Police cannont find suspect

[susiebun]

Hi All
I am a newbie here, so be gentle with me, I have stumbled across this website by accident, and from what I have read, I am very impressed!
I hope someone can answer my question....
I employed a guy about 2 years ago from an employment agency as an accounts clerk. He consequently stole in the region of £40k from my company and almost bankrupted me. He was interviewed by police, and it emerged that he had a previous conviction and indeed had served a prison sentence for this. Now i know this raises a lot of questions about the emp agency etc, but really thats not what is bothering me. After far too long in my opinion, the PPS have decided to issue a summons on him, but when they tried to serve the summons, were told that he had 'left the country', leaving just a note for his wife and children.
When I asked what happens now, i basically got a shrug of the shoulders, and whilst chatting with friends this evening, and drinking a bottle of wine, for the stress of it, my friends husband has told me that there is a time limit serving a summons, can someone enlighten me on this, if he is out of the country, can the police track him down and extradite him or something.
I have accepted i will not get my money back, but I may be able to get some sort of compensation on comviction
sorry if this is long winded

susie

[trt]

I would have thought that if he had fiddled 40K from your company, why are you asking on a on-line forum and not you solicitors?

Thats a lot of money not to be missed.

[susiebun]

the money was missed, that why he is being prosecuted, and i will ask my solicitor who will probably charge me handsomely for the privledge of giving me the answer.
I merely asked a question and thought someone would be kind enough to give me an answer.

[Euroanchor]

I would look to sue the employment agency, the guy was sent to you by them, and as such was legally an employee of the agency. They should have made appropriate background checks before sending him to anyone.
They can then try to get the money back from this guy,

[merciasounds]

Something similar happened to a friend of mine, she got lots of help from the citizens advice bureau - give them a try, they're training solicitors and you only have to give a donation if you want to.

[susiebun]

thanks for the advice, believe it or not, he actually started temping with the agency whilst he was awaiting trial, and he had references which checked out. I did check the same references and they also checked out, one was genuine, a company he had worked for before the first company he stole from, but one was bogus, actually his brother or some member of his family. He was actually employed by me, I just paid a 'finders fee' to the agency, they were as ripped of as I was.
I didnt get to speak to my solicitor today, but what i was wondering at the start and if anyone can tell me on here, how long do the police have to serve a summons, because, I have heard on the grapevine that he has left the country to avoid being served a summons, I thought things like this would never close. It more about justice now than it is about the money, we have accepted and written this off

[Dee Sa]

seriously think about placing an ad in his local paper on the lines of does anyone know the whereabouts of ------------ and state reward offered [ but not how much !] , you would be surprised what people will do for money and put to a POBox number .

[clairson59]

The offence he committed is an indictable offence which would be tried in a crown court unless he plead guilty at the start of proceedings at a magistrates court and did not elect to go to trial. As such there is no time limit on prosecution. They have to find him first though.