FALSE PRETENCES

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 148, 19 December 1935, Page 11

FALSE PRETENCES

TWELVE MONTHS' IMPRISONMENT

For obtaining £10 in money and two steamer tickets of a total value of £15 10s by means of false pretences on November 30, William Thorndon Bond Proctor, a labourer, aged 25, of Levin, was convicted and sentenced to twelve ■months' imprisonment .when he appeared before Mr. E. D. Mosley, S.M., in the Magistrate's Court today. He pleaded guilty to the offence, which consisted of obtaining the money and tickets by. means of a cheque signed vifith his brother's, name, which he presented to a clerk at the booking office on the inter-island steamer wharf.

Detective-Sergeant L.B. Revell said that on the night of November 30 prior to the departure of the inter-island steamer express for the south, the accused called at the booking office- on the wharf, and told the clerk that he was shipping a horse to the South Island, and wanted to arrange for two fares and the freight on the horse. He presented a cheque for £15 10s on the Bank of New South Wales at Palmer-1 ston North, signed "J. Proctor." He succeeded in cashing the cheque, and the clerk was instructed to hand over £7 15s to the accused. The Union Steamship Company paid the cheque into its account, but it was returned dishonoured. .

When interviewed, the accused explained that he had found the blank cheque in Willis Street, and had filled it in, using his brother's name. He went .Jo Nelson on the night he obtained the tickets, and spent the money on a drinking bout. '

The detective-sergeant added that the' accused had a list of previous convictions going back to" 1928 for theft and false pretences, and vagrancy. He had just been released from prison when he committed this offence