SWINDLER’S £l800.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3360, 15 August 1927, Page 2

SWINDLER’S £lßoo.

“You appear to be gifted with a fertile imagination and a plausible tongue, which gifts you have devoted to criminal purposes, and. by a. series of ingenious devices, have swindled several persons, including a number of friends of your own, and appropriated nearly £IBOO to your own rse. ! ’ With these words the Lord Justice Clerk, in tho High Court of Justiciary in F.dinburgh, passed sentence of three years’ penal servitude and piade an order for deportation on James Jones Wardrop, who pleaded guilty to embezzling sums totalling over £1784 from eight different persons. The Advocate-Depute (Mr Maitland) stated that the prisoner was 40 yeans of age and a native of Ayrshire. Twenty years ago ho went to tho United States and became a naturalised American citizen. He returned to Glasgow in 1925 and visited a number of large Engbsh towns, where he lived in luxury on the proceeds of the frauds to which he had pleaded guilty. On behalf of the prisoner, Mr J. H. Hickson Stated that Wardrop had gone to America in 1905, and became president of a shipping company. He enlisted in the Ameincan"Artillery during the Great War. and was promoted to be a captain. His shipping company became bankrupt, and when lie was- demobilised lie went into a series of bootlegging adventures, for which rnonev had to be rais°n at all hazards to pay for (lie shipments, and it was with getting that money that he was now charged. He had ’every intention of repaying these stuns out of tho proceeds of the advoiaturas, together with the 25 per cent of interest which ite had promised. Two of tin* parties ftorn whom he obtained money were aware that they were investing their money in bootlogging adventures. He bad every intention of opening a shipping office in this country, ami also in Mexico, as lie had represented to his victims, for the shipment of mahogany to Britain if the bootlegging adventures bad turned out successfully. ‘Many of the representations which Wardrop was charged with making were made while he was under the influence of alcohol, and he had had a clean record up tdl now. fn reply to his Lordship, counsel said that none, of the money had been recovered. The ebarge set forth that Wardrop represented that ho required money to pay to the Mexican Government to be allowed to ship mahogany, and that, in return for the money which he got, ho gave in security false and fabricated certificates in tho American West African Corpora tion.