EX-MILLIONAIRE CONVICTED

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 October 1931, Page 7

EX-MILLIONAIRE CONVICTED

STOCKBROKER’S FRAUDS. [BY CABLE —PBESB ASSN. —COPYRIGHT.] LONDON, October 29. The romantic career of a seventyone year-old ex-millionaire stockbroker, Sir Arthur Wheeler, was brought to a tragic close at Leicester Assizes, when he was found guilty on twenty-one counts of fraudulent conversion, totalling £25,000. He received one year’s imprisonment, and his partner, George Smith, -was bound over for two years.

The Judge said the gravest part of the punishment was the fact that Wheeler was found guilty, and “that here in this city, you have stood in the dock to hear it.”

It was the irony of fate that, when the same Judge was at the previous Leicester Assize, Wheeler, as DeputyLieutenant of the County of Leicester, attended him to form the Court, and sat on the bench near the Judge. Wheeler rose from being a junior clerk to a great fortune. He won national fame in respect of an organisation. the annual turnover of which was ten millions. It employed 240 clerks, dealing with sixty thousand re. gular clients. Its circulating list totalled half a. million addresses, and its postal and printing bill exceeded £20,000 monthly. Thousands of investors .relied implicitly on the judgment of Wheeler, who was knighted for his services during the war.