COUNT SWINDLES A WAITER.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1395, 22 March 1912, Page 5

COUNT SWINDLES A WAITER.

WOLFF-METTERNICH CASE,

By Tclesraph-Presi AEsoclatton-Copjrleht Berlin, March 20. Count Gisbert Wolff-Motternich was acquitted on tho card-sharping charge, but was found guilty of defrauding a waiter, and sentenced to a week's imprisonment. Buios, a momber of an alleged interna-' tional gang of card-sharpers, who was tried with him, was sentenced to thirty j months' imprisonment for card-sharping. Count Gisbert Wolff-MeUernich, nephew of tho German Ambassador in London, was sentenced in October last to nine months' imprisonment for fraud. Ho was released in January, and re-arrested nsho stepped across tho threshold of the prison, on a charge of card-sharping. The Count, says "The Times," is a young man of 25, who from his earliest "years ha? shown unmistakable signs that he belongs to that class of semi-rcsponsiblo degenerates who offer such a singularly difficult problem to the moralist and the jurist, and whose mentality has been made a special study by Lombroso and other criminal, anthropologists. At the age of 15 ho attempted to commit suicide, and was for a short time placed under medical supervision in a private lunatic asylum. A few years later he was sent to a ranch in Chile, but after repeated failures both in America and Germany, ho finally returned to Berlin in May, 1909, having resolved to mend his fortunes by making a rich marriage. He ivas entirely without means except for air allowance of 30 marks a month which his father, who had lost all patience with him, gave him to pay for the rent of a room. For a year, however, he contrived to live' the life of a man about town ' with no other resources than his distinguished name and his prospects of being some day able to satisfy his creditors by marrying an heiress. In December, 1910, ho was arrested in Vienna on a charge of complicity with a person named Stallmann in some card-sharping frauds, and Bent to Berlin. This case did not at once come up for (rial, owing to the fact that Stallmann had not yet been arrested; but various charges of fraud datins from tho period of his residence in Berlin were brought against him, and led to tho recent (rial. ' ]