pleasant place to live. It also had the advantage of being on the other side of the continent from Western Australia where someone might remember him and wonder where the money was coming from.

Working in the Bank's Head Office had made it easy. He changed the system so that .05% of the interest charged to every loan account, in every branch was diverted into an account to which only he had access. Who would notice? Obviously nobody had and, by a trail which would be very difficult to follow, these individually insignificant amounts found their way into his accounts with two other banks.

The electronic transfer of funds within and between banks was a wonderful innovation but, as he claimed when it became common practice, it could be open to abuse. He had proved his point but wasn't about to shout it from the rooftops. Going to prison hadn't been part of the plan but the pay was good. That pimply nerd of an auditor might know a great deal about computers and their programs but he still had a lot to learn about banking.