BOOKIES DEFRAUDED.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 16 November 1928, Page 3

BOOKIES DEFRAUDED.

BETS THROUGH THE POST. JUGGLING- WITH STAMP MARKS. A scheme for defrauding bookmakers, which the Recorder (Sir Ernest Wild, K.C.) described as “highly ingenious,” was disclosed at the 'Old Bailey( recently, when George Williams, 56, a postman, and Stephen John‘Carter, 48, an assistant steward, were each sentenced to three years’ penal servitude "for conspiring to obtain money by means of forged instruments, and to steal postal packets in course of transmission. Air Pcrcival Clarke, prosecuting, said that Williams and Carter had taken advantage of the fact that it. was The practice of bookmakers to. accept a bet sent through the post if the' postmark on the letter was antecedent to, the time of the race on which the bet was made. Two systems of fraud had been employed. With regard to the first Williams, who was employed in the’South Tottenham sorting office, would pass a stamped envelope through -the :d|ate stamping machine and afterwards would go outside and hand the envelope to Carter. Carter would put in the envelope bets on races which had already taken place, and then return the envelope to Williams, who would take it back to the post office and surreptitiously slip it into the dispatch bag. . Thus, a bookmaker would receive a letter post-marked 1.15 p.m., and containing a bet on a 2.30 race, which had, in fact, been taken to the post office by Williams at -3.30. The other method, said Mr (Clarke, was somewhat similar, except' that the necessary post-mark was obtained bv means of what was known as “a cut out "letter. ” A blank envelope bearing only a stamp would be enclosed in another envelope, which bore an accommodation address used by Carter. -A portion of the outer envelope would' be cut away so that the stamp on the inside envelope was exposed. This package Would then be put in the post, and the result would be .that Carter would get possession of an envelope bearnig no address, -but having on it a .stamp marked with an earlier time stamp. Very shortly afterwards this envelope containing a bet. on a race which had just taken place would be on its way through the post to, a bookmaker, Wil-liams-having put it into a dispatch bag.