A CAREER OF GRIME

Evening Star, Issue 20117, 6 March 1929, Page 10

A CAREER OF GRIME

PASSING VALUELESS CHEQUES [Special to the ‘Stab.’] AUCKLAND, March 6. An nteresting story was told by a released criminal who systematically planned clever swindles which for eighteen months duped the public and puzzled the police. Altogether ha.served five years for various offences. He was a jockey who once won a classic race at Ellerslie. Some years ago lie had a disagreement with an owner, and went to Wellington, whore he drank heavily. One day, when his brain was fogged, he wrote a cheque in the name of a wellknown New Zealand racehorse owner, and got it cashed at the hotel where his former employer usually stayed, thus starting a hectic career of crime, and after floating a few more cheques in fictitious names lie returned to Auckland and went on with Ins riding work at Ellerslie. In between meetings he slipped quietly to New Plymouth. Napier, or Palmerston North in order to drop a few more cheques. He would then race back to Auckland, where the police were baffled by. a sheaf of valueless cheques in the suburbs. He cashed a fair-sized cheque in t Newmarket saddlery, and his arrest soon followed as the result of a, detective identifying his lour-yeai-old daughter (who was taken to the shop), she answering to the description of a litflo girl the detective had seen at Ellerslie with her father. This arrest, after an eighteen months’ spin, got thg jockey his first tivo years. Subsequently he bought a Stetson al a leading city emporium, and hawing only £1 3s in cash he wrote out a cheque for £B4, and although it was valueless he left the shop with over £BO in change. On his way out of the shop he said “H'ello ” to a. girl assistant, to whom he had been introduced on the previous day, and went home with his purchase under his arm and a good-sized roll in his pocket. Next morning two detectives arrived, and, telling them to wait, while he changed his boots, he slipped £72 under his pillow. When they searched him at the station he had nothing, and the £72 was never recovered. That time he wars committed on eight charges, which had netted £264, and even while on a two months’ wait before his trial he successfully let loose tivo more cheques to provide his wife and children with something to kelp them along.