Court jails Conaty
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• An office manager for a haulage firm who altered cheques and pocketed more than 225,000 of his employers' money, claimed his £13,000 annual salary was 'less than he was worth'.
At Isleworth Crown Court on Friday Thomas Conaty of North Greens, Edinburgh admitted three specimen charges of stealing 21,000 from Martin Donahue Haulage in Ealing between January 1986 and January 1987 and asked for 21 similar charges to be considered.
He was jailed for nine months.
Conaty planned to leave the company at Christmas 1986 but stayed on to train his successor, said Karl Scholz, prosecuting. Conaty gave a cheque for £274 to Donahue for his signature. Only the figures were filled in and when the cheque was returned it was found to have had 21,000 added to it. When Conaty was questioned by his boss he admitted making the alteration and doing likewise to numerous other cheques. The total loss to the company over the year was 225,196, said Scholz.
Conaty's troubles began when he had an affair with a woman who persuaded him to back her in business 'with disastrous results', said Angus Ekserdjian, defending. He fell heavily into debt before the business collapsed.
His efforts to repair his marriage meant his travelling regularly to his wife's home in Scotland and he got further into debt.
During his time with the firm he worked "extremely hard and did much to contribute to its success", said Ekserdjian, 'but he felt he ought to have been paid what he was worth'.