IMPRISONED FOR LIFE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VI, Issue 272, 2 November 1916, Page 2

IMPRISONED FOR LIFE.

NOTORIOUS AUSTRALIAN SWINDLER. Johannesburg, Oct. 18. Andrew John Gibson, who was arrested in Sydney', has been sentenced to imprisonment for life, for bank frauds ainoutmg to £3765. He is described as the most expert forger, and iiad convictions in mnglanti, America, South Africa, and Australia. [Andrew John Gibson is one ot the cleverest criminals known to the Australian police. He arrived in Sydney over half a century ago when he was only twenty-two, and was employed as a dispenser. For four or five years he kept off the police records, but he lived a gay life, and this need of money led to his being arrested at Vass for false pretences, and sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment. Then he began his long career of roguery. Women were nearly' always his victims. As Sir. Harry West wood Cooper he married a young woman in Sydney in 1895, deserted, her, married a young girl in Brisbane and took her to England. he appeared in Canada and the United States, where he carried out numerous extraordinary frauds and “married” further women—always wealthy women. Next he went to South Africa, where he raised much money on a bogus deposit certificate. " Then he came back to' Sydney as “Surgeon-major Honje, V.C.” but the detectives here were already looking for him, and he was arrested at Burraga when as “Dr Swinton Home,” .he was about to marry a Bnrraga girl. He was extradited to Natal, served a sentence, and arrived back in Sydney at the beginning of this year. He was arrested again this time while posing as a doctor, and living in luxury' at' the Coogee Bay Hotel, and sent back to Africa to answer a further series of charges of fraud. ]