TRADESFOLK DEFRAUDED.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 November 1917, Page 2

TRADESFOLK DEFRAUDED.

CUNNING POSTAL SCHEME. YOUNG MARRIED WOMAN'S LAPSE. A series of peculiar thefts was admitted before Mr. F. V. Fraser, S.M., at Auckland recently, by a young woman named Ruby Gont. £he admitted seven charges of having obtained good from various tradespeople by an unusual and cunning form of false pretence. The goods included valuable pieces of muslin and silk from Ernest Rimmer, five pairs of boots from Hallenstein Bros., soaps of toilet accessories from A. Ecclea and J. C. Sharland, drapery fron» W. A, Thompson, the total value of the goods being about £2O. Chief Detective McMahon said that the accused woman was 29 years of age. She had been married to a man named Ulrica, who had got into trouble with the police, and she obtained a divorce. She later married Gent, who got a position as an accountant in the Wellingon district, and left his wife at Auckland, sending her money regularly. She conceived a rather cunning scheme of getting goods. Using a fictitious name, site wrote to tradesfolk requesting that certain catalogued goods be posted to her, giving an address at Mercer. Then she wrote to the postmaster at Mercer, on a re-direetion order, requesting that the goods be redirected to her at her address in Auckland. By this means she obtained about £2O worth of goods at her home in the Mount Eden district. The tradespeople lost trace of the goods and the customer, and Detective Sweeney and Plain-clothes Constable McHugh were put on her track, and eventually located her. They found that she was a very careful, tidy housekeeper, and that she had all the goods carefully stored away and in good order, so that the articles were in a condition to be returned to the owners. The woman had three children, aged seven years, four years, and two months; and she lived with her mother, an elderly woman. Fifteen or sixteen years ago she had been allowed probation after a similar offence.

Mr. Delamore, for accused, enlarged on the apparent absence of motive, and the storing up of the goods, suggesting Hhat te matter was te result of an outbreak of predisppsiion to steal while the woman was in a weak state following childbirth, but that her history showed that when in her usual (health the woman managed to overcome the tendency stated. : After having consulted the Probation Officer, his Worship stated that on account of the young children he would not send the accused to gaol. She would be convicted and ordered to come up for sentence within three years, during which time she would be under the supervision of the Probation Officer.