FALSE PRETENCES.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18567, 17 December 1925, Page 6

FALSE PRETENCES.

WOMAN PARTS WITH MONEY. (MIB3S ASSOCIATION TSLBGtAX.I 'WELLINGTON, December 16. A remarkable story of fraud was told in the Magistrate's Court to-day, when William Phillips, alias J. Matthews, builder, aged 46, was charged with obtaining £2OO from Frances Laura Dean by false pretences, with stealing £2l 12s lid from her, defrauding George Cartmell of £SO, and obtaining £6 from another man by means of a valueless cheque. The accused pleaded guilty to all charges, and was committed to the Supreme Court for sentence. Mrs Dean stated that she had a confectionery in Petone. Some time ago she answered a matrimonial advertisement, with the result that the accused called on her and showed her a bank-book with £63,000 at the front of a column. She arranged to marry him, he to obtain a divorce for her from her iiasband, from whom she was living apart. -; Phillips asked her for the money to pay the legal expenses, as it would look better coming from her. She gave him £24-and later £2l 12s lid to pay the two accounts, which he did not pay. She incurred £2OO expenses for herself and her two sons to go to Melbourne to marry accused. She was now penniless, and her sons had lost food jobs and were unable to get work, he only present she ever got from Phillips was a shilling bag of peanuts. Regarding the Cartmell case, Cartmell, a former lighthouse-keeper, stated that he had accepted a position as bookkeeper to the accused. Cartmell paid him £SO on furniture, and gave up his .position, came to Wellington, and then found out that the accused had deceived him.