NO ACCIDENT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 49, 6 May 1942, Page 5

NO ACCIDENT

USED STAMPS UTILISED

FINES TOTAL £15

Pleading guilty to three separate charges of fraudulently affixing used postage stamps to receipts issued by him for money received George Samuel Whiteside (Mr B. S. Barry) who did not appear wrote to the Whakatane Court sitting yesterday explaining that the stamps had' been used in error having become mixed with others on his desk which he was collecting for a Patriotic purpose. The magistrate, Mr E. L. Walton, S.M., said he could not accept the statement that the action had been accidental. Sergeant Farrell said: that the -police had been instructed by the Stamp Duties Department to investigate the issuing of three separate receipts signed by Whiteside who freely admitted that he was the person. He had offered 1 to make good the value of the stamps and declared that it \ras accidental. The stamps even tci the casual observer had obviously been used before. From the police point of view the defendant '..liadi always borne a good character.

Mr Barry said he was instructed that his client made a practice of collecting used* stamps, taking them from the envelopes as soon as he re--reived them and laying them on his ■desk. .Apparently several had got mixed up with the unused stamps and had been used, again by mistake. Defendant's eyesight was failing but he was the type c>f man who would not admit that lie was not as •good: as he had ever been, and carried on. A further proof that his net was not deliberate was the fad that he posted the receipts to a imortgagor with whom he was having considerable trouble. It was not likely that he would deliberately give him a weapon with which to retaliate.

The magistrate said he had been handed a further number of receipts issued by the defendant dating back to 1923 in -which the same practice had "been followed. "In view of these" he said, "I cannot accept the plea -of accidental. Defendant has "been guilty of a fraud under the Stamp Duties Act for which the penalty is £100. His age of course precludes any idea of a term of imprisonment but he will be fined £15 on each charge."