UNSCRUPULOUS SWINDLER

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16542, 9 January 1928, Page 9

UNSCRUPULOUS SWINDLER

LONDON, Oct. 24. Sentence of fours years’ penal servitude was passed at the Old Bailey upon Joseph Aspinall, 53, an engineer, of Holland Park-avenue, for conspiracy to defraud and obtaining money by false pretences. Prisoner was described as an unscrupulous adventurer, who had obtained nearly £200,000 from the public by fraud in the last twenty years. Tho Recorder said the case revealed a most remarkable set of circumstances. “It shows how the desire to get rich quick and the love of speculation can lead otherwise sane and level-mindect citizens to invest their hard-earned gains in any wildcat scheme that may be put before them by any plausible person. Although there is a stock exchange and other places where they can get reliable advice and reasonable / interest on their money, yet these people are imposed upon wholesale. It was hot only Yorkshiremen who were imposed upon. I see the list includes a retired manager from Kensington, a company director from Nottingham, an architect from Bedford, iyi auctioneer from London, a grocer from Scotland, and numerous other people from different parts of the country. This case ought to be a lesson to people not to hazard their money unless they first make inquiries. Had they made any inquiry here they would have found Joseph Aspinall had twice been made a bankrupt and three times convict-' ed.”