MOTOR COMPETITION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 71, 23 February 1937, Page 5

MOTOR COMPETITION

SEQUEL IN COURT. CASE AT AVELLINGTON. Per Press Association. AVELLINGTON, Fob. 22. Five charges of false pretences in the conduct of a competition for which a motor-car was offered as a prize wore made jointly in the Supreme Court to-day against Harold Fairchild Pobar, an agent, Bertram Egley, a company secretary, and Hannath Noel Blake Marshall, a company director.

The principal charge was that between June 22, 1935. and March 31, 1936, accused conspired with one another in AYellington and other places to defraud such persons as should lie induced to purchase tickets in a skill test competition by falsely representing that a ca rwas available as a prize, without disclosing the fact that the car was subject to an instrument by way of security securing the principal sum of £450, and by false representing that the car was new and being kept sealed. There w r ere four other charges that the three accused, by the same false pretences as stated in the first charge, obtained from John Leitch 2s 6d, from John Johnston Henderson 6d on two occasions, and from Henry Gastein sums totalling £l.

There are a number of witnesses, and the case will probably last until Thursday. There were nearly 20 challenges, most of them by the Crown, before the jury of 12 was obtained. Mr Justice Johnston presided. The Crown Prosecutor (Mr AA r . H. Cunningham) and Mr C. Evans-Scott conducted the Crown case. Mr H. F. O’Leary, Iv.C., and Mr T. P. McCarthy appeared for Egley, and Pobar conducted his own defence.

Outlining the Crown’s case Mr Cunningham said that tickets in the competition were sold to the public, to which it was represented that the prize was a new sedan car valued at £595. Purchasers of the tickets at 6d each had to estimate how long the new prize car would run on 18 gallons of petrol at a stated number of equal revolutions per minute, the wheels having been jacked up. At a reliable estimate at least £2OOO was collected from the public by the sale of tickets and when the test was finally made it w r as not the test stated oir the tickets. The prize car had then been in use for a considerable time and the speedometer reading was between 5000 and 6000 miles. The car was never available to the winner because it had a mortgage on it from the beginning of the competition, and the test -was carried out after the car had been seized by the mortgagees. Pobar, continued Mr Cunningham, was the originator of the scheme, and he and his former partner, a man named Blake, made overtures to the AA’cllington Rugby League to allow its name to be shown as the recipient of the net profits of the competition. It was proposed that 7<| per cent, of the gross takings of the competition and the whole of the net profits, less 15 per cent., should go to the Rugby League, which agreed to the use of its name on the conditions that the car was paid for and that there would be some kind of audit of the accounts of the competition. Pobar and Blake got in touch with Marshall, who was a director and secretary of National Motors, Ltd. The latter recognised that tlm competition would afford a good advertisement for the make of the prize car and he arranged that a car should be made available for the competition. FINANCIAL DEAL.

Neither Pobar nor Blake had any money, said the Crown Prosecutor. There was a company known as Guarantors, Ltd., with which Marshal! was

connected, and when National Motors sold the car to Pobar and Blake for £450 it was paid for by a cheque drawn by Pobar and Blake on. a bank account guaranteed by Guarantors, Ltd. As security for the guarantee Pobar and Blake gave Guarantors, Ltd., an instrument by way of security over the prize car. Egley became the accountant of the competition. Evidence similar to that given in the Magistrate’s Court was tendered by the prosecution. The witnesses were Victor Milton Simpson, chairman of the board of control of the Wellington Rugby League when the competition was being conducted; Lewis Smith Drake, chief traffic officer, Wellington City Council, who was present during the testing of the car’s petrol consumption; John Leitch, John Johnston Henderson, and Henry Garstein, purchasers of tickets in the competition; William Baxter and James Charles Marchbanks, bank officers, who gave details of the operation of accounts touching the competition. When the Court adjourned, Kenneth James Blake, of Auckland, who assisted in the early stages of the conduct of the competition, was in the box.