NEAR TO BLACKMAIL.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 3 July 1925, Page 6

NEAR TO BLACKMAIL.

AN INGENIOUS SCHIiMM. An ingenious, but unsuccessful, attempt to defraud two women oi amounts of £2O and £l6 was charged against a clerk named Norman Allan William Beagley (30), before Mr. J. W. Poynton, S.M., at Auckland. The ladies’ in question arc wives or two commercial travellers, and they stated that while their husbands were absent at Taurunga accused called on them and intimated that he held valueless cheques issued to him bv the husbands. To one woman he said her husband had given him a cheque for £lO in return for a cheque for the same amount, and when asked what it was for he muttered something about a champagne supper. She called her father, who desired to see the valueless cheque, and was told it had been left at the bank, as it had upset his hanking arrangements. The other woman said that accused represented that he held a valueless cheque for £2O. given him by her husband in return for a good cheque of his own. She asked to see the cheque, but Beagley said he had torn it up. He said if ke did not get the £2O he would get her husband “put in quod,'’ and that if he had to go to her husband’s employers it would mean his dismissal. M hen she said she hadn’t twenty pence to give him he olfered to "square it for a fiver,” and later he asked it she could give him £l. Both the commercial travellers recollected having met accused in an hotel at Tauranga, and one said Beagley had tried to borrow £lO off him. Witness said he was ready to lend the money on the representation made to him, but in consequence of something he was told he made the loan in the form of a postdated cheque, so that he might make further inquiries. The inquiries did not have satisfactory results, and he stopped payment of the cheque at the bank. Neither of the commercial Jn-a-vellers had met the accused previously, they said, hut accused noticed the address on a letter one of them had written to his wife, and made sonic passing remark about it. Evidence was given by a, taxi-driver that accused engaged him to drive to the houses of the commercial travellers in question, incurring a debt of 26s for taxi hire, and said he would pay by cheque at his hotel. When witness called for the fare accused had left the hotel, and tlie money had not been paid. At the last minute, after the evidence had been taken for the Supreme Court, accused changed his plea to guilty, and decided to be dealt with summarily.

Remarking that accused had previous convictions for tlieft. assault and obscene language, and that in this instance he had got near to blackmailing, the Magistrate remanded accused for a week for sentence. It was mentioned that accused was a married man with one young child.