Signature Forgery Alleged

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31504, 19 October 1967, Page 28

Signature Forgery Alleged

(N Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, Oct. 18. The signature on a receipt for £lBOO was a forgery, an expert said in the Supreme Court at Auckland today.

Teresai Hazel Myers, aged 39, described as a promoter is being tried before Mr Justice Richmond on 16 charges of false pretences, and one of forgery. The Crown alleges that Mrs Myers obtained $2530 by selling land she did not own.

and $269 in goods and money by valueless cheques. Eight charges relate to cheques; six to obtaining money by falsely representing that land at Whiritoa Beach, near Waihi, was hers, that it had been sub-divided and that she was able to give good title to lots; and two charges relate to attempts to obtain money in this way. The seventeenth charge is that Mrs Myers forged a receipt for £lBOO purporting to have been signed “C. H. Hargreaves.”

Mr E. R. Winkel appears for the Crown and Mr P. A. Williams, with him Mr M. K.

Edwards, for Mrs Myers. Mrs Elizabeth Maria Pisarek, of Hamilton, said she agreed to buy a section for £l3OO and paid £l3O as a deposit Later, she gave Mrs Myers another £6OO. The price of the section was to be reduced by £lOO. To Mr Williams the witness said a land agent Mr Hargreaves, had told her that everything was all right- that he was a Mrs Myers’s partner and had £lO,OOO “tied up.” Alfred Piegarski, Ferguson Franklin Brown, Geoffrey Thomas William Dohig, Charles James Heaven, Dorothy May Svendsen and Jos-

eph Lakomy all gave evidence of agreeing to buy lots from Mrs Myers who, they thought, owned the land. All but Mr Heaven paid deposits. - Sergeant John Alexander West, a handwriting expert, said that in his opinion the signature “C. H. Hargreaves” on a purported receipt for £lBOO was a traced forgery. He thought it probable that a signature on a memorandum of agreement had been traced on a blank sheet of paper and the tracing transferred by pressure on to the “receipt.” The trial is proceeding.