FOUND GUILTY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 113, 25 February 1950, Page 6

FOUND GUILTY

CHARGES OF FALSE PRETENCES GARAGE PROPRIETOR STANDS TRIAL (P.A.) GISBORNE, Feb. 24. After a trial lasting', five days the jury in the Supreme Court tonight found Charles Beecher, aged 35, garage proprietor, of J.C.B. Motors, Gisborne, guilty of 41 charges of false pretences. He was alleged to have defrauded the New Zealand Guarantee Corporation of £16,898 in the sale of second-hand motor vehicles. Mr Justice Hay remanded accused for sentence.

The Crown Prosecutor, Mr F. W. Nolan, said the charges concerned the sale of vehicles which were wrongly represented to the Corporation, higher deposits and prices being sliown in the papers sent forward. Before March, 1949, accused conducted two motor selling businesses, J.C.B. Motors and Civic Motors. In March, Beecher made over Civic Motors to William M. Ford and Desmond Paul O’Connor, and the business became DeLuxe Motors. The Crown alleged that no money was paid for the business by Ford and O’Connor, who had no prior knowledge of selling cars. Their evidence, was that they were paid £lO a week by Beecher and an occasional bonus. Counsel said that as payments were made into DeLuxe Motors’ account at the bank, the money, or nearly all of it, was invariably withdrawn within a day or so, and in a large number of cases went into Beecher’s account at another bank or into J.C.B. Motors and found its way into accused’s * bank, largely in the form of cash. About £19,000 had been paid into DeLuxe Motors’ account and all transactions amounted to £22,000.

For the defence, Mr L. T. Burnard said that Beecher, who until three years ago was a freezing worker, had started late in life as a salesman. With an increasing' business turnover Beecher found it desirable to get rid of certain aspects of his work. Ford and O’Connor then clime alopg and took over DeLuxe Motors. Mr Burnard said that because Beecher at times gave help with prices or sent customers to DeLuxe Motors it had been said by some witnesses that he was “mixed up with the business.” When it was sliown that £25,000 had been paid into' Beecher’s account it was assumed that Beecher had been doing extraordinarily well. In the previous four months it had been shown that Beecher had lodgments amounting to £30,000. It was natural that money should be paid by DeLuxe Motors to Beecher because of the wholesale nature of the business.

Summing up, his Honour said that 33. of the 42 charges related to transactions concerning DeLuxe Motors operated by Ford and O’Connor. On the face of the documents there was no mention of accused, but a man might be guilty even though his name did not appear on the documents. The false pretences were ostensibly those of Ford and O’Connor, but if the jury was satisfied with the facts and the general circumstances as presented by the Crown that the accused was a party to those actions, he was equally guilty as though he had signed his name to the documents. Intent to defraud had to be inferred from the facts.