GAOLED FOR ONE YEAR

Hokitika Guardian, 31 October 1931, Page 5

GAOLED FOR ONE YEAR

AFTER THEFT OF £25,000.

(United Preas Association.—By Electru Telegraph.—Copyright.]

LONDON October 29

The ronmantic career of a seventyone year old ex-millionaire stockbroker, Sir Arthur Wheeler, was brought to a tragic close at Leicester Assizes, when lie was found guilty on twentyone counts of fraudulent conversion, totalling twenty-five thousand sterling. He received one year’s imprisonment, and bis partner. George Smith, was bound over for two years, The Judge said tiie gravest part of (fie punishment was the fact that Wheeler was found guilty and “that here in this city you have stood in the dock to bear it.” It was the irony of fate that, when tho same Judge was at the previous Leicester Assize. Wheeler, as Deputy-Lieutenant of the County of Leicester, attended him to form flu* Court, and sat on the bench near the Judge. Wheeler rose from being a junior clerk to a great fortune. He won national faille in respect of an organisation, the annual turnover of which Was ten millions. It employed 240 clerks, dealing with sixty thousand regular clients. Its circulating listtotalled half a million addresses, find its postal and printing bill exceeded twenty thousand sterling monthly. Thousands of investors relied implicitly on the judgment of Wheeler, who was knighted for his services during the war.