COUNTERFEIT NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21539, 11 January 1932, Page 5

COUNTERFEIT NOTES

LARGE NUMBER DISCOVERED AX ALERT SHOP ASSISTANT. (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, January 10. A quick-witted shop girl and a smart police constable were instrumental on Saturday in exposing a scheme for circulating counterfeit bank notes, and in effecting the arrest of a man who was found to bo in possession of £SOO worth of spurious Bank of New South Wales £1 notes, exactly similar to those circulated between Auckland and Hamilton on April 24 of last year. Thanks to the girl’s presence of mind the intervention of the police caught the counterfeiter completely by surprise. The man walked into a fancy goods shop in Karangahape road at 11.30 a.m., and preferred a girl assistant a note which she regarded with suspicion. It was a £1 Bank of New South Wales note numbered E 913,885, and as the girl, in common with the employees of a majority of city firms, had been warned that each notes were in circulation ever since the counterfeit note scare of last year, she examined it carefully and showed it to a male assistant who confirmed her suspicion. The girl declined to accept the note, whereupon the man produced another note which was accepted. No sooner had he left the shop thart the male assistant ran out and enlisted the services of the nearest policeman, Constable Kimberley, of Newton, who was standing at' the Pitt street corner. The man bad by this time disappeared, but the shop assistant was able to give the constable a description of him. A valuable clue was the fact that he had entered the shop lending a four-year-old girl by the hand and had passed over the £1 note in payment for a toy perambulator for the child. . ' “The little girl is dressed in a pink frock,” said the shop assistant as he hurried along Karangahape road with the constable. They had not proceeded far when they saw the child playing on the footpath outside a dairy. Constable Kimberley, looking through the door, saw a man sitting in the back room of a dairy smoking a cigarette. “Good day,” said the constable, as he walked in. The man looked up startled. “You were at a fancy goods shop along the road just now? ” “Yes,” replied the man. “Let me see what money yon have with you ? ” The man turned out his pockets, placing £2 10s in notes on the table. One ol them was the counterfeit. He said it was given to him for change at another shop. He also said he had recently come from the south and was living with friends in Karangahape road. Dissatisfied with the man’s answers, Constable Kimberley arrested him and notified police headquarters. Detective Moore afterwards assisted him in searching the man’s lodgings. They found a tobacco tin in which were packed 500 counterfeit notes, all bearing the number E 913.885. _ Eight other spuri.ius notes were found in an envelope. Harry Dawson, aged 46, will appear in the Police Court to-morrow morning charged with uttering a forged £1 note,