WOMAN SWINDLER

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 June 1934, Page 10

WOMAN SWINDLER

AGED SISTERS LOSE £lB,OOO. LONDON, April 20. Stated by a police officer to be the most callous fraud with Avhom he had ever dealt, Annie Forman, 45, a knitter, of Upton Park, Avas sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude at the Old Bailey yesterday for obtaining large sums of money by fraud. Mr Eustace Fulton, prosecuting, said tAvo elderly sister, the Misses Watson, of Upper Tooting, parted Avith the Avhole of their property, about £lB,OOO, to Forman. She had also obtained various sums from seven other persons. The charges related to about £3,700, but actually betAveen 1931 and 1933 she obtained from the tAvo sisters about £lB,OOO. In 1931 Forman called at their house Avearing dark glasses. She said she had lately recovered from blindness, and was making a living for herself and her aged mother by knitting. She said she had knoAvn their mother and father, and hoped they Avould help her in starting her in business. She asked for £l2, Avhich they gave her. Almost every Aveek after that the same story Avas told, and they handed her more money. Having obtained £3OO or £4OO in small sums, she said her employers had refused to pay £3OO Avhich Avas due to her. Accordingly, she continued, she and a distinguished K.C. had taken proceedings at BoAA r Street, and had succeeded in recovering that sum, but an appeal had been made at the Old Bailey. . Judgment Avas given for £15,000 in her favour, she said, but on the condition that a. counter-claim for £3,000 should be paid first. The sisters gave her the money Avhich they believed Avas necessary for her to obtain the £15,000. With part of it she bought a cottage in the country for over £2,000.” In November, 1931, Mr Fulton said apparently a judge called “Lord Justice Avory” came into the matter, because. according to Forman, he made an order in some other proceeding that she should pay to her employers £250. She told the sisters that story, and they handed her the money.

OFTEN TN PRISON. Det.-Inspector Thompson, of Scotland Yard, said Forman was the daughter of poor but respectable people, and had lived practically all her life in the East-end. When she was 17 she Avas bound over for fraud, and in 1919 received three months in the second division for fraud. Her next sentence Avas 12 months at, the Old Bailey in 1921 for fraud, and at East Ham in 1922 she received two consecutive sentences of six months’ hard labour for fraud. Her last sentence Avas four years’ penal servitude at the Old Bailey in September, 1924. “She has lived with a man from Avhom Ave have recovered £3,000 and £4.000 Avorth of property ” added the officer. “She is the most callous fraud I have ever dealt Avith.”

Miss Greenwood, defending, said Forman became infatuated with a young man, and paid money to him and to his parents. The conveyance of the cottage was made out in his n a me.

The Common Serjeant (Mr Holman Gregory, K.C.), passing sentence, said: “You are a very wicked person and a very dangerous person to have about in society. 1 must protect the public from you.”