A woman has described how she was 'absolutely horrified' to discover that her building society account had been 'closed'.

Doreen Moore told a jury at Bradford Crown Court on Wednesday that she had gone to the Keighley branch of the Britannia to update her passbook in September 1995.

But when a cashier checked the records Miss Moore was told that her account, which contained more than £19,000, had been closed. "I was absolutely horrified," she said.

Miss Moore said she had the money set aside as a 'nest egg' in case she became ill and had never reported her passbook stolen or lost.

The prosecution alleged that Julie Dunn, 25, stole almost £13,000 from Miss Moore's account while she worked at the Keighley branch. She is also accused of stealing cash from the accounts of two other investors.

Dun, of Weston Street, Keighley, denied 23 charges of theft between June 1994 and June 1995.

She is alleged to have filled out forms for lost or stolen passbooks and transferred the money to new accounts from which she then withdrew cash.

Miss Moore and another investor, Clifford Freeman, both confirmed that they had never reported their books missing and said signatures on the application forms were not theirs.

Mr Freeman said he only became aware that his money was missing when he received correspondence from the building society asking him to confirm that he had closed his account.

Prosecutor Andrew Stubbs told the jury there were security safeguards but there was evidence that suggested the safeguards were slack.

"The defendant took advantage of this, combining her dishonesty with their slack procedures," he alleged.

He said transactions of between £500 and £1,000 required a supervisor's card to be 'swiped' through the computer and should have been witnessed by the supervisor. However, the card was in fact left unsupervised and Mr Stubbs alleged that Dunn had exploited that weakness.

Mr Stubbs alleged that regular withdrawals were made during 1995 and in the four days leading up to June 3 four withdrawals of the maximum amount were made.

"Why did the stealing stop?" asked Mr Stubbs.

"The prosecution says that both the sudden increase in the number of thefts and the sudden cessation is explained by the fact that June 3 was the last day the defendant, Julie Dunn, worked as a cashier at the Keighley branch of the Britannia building society - she had gone to work somewhere else."

The trial continues.

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