SILVER COINS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 198, 23 July 1931, Page 2

SILVER COINS.

FINES FOR IMPORTATION. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, July 23. Fines totalling £125 and costs £6 Gs and the forfeiture of £1157 was the penalty inflicted on Irene Dobson, aged 35, to-day for importing Australian silver coins. The Crown Prosecutor said that accused made a series of trips from Sydney under various names. On May 17 she landed at Wellington with £650 in silver. This was seized, but she explained that it was her own money which she was transferring to New Zealand. The explanation was accepted. and after a warning she was allowed to take the silver back to Australia. In July she brought over £I4OO which two ship’s officers took to her in an hotel in Auckland after the arrival of the Marama. Those two men had been fined in Wellington and the police here had seized £989 in the hotel. The total imported was £I4OO. The offence was committed deliberately after a warning. Accused’s counsel pleaded that, like many others in Australia, accused was terrified of the possibility of losing all she had in Australia and that apprehension was reasonable. She had paid the ship’s officers’ fines. The Crown Prosecutor said that the court must deal with the offence and make the punishment sufficiently deterrent. Counsel’s proper course was to apply to the Minister of Customs. William Bennet McGregor, aged 52, a millhand, was 1 fined £25 for being in possession of Australian silver. He was described as the tool of Hobson in getting the silver changed.