State v. Plotner

Decision Date04 June 1920
Docket NumberNo. 21550.,21550.
Citation283 Mo. 83,222 S.W. 767
PartiesSTATE v. PLOTNER.
CourtMissouri Supreme Court

Appeal from Criminal Court, Jackson County; E. E. Porterfield, Judge.

James A. Plotner was convicted of forgery in third degree, and he appeals. Reversed and remanded.

See, also, 185 S. W. 192.

The defendant was convicted in the circuit court of Jackson county of forgery in the third degree, in violation of section 4653, R. S. 1909, and appealed. The amended information on which he was tried is as follows (caption and signatures omitted):

"Now comes Hunt C. Moore, prosecuting attorney for the state of Missouri, in and for the body of the county of Jackson, and upon his oath informs the court that John Edward Kornfeldt and James A. Plotner, whose Christian names in full are unknown to said prosecuting attorney, late of the county aforesaid, on the 14th day of September, 1914, at the county of Jackson, state of Missouri, did unlawfully and feloniously conspire, combine, and confederate with one another and together, with the felonious intent then and there to defraud the Mercantile Bank of Kansas City, Missouri, a moneyed, corporation (existing under the laws of Missouri and engaged in the general banking business in the city of Kansas City, Jackson county, Missouri), and customers, depositors, and patrons of said bank and corporation aforesaid, particularly one William H. Toiler, of the money and personal property of said bank aforesaid, and its said customers, depositors, and patrons, particularly said Toiler, and in pursuance of and to effectuate their said unlawful and felonious intent and purpose, did then and there unlawfully and feloniously cause to be made, and did make, a certain false entry and entries, in a certain book of accounts, then and there kept by said bank aforesaid, in which said book of accounts was then and there recorded and kept the accounts of said bank aforesaid, with its customers, depositors, and patrons, and particularly the account of the said William H. Toiler, its customer, depositor, and patron as aforesaid, thus and thereby unlawfully and feloniously, by then and there making and entering the figures `200,' did then and there add and enter a charge of two hundred dollars ($200.00) against said Toiler, depositor of said bank, as aforesaid, on said book of accounts, and then and there and thus and thereby unlawfully and feloniously did diminish and discharge the existing pecuniary obligation of said bank aforesaid to said Toiler in the sum and to the amount of two hundred dollars ($200.00), and at the same time and by the same act, and with the same unlawful and felonious intent and purpose, did then and there in manner and form as aforesaid create an, as well as increase the, existing pecuniary obligation of said Toiler to said bank aforesaid, in the sum of and to the amount of two hundred dollars ($200.00), which said hook of accounts with the said false and fraudulent entry and entries therein unlawfully and feloniously made as aforesaid, the said defendants, John Edward Kornfeldt and James A. Plotner, did unlawfully and feloniously intend to and did deliver to the officers of said bank, to wit, George H. Ruddy, George M. M. Edwards, directors and officers of said bank, and William T. Kemper and others, persons then and there dealing with said bank aforesaid, and to the said William II. Toiler, depositor of said bank aforesaid, against the peace and dignity of the state."

On a severance the trial proceeded against Plotner. John Edward Kornfeldt at the time of the trial had pleaded guilty, was under sentence to serve two years in the penitentiary, and at liberty on parole. He was the principal witness for the state.

