I have had at least a dozen people contact me about this story. This gal who worked for a city in Lincolnshire stole over $1million and used the money to buy Elvis Memorabilia. She was the clerk that was tasked with counting the coin that came from parking meters in the area. She simply took the coin and swapped it with bills from other receipts in the local authority and walked out with about $20,000 a month.
She is in jail for three years and the Crown Prosecution Service has seized the Elvis stuff and is selling it at auction. Experts say that although there are a few "good" pieces, most are routine and its possible that the auction won’t garner the amount lost.
The real problem for me is the attitude of the person who commented on the story. Its so striking that I will print the entire comment here:
Well this is what can happen when collecting beccomes an obsession.I
really feel sorry for the lady.I think taking away her collection would
have been punishment enough after all she was only taking the money the
council had "robbed" from people.
Parking fees are money that has been "robbed" from the people. I suggest that that attitude is pervasive, particularly in the UK. As an industry we need to work on this problem. Parking is a resource and it needs to be nurtured, protected, and the people who do it need to have an attitude of caring and helping the citizenry, not one of police action and enforcement. Change the attitude and my guess is that Julie Wall, 46, would have through again before she dipped into the till and stole the money she obviously felt was "robbed" from the local citizens. Note that she didn’t steal from the other revenue collected by the local authority to which she had access, but only the parking money.
JVH
