99 THEFT CHARGES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21634, 10 February 1945, Page 4

99 THEFT CHARGES

£25,000 INVOLVED

3J YEARS’ HARD LABOUR tP.A.) WELLINGTON, Feb. 10. Leo Brooks, aged 49. commissior agent, was sentenced by the Chief •Justice, Sir Michael Myers, in the Supreme Court yesterday to a total of three and a-half years’ hard labour on 99 charges of theft to which he had oleaded guilty and involving defalcations totalling £25,000. “It is a sod spectacle to see a man if your ability and attainments in this position.” said Sir Michael Myers, “bill Cor a long time .you have been systematically committing a series of liol'ts. I have listened with care to the representations of your counsel, but 1 am convinced that the sentence must lie a substantial one.”

in respect of the charge, of theft of £ 1000 on January 28, 1944, the property of George Windsor Allen, he sentenced the accused t.o two years' hard labour, and for the theft on February 1, 1944, of £9OO shares, the property of Elizabeth Mary Robertson, he received 18 months, the sentences to be cumulative. On all the other charges Brooks was sentenced to 12 months’ hard labour, to be concurrent with the first sentences imposed. In asking for leniency, counsel for the accused, Mr. W. E. Leicester, alluded to what he termed the extraordinary career of Brooks. He said he was a native of Palestine and had been impressed in the Turkish Army at the age of 14 years. Later he escaped to Algiers, joined the British mercantile marine and was awarded two medals in the last war. Later he came to New Zealand and worked as a cook and a waiter, subsequently becoming a high-pressure salesman. Counsel attributed the lapse ol Brooks to lack of education and superoptimism, but declared he was in no sense another Woolcott Forbes, living in "the lap of luxury. There was no evidence that he had secreted sums ol His Honour inquired where the money had gone, and counsel rep bed that it had been expended in senseless and stupid investments, hare-brained financial schemes, and gambling. The Crown prosecutor, Mr. Cunningham, stated that the sum with which Brooks was charged did not represent the total by any means, but he had assisted the police m cleaiin-, up the transactions. Otherwise if he had not pleaded guilty, it might have been necessary to bring people Lorn all parts of New Zealand to give evidence.