‘Millionaire had $2 bank account’

Press, 12 May 1981, Page 7

‘Millionaire had $2 bank account’

An international businessman with “two homes, an aeroplane, ship and $2 million in the bank,” who offered a woman a $20,000 a year job as his secretary, was a confidence trickster with only $2 in his account when he swindled- the woman of $4OOO, Mr Justice Hardie Boys and a jury were told in the High Court yesterday. John Perkovic, aged 50, unemployed, has pleaded not guilty to alternative charges of forging a s2,ooo,oo2»entry in his bank passbook or using a forged passbook to obtain money and to a third charge of false pretences. Mr S. G. Erber appears for the Crown and Mr P. N. Dyhberg for Perkovic. The trial is expected to take at least two days.

It was the Crown’s case that Perkovic was a confidence trickster who forged an entry in a savings bank passbook to induce Mrs Skilling to part with $5OOO, Mr Erber said.

Evidence would be given by Richard James Parker, a bank officer with the Commercial Bank of Aus-

tralia in Auckland, that on October 18, 1978, Perkovic opened an account in the name of Ivan Perkovic with a deposit of $2. Later interest of 9 cents was added to the savings bank account. Robert Bruce Skilling would say that in February, 1980, he was in Addington Prison for 10 days when he met Perkovic, who told him that he was a businessmanmillionaire from Perth who could not get bail because his wife could not come to New Zealand because she was a Yugoslavian. He claimed that his three children were in welfare homes.

Perkovic asked Skilling if he could get bail for him. When Skilling was released he spoke to his mother who went to see Perkovic at the prison. Bail was arranged and Perkovic stayed with a friend of Mr Skilling.

Evidence would be given that Perkovic stated that he owned a ship in Perth, had two houses, a plane and the salvage rights to reclaim gold bars from the ship Niagra, which was sunk during the war.

“You will hear that Perkovic told Mr Skilling that he had over $500,000 in the New Town branch of a bank in Auckland and that he had $2 million which he was going to use in a business venture in Christchurch,” Mr Erber said. Shona Theodora Skilling would say that Perkovic had told her that he had frozen funds which he could not use because the police had taken his bank book. He asked her to telephone the bank on the pretence that she was his secretary but she refused because it was not true.

After Mrs Skiling went bail for him Perkovic prevailed on her to be his secretary. She wrote many letters for him. Perkovic told Mrs Skilling of his plans to set up a printing works in Christchurch. As his secretary she drove him around to various firms getting quotations for the supply of letterheads and paper. When Mrs Skilling told Perkovic that she was going to Australia at Easter for health reasons he asked her to do some banking business for him. He proposed that he

would employ her at $20,000 a year and that her husband, son, and a friend should also work for him. “Mrs Skilling would say it was a tempting offer. For a month she was taken in by Perkovic, acting as his secretary in what turned out to be a wholly fictitious business,” Mr Erber said. On April 8, 1980, Mrs Skilling took Perkovic to her home so that he could receive what was purported to be a telephone call from a Sydney bank. When Mrs Skilling asked if

she could listen into the conversation on the extension telephone Perkovic told her that the bank had electronic equipment which would indicate that the call was being monitored. A woman asked to speak to Mr Webster which Mrs Skilling knew was Perkovic’s other name. The caller intimated that she was secretary for the bank manager. During the conversation Perkovic told the woman that his secretary, Mrs Skilling, was going to Australia with some bank forms to transfer money to New Zealand. She would have two withdrawal forms for $lOO,OOO each and would identify herself with her passport. It was explained by Perkovic that because Mrs Skilling would be arriving just before Easter that the transactions need not be completed until after the holiday. Perkovic showed Mrs Skilling a passbook which contained the figure of $2 million. Just before Mrs Skilling went to Australia Perkovic came to her home and said that he needed $5OOO more to purchase a machine for printing letterheads and asked her to lend him the money which would be repaid in Australian currency. His funds had been frozen. With some difficulty Mrs Skilling, on.the day before she was to go to Australia, obtained $7OOO from the Syden-

ham Money Club. The sum of $5OOO was for Perkovic and the remainder for herself. Her security was the withdrawal slips which Perkovic had entrusted to her. On arrival in Australia Mr and Mrs Skilling found that the business which Perkovic said that he owned did not exist. They became concerned and on examining the bank book found that there was no official stamp authenticating the deposit of $2 million, Mr Erber said. Without telling Perkovic they returned to New Zealand, informed the police and tried to stop the cheques she had given Perkovic. All except one for $lOOO had been cashed and she was $4OOO out of pocket. Detective Sergeant Colin Dalzell obtained the passbook, withdrawal slips and Petrovic’s written authority from Mrs Skilling. When interviewed Perkovic claimed that he had $528,000 in the National Bank of Australia. Perkovic denied that he had borrowed any money from Mrs Skilling. Shown the documents Perkovic was taken aback. He admitted that the bankbook was his, that he had made the $2 million entry, that he had written out the withdrawal slips and that the true balance in the passbook was only $2, Mr Erber said.