Wine, Women & Wrong

"I like to think of banking," said Bank President Tony Burton in John P. Marquand's Point of No Return, "as . . . the most basically human business that there is in the world." Last week, Tony Burton got some backhanded support for his assertion from the FBI's Inspector Lee R. Pennington, who investigates bank frauds. Addressing a conference of the National Association of Mutual Savings Banks in Washington, Pennington said that most of last year's frauds (total lost: $3,000,000) were traceable to some fairly common human failings: gambling, drink, women. High living, big debts, bad business management were also to blame, and, in the case of thefts by women, men.

Pennington did not think bankers had done all they could to forestall thefts; in many cases, he said, even a cursory check would have shown that the employees involved had been living far beyond their means. The FBIman suggested that bankers make a practice of giving their bookkeepers and tellers their vacations "during the period when statements are forwarded or passbooks balanced"--and check up.

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