FALSE PRETENCES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 October 1939, Page 9

FALSE PRETENCES

ACCUSED SENT TO GAOL. OPERATED IN MASTERTON. Two years’ imprisonment was the sentence imposed on Arthur Jeffrey Durrant, aged 52, labourer, who pleaded guilty at the Wellington S.M. Court yesterday to 15 charges of obtaining money and goods by false pretences with valueless cheques and to two charges of obtaining credit by fraud with valueless cheques. Durrant, said Detective-Sergeant P. Doyle, in May entered into partnership with another man at National Park on a firewood-cutting job and ‘they opened a joint account with the Bank of New South Wales in Taumarunui. Early in September Durrant left National Park and came to Wellington with the cheque book of the joint account. He arrived in Wellington op September 4 and between then and 1 October 10 he issued 17 valueless cheques in various towns of the North Island, including Wellington, Masterton, Feilding, Manakau, Otaki, and Paraparaumu. Some of the cheques were from the partnership - cheque book and others were on forms which Durrant got from tradespeople. In all, said Mr Doyle, Durrant obtained £62 17s 2d in money and 9s 8d worth of goods by valueless cheques and obtained credit for £l9 10s. “He is making his fifty-third appearance before the Court,’’ said Mr Doyle, “and, strange to say, all his previous convictions have been for false pretences. He has never departed from the one system of crime, and imprisonment or reformative detention does not appear to have had much of a deterrent effect. He had been discharged from prison only a month or so befpre commencing this career of crime."