NOVEL RADIO FRAUD

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21640, 4 November 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

NOVEL RADIO FRAUD

"TAPPER'S" INGENIOUS DEVICE SAUCEPAN AS AMPLIFIER i2_ Novel methods whereby a radio " tapper " helped himself to a relayed tireless service, thereby depriving hundreds of lawful listeners of their piogrammes, were revealed in a case heard at Clerkenwell, London, lately. The unauthorised listener, Ernest Cash, of Islington, figured m what was said to be the first summons of its kind. He was alleged to have fraudulently diverted electrical energy from the lines of Wireless Services, Limited. Prosecuting counsel stated that Wireless Services, Limited, supplied programmes from the 8.8.C. and other stations by means of a central receiving station, which transmitted the programmes to their subscribers by direct wires. The amount of electricity lost in this instance might be small, but the company was not concerned with that so much as with the trouble caused to their subscribers and the consequent loss of revenue. Cash occupied a basement in a tenement house, on the first floor of which was a subscriber to the radio rental company. The receiving wires ran down the side of the house to a junction box just outside the subscriber's window. Cash attached a considerable length of wire to this box, and led it down through his window in the basement. ' Accused used a very ingenious method to get his programmes," added counsel, " by obtaining a pair of earphones, which are now practically obsolete, and inserting them into a saucepan to amplify the sound. That was the very worst thing he could have done, because the. electric current naturally took the line of least resistance through the earphones. Through this about 400 subscribers were deprived of their service." Cash who was stated to be married and out of work, pleaded that he was very sorry for what he had done. The magistrate told Cash he had rendered himself liable to be sent to prison. " You must know, and the public must know, that anything of this sort in the future must be looked upon very seriously by the Court," remarked the magistrate, Cash was fined .£l, and ordered to pay one guinea costs.