THE RECENT FRAUDS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7649, 28 May 1886, Page 6

THE RECENT FRAUDS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

- ♦ The Australian Insurance and Banking Record says The current year has been the most remarkable for the culmination of extensive frauds ever known in the history of the colony. The defalcations of H. A. Wood, the Public Receiver, and of Hesser and Egreinont, the secretaries of two Building Societies, were still engaging a large share of public attention —indeed, are even still in some way or other before the Law Courts—when the Commercial Bank (S.A.) failure came upon us like an earthquake. Then there was the alleged robbery of the Yaukalilla branch of the Commercial Bank of S.A., the trial of the manager of which will come off next month. Next came the arrest of one of the country managers of the National Bank at Hamley Bridge, R. S. Annear, on a charge of forging the name of James Bell, a customer of the bank, to a oheque for £133 2s, and for embezzling the sum of £6 19s 6d. The young man was committed for trial, but bail was granted— himself in £500, and two sureties of £250 each. Following this was the embezzlement of £1000 by Mr. W. Minchin, chief teller at the head office of the National Bank, Adelaide. Mr. Minchin confessed to appropriating the money during the current month, so that the terrible examples of the defaulting manager and accountant of the Commercial do not appear to have been sufficient warning to him. He was arrested on April 29, and on the following day brought before the P.M. and committed for trial. He has been fourteen years in the service of the bank, and was recently removed from the managership of the Gawler branch to take tho position of teller in Adelaide. He has hitherto borne an excellent character, and it is said there are extenuating circumstances in connection with the case, which may tell in his favour. Next came the discovery of the forged voucher bearing the accountant's initio's in the Commercial Bank of South Australia, as mentioned above. The trial of Alex. Crooks (aged 39) late manager, and Alex. McKenzie Wilson, late accountant, of the Commercial Bank of South Australia, took place on 7th April. Both prisoners pleaded guilty, and were sentenced respectively to eight and six years' penal servitude. The sentence of Crooks would probably have been heavier, but tho directors only pressed one charge against him—for the embezzlement of £5000. The deaths of three persons are directly traceable to the shock caused them by losses resulting from the bank failure, and at least two business men are now in the lunatic asylum from the same cause. Few, if any, men have done so much mischief commercially and socially as Alex. Crooks since the foundation of the Australian colonies. Wilson's sentence is generally considered a much heavier one than Crook's in proportion the amount of wrong that he had done. Apart from banking business thero • are the sad defalcations of Alexander Walker, the secretary of the Y.M.C.A. extending over three years, and totalling £1288. He also is awaiting his trial. Privately two other defaulters are talked about,, but their friends are making strenuous efforts to pay off their liabilities, which in one case is said to be about the same as Walker's, and in the other not far short of that amount. Other cases are known to have occurred within the past few months, which have been "squared," and consequently not come before publio notice except as nine days' gossip. These facts, however, disclose a very dreadful state of commercial immorality, and are producing an amount of distrust and suspicion 'to which we have hitherto been almost strangers. To add to the intensity of these feelings, certain evil or mischievously disposed persons lately spread damaging reports—utterly without foundation, as to the stability of two or three of our largest mercantile houses. There is no denying that times are bad with us, as with the rest of the world, but they have been represented by designing or foolish persons as worse than they really are ; and one effect of the constant cry of " stinking fish" has been to make things worse than they would otherwise have been. People now a days seem too fond of calling on Jupiter for help, instead of putting their own shoulders to the wheel. Many working men, so called, who complain of being on the verge of starvation, cry out at work that we old colonists took as a matter of course and without grumbling. There are many honour* abls exceptions, but the grumblers do a great deal of harm in their way, and cause much of the sympathy that would be felt for those in real distress to be discounted or withheld.