POST-WAR SCANDAL

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 179, 17 April 1923, Page 7

POST-WAR SCANDAL

THE MARSEILLES MEDICAL FRAUDS CLERICAL ERROR LEADS TO DISCOVERY By Telegraph.—press association. —Copyright. ' (Rec. April 16, 8.15 p.m.) Paris, April 16. The frauds at Marseilles will prove one of the greatest post-war scandals'. The investigations snow the ever-wid-ening extent of the frauds, the high professional standing of the accused to the public excitement. It is now estimated that the State has been defrauded of at least twenty-two million francs. The affair was discovered through a trifling clerical error of a clerk who received from a body claiming to represent disabled soldiers a request for a medical coupon book ■ in the name of one of its members Instead of sending the counons to the society, the clerk sent the book to the soldier’s private address, with a request that he would acknowledge its receipt. The soldier replied that he Had never asked for tho coupons and had never been ill.

It was then found that many members of the society had been receiving medical attention when dead for some time, while tho living members had an abnormal record of ill-health. Many when questioned denied that they had ever been ill. or even knew of the existence of the society, which apparently recruited members by merely putting their names on the register. Its agents accosted ex-soldiers at •veterans’ meetings and thus got enough information to fill un the Government papers. It has now been found that three societies have been working this plan and sharing the profits with certain doctors and chemists. Often ex-soldiers were given tubes /6i tooth paste and boxes of soap in exchange when applying for prescriptions containing seventy or eighty francs’ worth of drugs.—Aus.N.Z. Cable Assn. fAn earlier message stated that thirty-four, doctors had been arrested in connection with those frauds, and that a number of chemists also were charged with presenting fraudulent vouchers.]