The defendant, in August, 1914, and thereafter, was an attorney, with an office in the Lathrop Building, Kansas City, Mo., and a depositor in the `Mercantile Bank mentioned in the information. At that time Kornfeldt, a young man 22 years of age and married, was a bookkeeper in the bank, and had charge of those books representing the alphabet from K to Z, covering Plotner's account. Plotner had done Kornfeldt some favors, so as to arouse a feeling of obligation on Kornfeldt's part. About August 17, 1914, Plotner requested Kornfeldt to come to his office, which Kornfeldt did. Plotner then told Kornfeldt that he was expecting certain checks to come through the bank, which he would not have money deposited to cover. He had a check for $200 coming through that day, and asked Kornfeldt to "take care of it." Kornfeldt was unable to see how he could take care of it, in the absence of sufficient deposit to Plotner's credit. Plotner suggested that it could be handled by charging the amount to some other depositor who had ample deposit, and promised that he would make it good the following day. The check was accordingly presented, drawn by James A. Plotner, payable to B. Himberg. Kornfeldt carried out the scheme by charging the amount, $200, on the cash journal, to the account of William Toiler, a depositor. No windfall came to Plotner that night or afterwards, and the amount still remained charged to the account of William Toiler. Instead of having resources by which to make good the shortage, Plotner, apparently, was incurring continual drafts upon his resources, and a few days later drew another check for $100 and Kornfeldt carried out the same sort of a scheme to cover up the transaction. Kornfeldt seemed to be completely under the influence of Plotner, and ready to do anything the latter requested in the direction indicated, although he hoped and expected all the time, he said, that Plotner soon would make his shortages good. He endeavored at times to get Plotner to straighten out the trouble, and was put off with promises and plausible explanations. Plotner's chronic need of money caused a repetition of the transaction mentioned through a period of about three months, until his total peculations amounted to $9,800. Among the checks so drawn and paid was one for $200, dated September 11, 1914, drawn by Plotner, payable to Hoff, Meservey, German & Michael, which was charged to the account of William Toiler September 14, 1914. This was the check and the false entry described in the information.

About the middle of January, 1915, the Mercantile Bank was merged with the Commerce Trust Company of Kansas City, and when negotiations looking to that merger began, and some time prior to the merger, Kornfeldt told Plotner about it, and Plotner began to figure some way to escape the inevitable discovery which would follow an examination of the Mercantile Bank's books. He suggested several methods to bluff the matter through, and finally advised Kornfeldt to go to Kansas until he (Plotner) could fix it up, and Kornfeldt went. Plotner then, acting, he said, as attorney for Kornfeldt, went to the officers of the Mercantile Bank and told them Kornfeldt had been embezzling funds of the bank, and had confessed the same to him in his capacity as counsel; he suggested that a settlement in some way should be arranged. Before any definite conclusion of that matter, Kornfeldt returned from Kansas, was arrested, and gave all the facts to the police officers. Finally Plotner substantially admitted his guilt; that he had got practically all the money he was charged with getting, by means of checks which he drew on his own account and which were charged by Kornfeldt to the accounts of others. It turned out that the $200 check, the entry in regard to which constituted the offense for which the defendant was convicted, was drawn to pay a claim against Plotner, a claim which he owed for an account he had collected for some person.

The entry under consideration was made in the "cash journal" of the bank. It never appeared on Toiler's passbook, but the entry on the cash journal affected Toiler's account, in that it reduced his deposit account $200, and thus reduced the obligation of the bank to him that much. It is not shown that this false entry relating to the $200 appeared on any other book kept by the bank. The purpose for which the "cash journal" containing the false entry was kept, the use to which it was put, and what was done with it, were explained by several witnesses for the state. Kornfeldt testified that after the entry was made in the book that it was intended to be delivered to "any one coming in who wished to look at it." He did actually deliver the book to the board of directors of the bank, and to the committee appointed by the bank as the auditing committee to check the book up.

"They came and asked me for it, and I took it to them. That is a delivery, as nearly as I can figure it out. I carried it into the directors' room and laid it down on the table."

He then said, if William H. Toiler had come in there and inquired for the book, it was there for the purpose of delivery to him. This was for the purpose of inspection in the bank. Kornfeldt testified further that at the time of the merger of the Mercantile Bank and the trust company, before the delivery of the books of the bank to the trust company, he worked one whole day on Plotner's passbook in order to balance it up and deliver it to him. He did not say that any false entries were in that passbook, and it may be inferred from his testimony that he was working to get entries in it that ought to have been there at the time of the transactions mentioned.

George H. Ruddy, who was cashier of the Mercantile Bank at the time, of the transactions mentioned, swore that the cash journal in which the false entries appeared was under the control of Kornfeldt, whose duty as a bookkeeper was to take charge of it, and to deliver it "to me or any other officer of the bank, or any of our directors, or to our examining committee, as provided by the statute, or the clearing house examiner, or any customer who desired to examine his account in good faith, or any stockholder who wished to make an examination." He...

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