FALSE PRETENCES

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 162, 5 April 1938, Page 18

FALSE PRETENCES

Labourer Sentenced To Year’s Imprisonment

“This man appears to lie one of four of this class of criminal who have been operating in the city during the past few months,” said Detective-Sergeant P, Doyle, when he was - conducting the police prosecution against Henry Hoyden Moore, who appeared before Mr. J. G. L. Hewitt, S.M., in the Magistrates’ Court, Wellington, yesterday, on three charges of obtaining money by false pretences. Mr. W. F. Ongley appeared for defendant. Moore, a labourer, aged 40, pleaded guilty to all the charges, and was sentenced to six month’s imprisonment on two of the charges, to be served cumulatively, and ordered to come up for sentence if called upon on the third. > On March 5, defendant asked for a blank cheque form at the Hotel Cecil,’ stated Detective-Sergeant Doyle. Defendant said that he had left his cheque book at home and wanted to catch the Limited express to Auckland. He went to the Hotel Waterloo and cashed the cheque for an amount of £lO. On March 10, he went to a shop and ordered nine slashers for a total price of £2/3/9. He then presented a cheque for £l2/10/-, and “needless to say, he did not call back for the slashers,” said Detective-Sergeant Doyle. He received £9/3/9 in cash as change from the cheque. On the third occasion he went to Peter Jackson, Ltd., and ordered a suit, for which he was measured. He cashed a cheque thei-e for £25, and received £l4/10/- in change after paying for the suit. He did not come back for the suit. All of the cheques were drawn on fictitious accounts.

“Four years ago defendant worked for what" he could earn and re-estab-lished- himself as an honest member of the community after serving a prison sentence,” said Mr. Ongley in his defence. “He married, but after a time some person informed his wife's relations that he was a criminal and they took her away from him. He got her back, but they took her away again, and he broke out. He threw up his job, and this breakdown from his honest way of living seems to have been the result of his trouble ever his wife.”