FALSE PRETENCES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 67, Issue 5642, 16 July 1943, Page 2

FALSE PRETENCES

ACCUSED BEFORE COURT 7 ..VALUELESS cheques issued A remarkable story of deception and gullibility was unfolded in the Te Awamutu Court yesterday when Harold Avery Clayton appeared on four charges of false pretences. The first charge was that at Cambridge accused obtained from Andrew Wright Anderson a sum of £5 by re- • presenting that a cheque drawn on a bank at Rotorua for £5 was good and 'valid'. .The second charge stated that accused obtained £5 from George Sidney Ardley (Auckland) under similar circumstances; the third was that he obtained £lO from Arthur Frederick Bartley (Kerepehi); and the fourth was a charge of obtaining by fraud £lO from Henry William Wotton, of Ohura. Accused, who is at present serving a sentence at Waikeria, pleaded guilty to all the charges. Sergeant S. G. Clist prosecuted and outlined the circumstances leading to the charges. Accused had posed as a returned soldier from the Middle East, as a veterinary surgeon out curing dogs of distemper with a formula he brought back from the East, and as a ; captain of the “Intelligence Corps” working in association of a magistrate at New Plymouth, the sergeant said. Mr W. H. Freeman, S.M.: The hallmark of respectability ! Remarking that he was amazed at the ease displayed in getting people' to cash cheques, the magistrate sentenced accused to twelve months’ imprisonment.