FALSE PRETENCE

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24869, 8 May 1946, Page 3

FALSE PRETENCE

VERDICT OF GUILTY RETURNED A charge of obtaining £5 from Terence Patrick O’Connor by falsely representing that a cheque for £l2 drawn on the Commercial Bank of Australia in favour of P. Reilly and signed S. Burton, was good and valid, was made against Edward Bonner Collins in the Supreme Court yesterday. The assistant Crown Prosecutor (Mr ,A. W. Brown) said the accused had i offered to obtain a tyre for a fruiterer named Washington, of Riccarton. Washington lent him a cheque form and it was on this form, of identical number, that the accused obtained a loan of £5 from a barman at the Grosvenor Hotel, named O'Connor. He left the cheque as security, but he did not return and the cheque was found to be valueless. William Clarence Washington and Terence Patrick O’Connor gave evidence of their dealings with Collins, and act-ing-Detective Thomas Thomson described how these two picked out Collins at an identification parade and how he declined to write either S. Burton or P. Reilly, but offered to write his own name.

Conducting his own case, Collins claimed that the witnesses were mistaken in identifying him, and that he was the victim of a blunder. He denied ever having seen Washington or O’Connor. Washington had said the man he dealt with stayed at the Bush Inn. O’Connor said his man stayed at the New Zealander Hotel. The proprietress of the New Zealander Hotel attended the identification parade but was unable to identify her guest, P. Reilly, who did in fact exist. A verdict of guilty was returned after 10 minutes, and the accused was remanded for sentence.