CAREER OF FRAUD.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 70, 21 March 1908, Page 13

CAREER OF FRAUD.

J ! OBLIGING CNCLES LEGACY OF £100.000. ■ An extraordinary story of a career of I fraud was told at the Old Bailey, wbeu i Roderick Logan Rennie. thirty-three, residI ins in Victoria-avenue, Surbllon, pleaded i guilty to charges of incurring debts by false pretences and of forging a receipt for £1000. Mr R. D. Mnir said that the receipt for i £1000 w:is forced in the name of a gent'e- ■ man with whom RenmV bad beou at school las a boy. Ho purported to be a vendor of motnr oars, and in order to get advertise- | merits inserted without paying for them he I got a cotice put in a Susses paper to the I J effect that a rich nucle in New Zealand i had died. leaving him £100,000. Ou hi* cards he described himself as Captain W. B. J Reunip, of the 7th Dragoon Guards. There I was a Captain Uennie in the Army, and it I was on that gentleman, when he returned from India, being confronted by a number of people who said he owed them money, that the matter was put in the hands of the police. I As a youth the prisoner was dismissed by his employers at Brighton for stealing postal orders. In IS9I he went to Cooper's liill Schools as assistant master, and sub j sequently to Yarmouth to fill a similar post. j but was dismissed from both, from Cooper's : 11111 oa accusations of dishonesty, and from I Yarmouth for the way in which he treated I • the pupils.' In ISUU he was at llalton, in i J Yorkshire, and in the following year got married. In ISCS Its opened a school at' the Eectory, Castleford, but became a bankrupt. He next swindled some people out of £200 in connection with an establishment called Holloway College. From Holloway he went to Crewkerne, and got an appointment as headmaster on forged references. The Recorder sentenced him to three years' penal servitude.