AUDACIOUS THEFT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21640, 10 May 1932, Page 13

AUDACIOUS THEFT

KEY THAT WOULD NOT FIT INDUSTRY WITHOUT REWARD IMPRISONMENT AND. FINE. • A man named Johnny Sjogren was recently sentenced in Stockholm to 37 months’ imprisonment with hard labour and a fine for an audacious theft. By an ingenious plan in the best tradition or the “shocker” novel he stole from a. sate in a branch office of the tax commissioners a sum of about 500,000 kroner (about £28.000). Sjogren spent more than a year in perfecting his plans, and he carried them out alone. He found out the name of the cashier at the income tax branch office by the simple expedient of telephoning to the manager and asking what the name was. Once he had got the name he looked up the cashier s address i a telephone directory, and by a ruse wne able to obtain a wax impression of the key to his flat. Armed with a duplicate key Sjogren returned the sanie night, and, letting himself into the flat, began his search for the necessary office keys, so that he might make duplicates. These keys he found in the pocket of the cashier’s trousers m the bedroom where he was asleep. Sjogren easily copied the office keys, and lie got into the building without difficulty, but his copy of the safe key would not fit. Sjogren stole into the cashiers flat again, again “ borrowed ” the original key, and made another duplicate. But this key also failed to open the safe, and he made another raid on. the flat. A fresh duplicate was also useless. Sjogren declares that he paid at least 10 noduvnal visits to the cashier’s home over a period of some months. ’ , At last, after innumerable failures, the night came when one more key Sjogren had made opened the safe in the office. But the safe was practically empty, and it wa s necessary for him to go back nb nftcr night, like a poacher inspecting Irs lines, before he found an accumulation of tax payments sufficiently large to be worth taking. Then he helped himself to bundles of notes to the amount of 500,000 kroner, and -'iked home, throwing his keys down the nearest street drain. With the aid of a false passport Sjogren then went to Denmark, but the strain of his enterprise bad begun to tell upon him. He began to act in a manner that aroused the suspicions of an hotel chambermaid, and on information which she and the hall porter supplied he was arrested. The two hotel employees are hoping to divide the reward of 10,000 kroner (about £560) offered by the Stockholm Insurance Company.