Accountant stole $1.6m from client

An accountant found guilty of stealing more than $1.6 million from the estate of an elderly client as she descended into dementia has been jailed for more than seven years.

Robert Charles Atherley had more than 30 years professional experience, and was the accountant, held power of attorney and was eventually made the legal guardian of 88-year-old Mary Taylor Eva before she died in 2006.

Atherley was so close to the elderly woman that when she became increasingly frail, he arranged live-in carers which allowed her to stay at her long-time home in Pingelly.

But prosecutors said for eight years before and after her death, Atherley was also engaged in a “deliberate, concerted and persistent series of stealing” from the woman, transferring money from her accounts into his own, and his wife.

Those thefts continued even after Ms Taylor’s death in 2006, when another $318,000 was taken by Atherley as executor of her will – while the genuine beneficiaries of her estate were kept in the dark for seven months.

After family members realised something was seriously amiss, they launched Supreme Court action in 2008.

And it was then Atherley attempted to hide what District Court judge Simon Stone described as his “systematic plundering” of the old woman’s money.

The court was told using accounting software at his accounting business, Atherley concocted work he said he had done for Ms Taylor which matched some of the monies he had taken.

He produced these invoices during Supreme Court hearings in 2009 and 2010.

“The State contends that Mr Atherley was desperately looking for some professional services he could point to which he could use to justify the hundreds of thousands of dollars he had stolen from Ms Eva’s accounts after her death,” the judge wrote.

After a judge alone trial, Judge Stone convicted Atherley of the thefts before and after Ms Eva died – and also found him guilty of committing perjury during the earlier Supreme Court hearings.

And today he jailed him for seven and a half years on two counts of stalling and one of perjury, saying Atherley had shown no remorse over his repeated thefts from a particularly vulnerable victim.