"TAKEN DOWN"

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVII, Issue 139, 14 June 1913, Page 2

"TAKEN DOWN"

NEW ZEALAND ENGINEER'S

LOSS

' 'CHARITY DISTRIBUTION

TRICK

(Post Correspondent.)

LONDON, April 25. Once more a New Zealander holi-day-making in the Old Country has been victimised by confidence men and relieved of a considerable sum of money. The last important case at all authenticated was that of a New Zealand farmer who chummed up with some people crossing from Italy and was afterwards "taken down" for £600 in Paris.

This week's case is that of a New Zealand mining engineer, Mr C. S. Farmer, who only returned a" month or two ago from fulfilling a mining cowmission in Siberia. Mr Farmer leffc New Zealand with his family about 4-J years ago, and went to Petropavlovsk, in Siberia, en (route for the Spassky Copper Mines, of which he had been appointed superintendent. The commission ' proved most successful, and Mr Farmer aJid his wife had been enjoying a few months' well earned holiday in England prior to returning to the Kirghis Steppes to enter into the work again.

It seems that they were staying at an hotel near the Strand, and last Wednesday Mr Farmer was walking near St. Clement Danes when he was accosted by a man who asked him the way to Victoria Street. The stranger, who was well dressed, took the cue from Mr Farmer's greenstone pendant to. talk about New Zealand, and he displayed a surprising knowledge of Mr Farmer's district (Auckland) and