BANK DECEIVED.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21022, 10 May 1930, Page 17

BANK DECEIVED.

REMARKABLE SKILL OF COINERS. A remarkable story of how two coiners were foiled by a woman Post Office assistant was related in the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh, when James Steele and Robert Ramsay, two local men of middle age, were each sentenced to three years’ penal servitude for contraventions of the Coinage Act, writes the Edinburgh correspondent of. the Manchester Guardian. The accused, who lived at Caledonian Road, pleaded gnilty to being in possssion pf machinery and equipment for manufacturing counterfeit half-crowns and with having made 1350 counterfeit half-crowns. It was stated that the accused were joiners who had spent years in studying electricity, . magnetism, and engineering. They had come near discovering a process of electroplating and electrotypiug which would have been very useful for legitimate purposes! but in instead of perfecting their process they had drifted into a criminal channel. The counterfeit coins, counsel for the crown stated, wore so skilfully made that they could scarcely be detected. Counsel was informed by the Mint that in all their records there was no case of coining offences where such high skill and such precision had been, shown in the manufacture of counterfeit. The process which the accused adopted was comparable to that used in the legitimate manufacture of coins. Counsel explained that a woman assistant in an Edinburgh sub-post office had her suspicions aroused by the number of boys who purchased postal orders with half-crowns. She submitted some of the coins to the hank, who informed her that they were genuine. She then took some of the coins to the police, communication was opened up with the Mint, and the coins were declared counterfeit. Counsel added that two days were occupied in dismantling The elaborate machinery which the accused had at their workshop. The Lord Justice Clerk, in passing sentence, said the case was a deplorable one of misdirected energy. It was difficult of detection, and the woman responsible for discovering the accused’s misdeeds was deserving of the highest credit.