Perthshire bank worker to stand trial accused of embezzlement

A Perthshire bank worker is to stand trial accused of embezzling more than £800,000 from customers at his branch.

Samuel Mackintosh is alleged to have stolen the vast sums of cash over the course of just over four months last year at the Bank of Scotland branch in Auchterarder High Street.

Prosecutors say he was working as a personal banking advisor at the branch at the time of the alleged offences.

Mackintosh is first alleged to have embezzled £45,766.54 from a bank account on March 24 last year.

He is then said to have embezzled a total of £475,000 from another account over the course of six transactions between July 4 and July 6 last year.

And finally, on August 4 last year, it is alleged he embezzled £300,000 from an account held by another customer.

Prosecutors say that in all the cases he transferred the money from the named accounts into other accounts as part of the alleged embezzlements.

Mackintosh, 27, of Perth, denied a total of six charges of embezzlement on indictment.

They are alleged to have been committed between March 24 and August 4 last year.

Defence solicitor David Holmes asked that the case be continued for him to make further investigations on the defence's behalf.

Sheriff Alastair Brown set a further pre-trial hearing in August.