WOMAN’S LOSS AT CARDS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17769, 3 May 1932, Page 5

WOMAN’S LOSS AT CARDS

TRICKED AT PARIS “CLUB” TWO ENGLISHMEN SENTENCED PARIS, March 22. Two Englishmen were sentenced to terms of imprisonment by a Paris Correctional Court to-day for attempting- to obtain " £40,000 from -Mme. Fulke, a wealthy Norwegian woman, by means of a series of card swindles.

One is Albert Hopkins, who was born at Manchester in 1888. He was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment and fined £2O. The other is Edward Appel, known as Appleton, who was born in London in 1883. He was sentenced to 13 months and fined £lO.

One accomplice, a hotelkeeper, was condemned to three years’ imprisonment and lined £10; while another received a sentence of six months, but was allowed the benefit of the First Offenders’ Act. It was alleged that Hopkins took Mine. Falke to what he described as a select private gambling “club,” a hotel in the centre of Paris, and that there she lost £40,000 at baccarat in five evenings. She paid £12,000 in cash and gave cheques for the balance. But before the cheques had been cashed she communicated with the police.

The hotel was at once raided. Packs of cards which had been tampered with were found, and, in spite of the declaration of Hopkins and Appleton that the play was entirely above board, the evidence indicated that the “club’’ was an elaborately staged fraud.