MAGISTRATE’S COURT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 182, 3 July 1937, Page 10

MAGISTRATE’S COURT.

FALSE PRETENCE CHARGES. Per Press Association. . ’DUNEDIN, July 2. Described by the chief detective as premeditated and deliberate frauds on the State, charges of false pretence under the Unemployment Act were preferred this morning against William Albert Sutherland, Douglas Robert Forrester, Andrew Lee Baird and Hugh Wilson Gray. The police stated that in the jiast some men had been fined for obtaining relief by false declarations, bnt fines seemed to lie no deterrent, and in these present cases the men were charged with false pretence, which allowed the additional penalty of imprisonment.

These four men were employed at one wool store, he said, and in two oi the cases when the department's inquiry officer sought information there he was told by the man in charge that the accused were not working there, which was a deliberate lie. The charges were laid under the Justices of the Peace Act providing for a three months’ penalty or a £2O fine. There were 10 informations against Sutherland, a married man aged 33 with two children; 12 against Baird, aged 30, married, with one child ; nine informations against Forrester, aged 28 years, single, and seven against Gray, a single man aged 40. Accused were remanded in custody till Monday while the Magistrate considers 1 the penalties. AUCKLAN D OFFENCES. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, July 2. “Thirteen is an unlucky number, so is Friday an unlucky day, and this one will he unlucky for you,” said Mr C. R. Orr Walker, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court, when lie imposed a fine of £l3 on Owen Edward Price, father of two children, who admitted a charge oi' making 13 False statements of his earnings in order to receive £ll 14s io which he was not entitled under tlie Employment Promotion Act. Having altered his name in his unemployment- levy book ill order to take advantage of the Christmas sustenance bonus, William Russell Jenkins admitted making one false declaration which allowed him to draw £1 15s. He was fined £8 10s.

Additional fines were imposed as follows: —Patrick Janies Scelly. £7

10s; Solomon Parkinson and Ernest Richard Flrnorc, £» each ; Frederick Dustin. £3. Costs amounting to 10s were entered in all cases.