A PLAUSIBLE MAORI.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 4 October 1917, Page 2

A PLAUSIBLE MAORI.

LAST week we recorded the fact that a Maori named Marafcu Toko Mokau was arrested at the Springs for obtaining money andlodgings in Helensville on false'-,-pretences.

Yesterday the accused appeared before Mr F. V. Fraser, S.M., at Auckland, on the above charges, as well as masquerading at Helensville as a " wounded hero of the Sorame."

Senior-Sergt McNamara stated that the. young fellow was a Waikato native, who had never been to the war, but had been laid up in the Auckland Hospital for some time with an injured foot. Towards the end of last month he left the Hospital and went to Helensville in company with a Northern Maori. There he went to a hotel, and represented to the hotel-keeper that he was a wounded soldier, just returned, who had been injured on the Somtne battlefield. He borrowed 10s from the hotelkeeper, and got some days' board and lodging on the pretence that his remittance had not yet come to hand. He had many . tales of the war to tell, but when he wanted to borrow 35s from the hotelkeeper the latter became suspicious, and spoke to Mokau, who admitted that he. had not. been to the war, and left the hotel. He said he had been telling his stories of the .war "just for a lark." He went to the Springs, about two miles from Helensville, and there again posed as a returned soldier. He was regaling a circle of ; lady visitors with tales of the horrors of the war, and being in return, himself regaled with chocolates, afternoon tea, and admiration, when the constable once more came on the scene and arrested him.

Remarking that the only way to impress the younger generation of Maoris with the seriousness of this kind of deceit was to deal with him severely, His Worship sentenced Mokau to a month's imprisonment.