FRAUDS ALLEGED

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 May 1931, Page 12

FRAUDS ALLEGED

SOLICITORS AND MEDICAL MEN. SYDNEY, April 17. Three cases now before . Sydney Courts involving fraud charges, conspiracy counts and bankruptcy proceedings deal -with the disposal of thousands of pounds. The fraud charges are those against Leila Beryl Smith (37), law clerk, who is charged with having during the last five years conspired with William Carnegie Clegg, solicitor, to defraud Harry Wilsoit and others of large sums of money. Clegg is also under arrest, though at the time he is in a serious condition in a private hospital in the suburbs. A constable is at his bedside day and night. In applying for a remand at the Central Police Court , the Police Prosecutor told the magistrate that the Crown alleged that Smith had been employed by Clegg for 18 years, that theii' operations were most extensive, and that people who had been allegedly defrauded had been paid interest out of theii' capital. The total defalcations amounted to £50,000. Two medical agents, Raymond Barr Brown, aged 66, and Littleton H. Blunt, 30, are charged with having conspired between 3rd January, 1929, and 10th April, 1931, to cheat and defraud the Provident Medical Society and other persons of large sums of money. The police explained that the defendants were in practice in Sydney as medical agents, insurance brokers, medical accountants, debt collectors and income tax adjusters. It is alleged that large sums of money were paid to the two men as income tax, unemployment tax and insurance premiums, but had not been paid to proper authorities. In addition, .large sums had been handed to them for investment, but had been retained by the defendants for their own use.. Similar allegations are made concerning the moneys of the Provident'Medical Society, which, is a sickness insurance fund for doctors. The police have secured a long adjournment of the case in order to enable them to make a thorough investigation of the books of the two defendants. The third case was that pf an examination in bankruptcy of an ex-solici-tor, Edward Hawkins, who admitted that although he had received nearly £14,000 of clients’ money for investment he could not account for it, and he was now a pauper. He attributed his bankruptcy to a long illness of his wife, and his own serious illness. The audience in the Court consisted of 29 Cornier clients, mostly elderly women, who had given him funds to invest.