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New Zealand Mail, Issue 1204, 29 March 1895, Page 25

The latest instance of the confidence trick in "Wellington occurred on the Queen's Wharf on Monday evening just as the s.s. Rotorua was'leaving for the South. Among the passengers were Sir Bobert Stout and Mr J. Shand, a squatter from the Chatham Islands, who were standing on the wharf engaged, in conversation with the Hon Gr. F. Richardson. Suddenly there came up to them a man who, in a hurried tone, said, " Here, Shand, I'm Ford, of the Bank of New Zealand, lend me <£lo for a few minutes." Mr Shand, thinking that " Ford" was to be a fellow-passenger with him, immediately put his hand in his pocket and taking out a J2lO note handed it to the impetuous stranger, who placed a cheap silver watch in his hands, which he requested him to hold until he came back, and then decamped. Within a few minutes it dawned upon Mr Shand that he had been beguiled, but as the boat was then leaving nothing could be done in the matter, except that Mr Bichardson reported the incident to the police, in whose hands it now rests. The tusk of the largest Siberian mammoth ever dug up weighed 8691 b.