£5 TOTE TICKETS FORGED IN AUCKLAND

Grey River Argus, 29 March 1948, Page 5

£5 TOTE TICKETS FORGED IN AUCKLAND

Club’s Considerable Losses Over Past Year Police Action Taken On Saturday P.A. AUCKLAND, March.2B Racecourse forgeries, on an extensive and an increasing scale, have been carried gm by operators upon the Auckland Racing Club's totalisator for nearly a year. Over this period, the club has been losing at each of its meeting large sums ot money paid out on forced £5 win tickets. ’ The police are now in possession of forged tickets valued at about £l5OO from the Ellerslie course. These are all from only two days of racing since Christmas, indicating _that the fraud has been on a large scale. Before that the club had followed the usual practice of destroying tickets after they had been passed for payment. The police were thus unable to retrieve all of the forged tickets or which payment was made at the previous meetings It is stated that the method adopted by the persons concerned in the forgeries was to buy £5 tickets, apd, when the race had been run, to change the number to that corresponding with the number of the winning horse. A small plant was used to alter the numbers on the tickets. This plant was secreted in an outbuilding on the course. POLICE TAKE TICKETS The forgeries were investigated by Senior Detective F. N. Aplin, and Detective Sergeant M. J. Ross. A special effort was made by these officials on Saturday, and they were assisted by Detectives O. L. Freeman and W. A. Austin. As the result of their inquiries, two £5 win tickets, representing a payment of £47 12s 6d on two races, were confiscated. One ticket was presented at a totalisator window after the first race, and the other after the second race. Hitherto, comparatively few cases of forged dividend tickets have been reported in Auckland. In 1932, three forged winning tickets were discovered at Alexandra Park after a trotting meeting. A forged ticket was then detected by a clerk at the following Avondale fixture. All of the tickets were ingenious limitations, the only difference between them and the actual tickets issued being minute variations in the signature endorsed on them. An arrest was made on that occasion, and the offender was convicted of attempting to obtain from the Avondale Jockey Club £7 10s by falsely representing that the totalisator ticket was a good and valid order for the amount. After the confiscation of tickets on Saturday, three men were arrested. They will appear before the Court on charges of theft from the Auckland Racing Club. Strike in Japan TOKIO, March 26. Three hundred thousand Government workers began a “vacation ’ strike at midnight. Unless negotiations are successful to-day, 700,000 other workers are expected to join the strikers in a series of zonal “vacations” within the next few days.

The occupation forces are not affected, but all other telephone, telegraph, and postal services were tied un to-day. Tram services were suspended for two hours this morning.