SCHOOLGIRL AS FORGER

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 October 1931, Page 9

SCHOOLGIRL AS FORGER

COUNTERFEIT DEN IN ATTIC. VIENNA, September 10. Marie Irndorfer was sentenced today to twelve months’ hard labour at the conclusion of an extraordinary case of banknote forgery at Steyr. The actual offender, however, was a 13-year-old schoolgirl, Christine Irndorfer. But as Christine is immune from prosecution as being under 14 years of age, only her elder sister, Marie, who is aged 24, could be brought before the court and charged as an accessory. According to the evidence of little Christine, which was taken at school, Marie urged that she should exercise her extraordinary talent for drawing by reproducing Austrian 50 schilling (about £1 8s 6d notes). From the hoard of their father, a well-to-do peasant, Marie stole a 50 schilling note. On blank pages of a school exercise book Christine reproduced the 50 schilling note. She first dipped the paper in washing blue to give it the proper colour, then carefully traced the genuine note and transferred the tracings to her blue paper. The forgeries, produced in court, were clumsy, yet good enough to deceive the village shop-keepers-to whom they were presented after dark. Quite a number were put into circulation before the 13-year-old “counterfeiter’s den’ ’in the school attic was raided by the police. Medical experts pronounced the elder girl to be quite normal, but she gave tho impression of being backward in court. She said that there could be no harm in her little sister making these notes “because all notes are only paper and Christine’s were quite as good as those they ha,ve in the shops.”.