DUD CHEQUES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 126, 30 May 1934, Page 9

DUD CHEQUES.

LABOURER GAOLED.

MANY GOODS PURCHASED. better to magistrate. ' A well written letter asking that he should be dealt with as leniently as possible and expressing the writer's intention to go straight in the future was handed to Mr. F. K. Hunt, S.M., in the Police Court this morning by Arthur I'raneis Cole (4S), a labourer, who pleaded guilty to fifteen charges of false pretences. Accused, said Senior Detective Hall, had been released from a prison camp near Wellington in February, and had come to Auckland, where he had issued a series of valueless cheques, as the result of which he had obtained £101 9/5 in money and goods valued at £5 18/. Accused had made a practice of going to a doctor, dentist, or chemist saying that he was a farmer. After making an appointment he had said that he had left his cheque book at home, and had either purchased or borrowed a cheque form. Once he had got a cheque form he filled it in and got someone to act upon it as if it were genuine.

"His purchases included a radio on instalment, a lawnmower, a pair of hedge clippers, a gallon of paint, two rolls of pig fencing, a bath, crockery for a wedding present, three pairs of gumboots, two bicycles, a plough, two pairs of gumboots and a pair of shoes, 22 sheets of roofing iron and nails, another bath, a teaset and a clock, more boots, and a dinner set," read the detective, who added that accused had taken possession of only two lots of goods. Accused, it was stated, had been found living in a bach at Onchunga together with another man and a woman. Accused, who had assisted the police after his arrest, had said that he had been the "mug" who had had to supply liquor for the bach.

In the letter which he handed to thct magistrate, Colo said that if it had not been for strong drink, taken as the result of domestic troubles, lie would not have been before the Court. It was his intention after his release to lead a respectable life, and asked that the Court should deal leniently with him. Cole added that he had been with the Post and Telegraph Department for 10 years and also had been employed by the Auckland Power Board and the Devonport Ferry Company, and that on each occasion lie liacl resigned on his own account. He indicated that he intended to use the time that he was in gaol to prepare himself for a law-abiding future.

"I think you had better tell all this to the Prisons Board," said Mr. Hunt after reading the letter. "You are a nuisance."

Cole was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, to be followed by two years' reformative detention.