FAKED RETURNS

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 March 1939, Page 12

FAKED RETURNS

INCOME TAX FRAUD. Albert Hewson is 56. Until recently he lived in an £l,BOO house in Carlton Close, Edgeware, N.W.1., with his wife and four children. To his friends and neighbours, Albert Hewson was known as a quiet, kindly business man, no different .from a thousand others who live in [ comfortable homes in the suburbs of London. Each morning at 8 they saw him leave for the city in a large saloon car. They saw him return each day to spend a quiet evening at home with his happy and contented family. Now Albert Hewson is serving a I sentence of 15 months’ imprisonment. Hewson had yielded to the temptation to fake his income tax returns. In 10 years he had concealed profits amounting to £lB.OOO. Mr. Justice MacNaughten sentenced him: “Not only because your conduct deserves punishment, but that others may know that if they attempt to defraud the revenue in the way that you have done they will suffer a like fate.” And in the £l,BOO house in Edgware last night, the family of the man who had defrauded his fellow taxpayers faced up to the fact that from now on their life of comparative luxury is over. Mrs. Hewson, with her son and daughter—Alfred and Winifred, both in their early twenties and working in the city—planned how they could keep the youngest son at school, how they could maintain their £l,BOO house. “It is up to us now,” Winifred told a reporter. “My brother and I intend to do everything to keep the home together.” She glanced round the panelled room and said: “It will be a hard job for Alfred and me for the next 15 months.” Hewson began life as an office boy and became a clothing manufacturer. It was said in court that in 1918 he began a business with his life savings of £2OO. In the 1921 slump it seemed likely that the business would have to close down. But the business survived. And Hewson, alive to the danger of being left without resources and savings, put aside his faked profits. That is what his counsel. Mr. J. W. Morris. K.C.. said on his behalf. Hewson opened a banking account in the name of “C. H. Whittingham.” drew cheques in payment of fictitious “Whittingham” invoices. He had since paid the income tax authorities £5.000. But Mr. Justice MacNaughten ordered him to pay £3OO towards the cost of the prosecution, saying: “This I regard as the gravest of your offences —entering as business expenses money that you had put into your own pocket, and opening for that purpose a banking account in a fictitious name.”