BOOKMAKING CHARGE

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27576, 5 February 1955, Page 8

BOOKMAKING CHARGE

FORMER MANAGER OF T.A.B. AGENCY \

CASE ADJOURNED UNTIL WEDNESDAY (New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, February 4. A former manager of the Totalisator Agency Board’s Ponsonby agency, John Robert Stackpole, aged 28, a land agent, denied a charge of carrying on the business of a bookmaker when he appeared in the Magistrate’s Court today before Mr L. G. H. Sinclair, S.M. Detective-Sergeant F. A. Gordon said that the evidence would show that at the Ponsonby agency of the T.A.B. all betting transactions were in cash. No employee there was authorised to take telephone or credit bets. It would be shown that Stackpole told a patron of the agency, Norman Pearce Thacker, an Auckland businessman, that he could place bets within the two-hour period, and that he gave Thacker his agency telephone number and his home number to enable him to place credit bets, said DetectiveSergeant Gordon. Early in the week after a race meeting, Stackpole would present Thacker with a statement of bets placed, and the. results and dividends of thorn, and Thacker would pay him by cheque if money was owing, Detec-tive-Sergeant Gordon said. If Stackpole owed money, he would pay in cash. The statements were in Stackpole’s handwriting. Thacker made many bets with Stackpole under this system between August and November, 1954, under the impression that they were being placed on the totalisator, Detective-Sergeant Gordon said. At the end of November, Thacker was told that the maximum pay-out on a double he had won would be £4OO, instead of the £975 12s which it paid. Thacker then discontinued placing bets with Stackpole. “The evidence will prove that Stackpole was using his position as manager of an agency as a cloak to his bookmaking activities,” Detective-Sergeant Gordon said. “In the event of the Court convicting him, I submit that the circumstances will justify a substantial penalty.”

After evidence had been heard, the case was adjourned until February 9.