BETTING PLUNGES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26437, 16 April 1947, Page 8

BETTING PLUNGES

YOUNG MAN’S HEAVY LOSSES “ UNSCRUPULOUS ” BOOKMAKERS P.A, WELLINGTON, Apl. 15. A story of reckless betting with bookmakers, one of whom was stated to be a justice of the peace, was told in the. Supreme Court to-day, when Gilmer Cunningham Whyte, aged 28, a clerk, was sentenced to two years’ reformative detention for the theft of £1207 from the Wellington Hospital Board. Counsel, Mr W. J. Stacey, stated that the accused’s father had made good other defalcations by his son totalling more than £2OOO. Whyte had been employed by the board as patients' property officer, his duties being to collect the patients' mone.y when they entered hospital, as well as their pension moneys from the Social Security Department, said Mr Justice Smith. In many cases receipts had been forged, and the prisoner appropriated the money, the reason being that he engaged in gambling, and, having lost, plunged again in an attempt to recoup himself, but, as usually happened, the attempt failed. The prisoner had been employed in a position of trust, and though it was his ffrst olTence, and he was only a young man, a sentence must be imposed that would be a deterrent to others. “The prisoner got in the hands of unscrupulous bookmakers,” said Mr Stacey. "I use the word ‘unscrupulous ’ from an investigation I have made. There were two bookmakers, and one of them was a justice of the peace.” When he. lost money he started, so to speak, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and in less than a year got through the astonishing sum of more than £2600. His father had paid that sum, and it was returned to the people concerned. but the prisoner then discovered that he was still £2OO short. He did not have the heart to ask his father for it, and started gambling again, so that the sum lost became more than £I2OO.