NOTORIOUS FORGER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14133, 7 August 1909, Page 2 (Supplement)

NOTORIOUS FORGER.

GREAT FRAUD RECALLED.

Br the death at Woodfield Lodge, Mount Ephraim Lane, Streatham, of Benjamin Greene Lake, ex-solicitor and ex-convict, in hie 70th year, a 1 strange and chequered career was brought to a close. He • was sentenced at the Old Bailey in 1901 to 12 years' penal servitude for misappropriating trust funds, but released after serving only seven years last August on the ground of ill-health. On the very day of his restoration to his comfortable Streatham home one of his victims—an Oxford man, eon of a former lieutenant-colonel of the 16th Hussars—had to apply to the Kingston magistrates for assistance from the poorbox. A former president of the Incorporated Law Society, as it was then known, and chairman of its disciplinary committee, Lake wag for many years one of the most eminent solicitors in England, and enjoyed a large practice. The failure of the firm of Lake and Lake in the cummer of 1900, with liabilities exceeding £300,000, created great consternation in legal circles.

An investigation into _ its affairs was followed by the prosecution of Benjamin Greene Lake, and at the Central Criminal Court in January, 1901, he was convicted of misappropriation of trust funds., to the amount of £70,000, and sentenced by Mr. Justice Wills to 12 years' penal servitude.

Lake ascribed his failure and losses to defalcations on the part of a former partner, who was also his cousin—-George, Edward Lake, and said, lie did not discover them until after his partner's death. At his trial considerable doubt was cast on the assertion that George Lake was dead, though,,a. funeral had taken place at Bushey. .... . . ■" The coffin had been brought over from Germany, and with it two certificates of death, in German and English respectively. It was even said that the reputedly dead man had been seen walking about. In the course of the trial Lake went into the witness-box, and strongly protested his innocence of the frauds alleged against him, throwing the fault, from which those who had confided money with the firm had suffered enormous losses", upon his late partner. Addressing the convict, when parsing sentence, MY. Justice Wills said: —

" Your age, your respectability, your great have unfortunately turned out to be part of the stock-in-trad© by which frauds of fearful extent have been committed. Ido not make the mistake of attributing all those frauds to you, and I have little doubt that the origin of this bad business was the conduct of your cousin, and what that, conduct led to. but that in the latter stages ?of it, and for many .years past, you have been cognisant of what has been going on it is impossible to doubt.

"It it impossible to acquit you of guilty participation in the misappropriation of large —how large I know not: and what misery, disaster, and family ruin you have spread abroad by your defalcation's I cannot estimate.". , *