BOGUS COLLECTORS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 598, 26 February 1929, Page 16

BOGUS COLLECTORS

HENDERSON RESIDENTS DUPED GAOL TERM FOR TWO MEt T Henderson residents have beer victimised during the last monti by three men who have canvassed the district collecting, so the} said, for the unemployed. The collectors carried typewritten sheets stamped with the words, “Unemployment Relief Committee." and apparently signed by a former secretary of the committee. Their credentials consequently appeared to be beyond question, and warm-hearted people gave generously. One of the men, who hacl joined the busy band for only a day or two collected £4. and a second collector extorted sufficient to support himself and his wife. Edwin Stuart Agnew, a labourer aged 39, and Clarence Boulton, a seaman aged 24. pleaded guilty at the Police Court this morning to being rogues and vagabonds, as they had collected donations by representing that they were authorised by the Unemployment Relief Committee. The third member of the trio was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment when he appeared at Paeroa recently. Chief-Detective Holmes produced the forms which had been carried by the men. They were well-worded appeals and bore the stamp of the committee in two places. "Th# men admit that they have been collectir continued Mr. Holmes. “They say tney have destroyed the stamp and all correspondence, and had intended to give up collecting. The forms are supposed to be signed by a farmer secretary of the relief committee and that is technically a forgery, Hut the man who was senUW iced at Paeroa was responsible for it." Both men were making their first bow in Court, but Agnew had done much more collecting than his comrade.

Neither man had anything to say. and Agnew was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment. Boulton was sentenced to one month.