‘FRAUDULENT BUBBLE’

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 51, 23 November 1929, Page 12

‘FRAUDULENT BUBBLE’

GAOL FOR DECEIVER By Telegraph.—Press Association. Invercargill, November 22. Mr. Justice Kennedy sentenced David Neilson Johnston, New Zealand representative of Quarterly Dividends and National House Purchase, to three months’ hard labour concurrently on each of six charges of obtaining money under false pretences. Addressing the prisoner, His Honour said: “You have been the representative of two companies whose tricky and deceptive deposit system was a mere fraudulent bubble. Although your representations may have seemed to an ordinary person mere deception, these representations did, in fact, deceive persons with little commercial experience, and also persons with commercial training but who did not stop to think. You are a man of intelligence and education and your past good character and conduct show that you are in your present position through the initial pernicious influence of a man at present beyond the jurisdiction of this Court. You had, however, ample warnings from individuals who had experience of the system, and you were heedless of the warnings in leading articles in responsible newspapers. You will be sentenced, however, merely for those offences upon which you have been found guilty, and will not have to bear vicarious punishments for those responsible for the promotion of the companies.”