WESTERN BUREAU — The case against a Montego Bay-based IT firm owner accused of defrauding customers and clients, was on Monday put off for the third time after he again failed to retain a lawyer.

Horace Haughton is to reappear before the RM Court today when he should have secured the services of an attorney.

The Montego Bay Resident Magistrate’s Court was however told that he had approached attorney, Clive Mullings.

“It is a hope that is being entertained by Mr Haughton,” Mullings told the court, adding that he had only been approached yesterday morning.

Haughton, who heads the recently defunct Softcom Limited in the resort city, is facing 35 counts of obtaining money by false pretence.

The Pitfour, St James resident is also facing a charge of simple larceny in connection with the theft of a television set and a bed spread from the Cariblue Hotel in Montego Bay. The two items are valued at $17,500.

On May 5, he reportedly booked into the hotel where he paid for five nights, using a cheque valued at $12,500. He later asked that a television set be brought to his room and hotel personnel complied by adding a 20-inch Sharp television.

But when they returned to the room the following day, Haughton was missing, along with the television and the bed spread.

In respect of the fraud case, more than 300 Softcom employees attracted the police’s attention to his alleged financial impropriety when they staged a demonstration outside the company’s Church Street office on May 6. They demanded to be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars they said were owed to them by Haughton.

Workers were reportedly hired with promises of as much as $60,000 per month after statutory deductions, while others were told they could earn up to $7,000 weekly. But before they were guaranteed employment they had to pay the company over $3,500 towards the purchase of uniforms, which they never received.

Their jobs included data entry computer graphics, telemarketing and the sale of insurance to the public; but the bank dishonoured the cheques Haughton used to pay them.

Haughton also reportedly obtained computers and other office supplies on credit from various business places and paid with cheques that were also dishonoured by the bank.

On the day of the demonstration, however, he was nowhere to be found. But the police apprehended him in Kingston on Thursday, May 8.