A woman accused of stealing her children's $500,000 inheritance and blowing it on pokies will stand trial in the ACT Magistrates Court today, charged with 229 counts of theft.
Police allege Katherine Hawcroft, of Latham, secretly sold a property she was holding in trust for her children and nieces, and gambled the money on poker machines at several licensed clubs in Canberra.
Hawcroft's trial, on a charge of stealing $523,000 from the family's heirs, was due to begin yesterday, but her barrister Shane Gill challenged the indictment prepared by the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Mr Gill argued a separate charge should apply each time Hawcroft was alleged to have withdrawn money from the account in which she lodged the proceedings of the sale.
Prosecutor Chris Todd told visiting judge Justice Shane Marshall though the DPP did not accept Mr Gill's argument, he would draft a new indictment that would see Hawcroft go on trial charged with 229 thefts.
Hawcroft's parents entrusted her to manage an investment property, the Victor Lodge Hotel, in Kingston in 1994.
She was to hold the property in trust for her three children and the two daughters of her brother, Phillip Prineas, until the youngest of the children reached the age of 25 in 2011.
Prosecutors allege Hawcroft sold the hotel to its tenants for $700,000 more than $200,000 below market value in November 2000 without telling any of the heirs.
Police said she admitted selling Victor Lodge and gambling most of the proceeds at the Tradies in Dickson, the West Belconnen Leagues Club and a smaller amount, $8000, at the Canberra Casino when they interviewed Hawcroft in May 2006.
Police allege Hawcroft put more than $800,000 through poker machines over two years at the Tradies club. After she ''self-excluded'' herself from the club in August 2000, she moved most of her pokies spending to the West Belconnen Leagues club.
Her niece Christina Prineas told police she had only learned her inheritance had been sold four years after the transaction.
Ms Prineas was told by her cousin Jacqueline Hawcroft, the defendant's daughter.
After confronting their aunt about the allegations, Ms Prineas and her sister, Antigony, went to a lawyer, who called police.
Hawcroft will be charged with stealing $523,498 from her two nieces and her own three children. None of Hawcroft's children have lodged a complaint over the matter.
But the Prineas sisters each claim $183,000, one-fifth of the market value of Victor Lodge at the time of the sale.
Prosecutors sought permission to interview Hawcroft's brother, Philip Prineas, at the National Capital Private hospital earlier this year, where the 66-year-old was gravely ill with prostate cancer.
He was not expected to live until the trial date.
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