Case of the Missing Funds

The Newark neighbor's of Brewery Cashier George J. Brueckner wondered how, on take-home pay of $87 weekly, he managed to own two cars, keep a daughter in college, and plunk down $23,000 in cash for a house. The answer: he withheld receipts sent to the brewery to perfect his own "unbeatable" system of betting on the horses, but contrived to balance the company books at the end of each month. Finally, the shortage reached $125,000 and Brueckner could cover up no more. He confessed, and was sentenced to prison for embezzlement.

With as many variations as victims involved, the case of George Brueckner was repeated thousands of times in U.S. businesses last year. After totting up all the figures, Baltimore's Fidelity and Deposit Co., the nation's No. 1 bonder of business employees, estimated last week that during 1955 businessmen lost some $500 million from employee embezzlement --almost as much as they lost by fire.

Not always is the embezzler an underling trying to pad out a slim paycheck. When the president of Chicago's MidAmerican Steel Warehouse saw his profits slumping deeper and deeper, he decided to make one final effort to save his business. To bring in new working capital he took more than $100,000 and went on a gambling expedition to Las Vegas. MidAmerican went bankrupt anyway.

And in Seattle, even automation was blamed for embezzlement. Fearing that she might be put out of a job by the department's new automatic accounting machines, a traffic bureau clerk made off with incoming traffic fines to prove that the machines were not dependable. Accounting reports -- machine-made -- soon showed up a discrepancy in her accounts and trapped her.

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