Totalisator Fraud Ring Alleged

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31677, 13 May 1968, Page 1

Totalisator Fraud Ring Alleged

(New Zealand Prete At lactation) AUCKLAND, May 12. A gang which had been printing and cashing forged totalisator tickets was uncovered at the Alexandra Park Raceway on Saturday night, the Auckland police said.

The police arrested a woman after she had tried to cash a totalisator ticket that the police said was forged. The police found 17 similar tickets in her possession. The woman will appear in the Auckland Magistrate’s Court tomorrow morning, charged with uttering forgeries. A number of other forgeries, cashed through the totalisators, have since- been discovered. “Other people are implicated, and our inquiries are widespread,” Detective Inspector J. F. Stevenson, of the Auckland Criminal Investigation Branch, said tonight “We have reason to believe that other forged totalisator tickets are in existence.”

He advised people not to make deals in totalisator

tickets, whether at a course or outside it.

The police throughout the country have been waiting for a week for action. Early last week they discovered that a ticket-issuing machine had been stolen from the totalisator building in the Derby Stand enclosure al Ellerslie. Other issuing machines had been damaged. The machine—which has not been recovered—is capable of issuing totalisator tickets in any denomination for any meeting in New Zealand.

All a forger would have to do would be to buy a totalisator ticket on the course to discover the code of the day, and then work the machine—presumably from a car or van parked on the course. “I think you can safely say that the design of totalisator tickets will be changed very quickly,” Detective Inspector J. F. Stevenson, of the

Criminal Investigation Branch, said tonight. The police had, since the discovery of the theft, also watched the Trentham meeting last Wednesday, the Hutt Park meeting on Friday night, and the Trentham, Gisborne and Te Rapa meetings on Saturday afternoon.