FRAUD AGAINST GOVERNMENT

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22400, 13 May 1938, Page 4

FRAUD AGAINST GOVERNMENT

UNEMPLOYMENT FUNDS MAN FOUND GUILTY IN SUPREME COURT A verdict of guilty was returned by the jury in the Supreme Court yesterday in a case in which John Alfred Rhodes, an unemployed accountant, was charged with defrauding the Labour Department to the extent of £l9O 17s 2d, Rhodes was remanded for sentence. • The charge was that between March 23, 1933, and January 8, 1938. Rhodes, with intent to defraud, obtained from the Labour Department sums of money totalling £l9O 17s 2d by falsely representing that he was living with and maintaining his wife and son. Mr Justice Northcroft was on the Bench. Mr A. W. Brown prosecuted, and Mr R. Twyneham appeared for the

accused. ' Mr Brown said that the accused went to the Labour Department early in 1933 and registered as being unemployed. He filled in forms stating that he was living with and maintaining a wife and child. Rhodes was married in 1930, but in December, 1932, he and his wife separated, and from then onward he lived apart from his wife and child, who, after the separation proceedings, was in the custody of the wife. It was clear from the evidence that would be called that from then cn he had not maintained his wife and child. On Rhodes’s representations to the department he was paid on a higher scale than he woulu have been had he been known to have no dependents, The accused admitted to the police making false statements to the

department. , _ Evidence was given by Labour Department officials, police officers, and the accused’s former wife, on the lines of counsel’s address. The accused, examined by Mr Twyneham, denied that he had any intention of defrauding the . department. . m Addressing the jury, Mr Twyneham suggested that the accused, did not appreciate that when he signed the papers the effect was to defraud the department. The accused was obviously in bad health, and was suffering from the effects of a fracture of the skull. That his mental processes were curious was shown- by the evidence given by witnesses for the. Crown, and counsel instanced the evidence of a detective officer who said that when he interviewed the accused the latter was apparently under the belief that he was still married and remembered nothing of a divorce. His Honour, after the jury had given Its verdict, said that Rhodes would not be sentenced until adequate medical examination had been made of the accused.