"MOST INGENIOUS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 157, 6 July 1931, Page 7

"MOST INGENIOUS."

FRAUD BY FORGERIES.

TWENTY-ONE CHEQUES.

YOUNG MAN SENTENCED,

A young farmer trom the. South, Mervyn David Rowe, aged 23 '(Mr. King)' was sentenced by Mr. Justice Smith in the Supreme Court to-day on 42 charges of forgery and uttering forged cheques.

Rowe had been an inmate, for short periods, of two mental hospitals, following an accident at Dunedin in which he received head injuries, said Mr. King. He had been under observation by the superintendent of the Auckland Mental Hospital this year, but the superintendent's opinion of his condition was indecisive.

A "most ingenious of passing off cheques totalling £400 to £500 in value- tad been devised by the prisoner, said Mr. V. R. Meredith, Crown Prosecutor. Whatever his mental condition he had been able to get goods sent to Warkworth and other places by orders, he had given to merchants, and he had obtained £40 as change from his cheques. The law provided for the transfer of a prisoner to another institution if the authorities found that advisable.

His Honor said all the -offences had been committed last May. It was extraordinary that the prisoner was able to utter 21 .cheques in one month before he was stopped. Ha had been before the Court prior to his Dunedin accident and the Court could not accept .the,,view that his career of crime wae entirely due to his head injury. In view of the extraordinary position it seemed that he should be kept under further observation.

Addressing the.prisoner his Honor said: "If you cannot control yourself you should be put away in order that you will not do any more damage to the commercial community."

Rowe was sentenced to four years' reformative detention.