A FALSE DECLARATION.

Otago Witness, Issue 3860, 6 March 1928, Page 37

A FALSE DECLARATION.

PENSIONS DEPARTMENT DEFRAUDED. AUCKLAND March 2. An ex-soldier named Joseph Avery, who lost a leg in the Battle of the Somme, came before Mr W. R. M'Kean, S.M., at the police Court this morning on two charges of having made a false declaration to a pensions officer. He pleaded guilty. The Registrar of Pensions said that the department claimed a penalty on the charges, while Avery would have to refund the sum of £lB odd, which he had received as the result of his false declaration.

Mr R. A. Singer, who appeared for the defendant, said that Avery went to the war early in 1915, and lost his leg in France. On his return he was granted a life nension of £1 12s per week. In 1924 Avery obtarSed an advance of £3OO on his pension, and with the money he purchased a confectionery business in Wellington. Three weeks after he started business the shop was burnt down, and all that Amery received was the insurance money, which lasted him seven months. Avery was then destitute. He had a wife to keep, and applied for and was granted an economic person of £5 10s per month. The two of them had to exist on that. In October last Avery secured employment at Rotorua, but this lasted only until the middle of November After all, by the offence he had committed Avery had obtained only the small sum of £lB 7s 43 from the Government, to which he was no.t entitled. “The pensions paid are inadequate, and they get more inadequate the further away the vista of the war goes.” said Mr Singer. He added that Avery had no money, and he was not working. It would be an iniquity to send such a man to prison.” “ Your counsel suggests that to obtain money from the Gtfernment by false pretences, as you have done, is less reprehensible than to obtain it from anyone else,” Mr M'Kean told Avery. “ I am not concerned about how you can pay back the money you have obtained by this fase pretence. It is a bad case, and you will be fined £5 and 10s costs on the first charge, and convicted and ordered to pay costs on the second.