EXTENSIVE RAILWAY FRAUDS

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 2008, 5 June 1885, Page 2

EXTENSIVE RAILWAY FRAUDS

There lias been discovered inLyttelton, says the Telegraph, a series of frauds of a singularly audacious description, which are alleged to have'been made in''the Railway Department. On. Saturday morning nine men were charged at the Lyttelton R.M. Court with " conspiring to defraud Her Majesty the Queen." The nature of the charge did not then.appear, for Sergeant Mason asked the Magistrate to grant a remand till Wednesday, pending the arrival of one of the principal conspirators. The remand was; granted accordingly,

The individual referred to by the Sergeant as a principal conspirator is Thomas Hough, a well-known timekeeper on the Railway at Lyttelton, It appears that according to the system of working on the Railway wharves and the Government sheds the men are supplied with a ticket by the timekeeper, when they go to work in the morning. Their day's work done, they present the ticket to him, and he marks upon it the number of hours.during which they were employed. It is now alleged that Hough abused the position of trust he enjoyed as timekeeper, and, with eight of the hands employed by the Department, entered into a deliberate conspiracy to defraud the Government by making it pay for work which was never done, The men are said to have come to him in the morning for tickets, and to have brought them back-in the evening to be marked, but the intermediate time was spent by them, not in the Government sheds, but in the employ of private citizens. How long this is supposed to have been going on cannot at present be stated, but the sums of which Her Majesty was thus defrauded are estimated roughly at several hundred pounds. Of course hough is supposed to have afterwards shared in the plunder. When the alleged discovery was made, Hough was absent from Lyttelton, having gone over to the other side. Lately, however, the police learned that he was leaving Sydney for Wellington, and Constable O'Connor was despatched 1 to apprehend him on his arrival at the latter port.' This he succeeded in'doing on Friday morning last, and simultaneously the Lyttelton police arrested the nine men already mentioned.

At the R.M. Court on the remand being granted, Sergeant Mason promised to telegraph to the authorities, asking whether bail would be allowed. A favorable answer was returned, and on Saturday evening eight of the'nine were liberated on bail, themselves in £IOO each, ancj. two sureties of £§o each. The ninth was unable to find a surety. Hough was brought to Lyttelton % the.Hawea, and was 'lodged in the lock-up.' ' • The affair is considered the greatest scandal which has occurred in Lyttelton for very inany years, and has causeo) much excitement there.

(PPP PRESS ASSOCIATION.)

OpisTCHUKCH,June4, Al the Lytteltqn Resident Magistrate'^ Ooui'fc to-day eleven employees in the Railway Department at 'tjjat place were charged wjth conspiring to defraud tlje Government, The principal, it is alleged, is John Hough, who was timekeeper, and had to keep work done by the other men, The theory for the prosecution is that by mutual arrangement between the timekeeper and the laborers the latter were given credit, and received payment, for work they had not performed, but which Hough certified they had done. In his opening remarks Mr Joynt, who prosecute}, said,that Ifough. had, signed "a written (which qf cpijrse, cqpjd only implicate himself)''that ho" was'iij complicity with other men, whose names lie did not mention. The case against Hough and an employee' named William Percival was'first taken, and'after evidence had been taken both prisoners were committed for trial. The Bench refused bail to Hough till the cases against the - other men were investigated. The Government have probably been defrauded of some hundreds of pounds.