PROMOTION OF LOTTERY

Taranaki Daily News, 27 May 1933, Page 9

PROMOTION OF LOTTERY

TWO MEN ADMIT OFFENCE SCHEME TO DISTRIBUTE £7OOO. SOME TICKETS SOLD IN DOMINION. FRAUDULENCE NOT SUGGESTED. By Telegraph—Press Association. Wellington, May 26. Charged before Mr. E. Page, S.M., today with establishing a lottery known as “Empire and Foreign Amalgamated Consultation,” whereby £7OOO in money was to be distributed by chance, Melton Allan Ingle and William Craighead pleaded guilty and were each fined £l5 and given a month to find the money. Herbert Henry Waters was fined £1 for selling tickets.

Detective-Sergeant Revell said, that in December Ingle and Craighead decided to promote a lottery and approached a local firm to print suitable tickets. Five hundred tickets were printed, and the defendants proceeded*to sell them themselves and through agents. They were approached by DetectiveSergeant Hall in March and as a result of, the interview they ceased selling. They said that they had sold 150 tickets. Defendants, Detective-Sergeant Revell said, would have had to sell 56,000 tickets. For a start only 500 were printed, and as the lottery was to close on March 31 and be drawn bn April 14 the defendants had very little time to sell the required number of tickets. They proposed to get a concession to draw the lottery in some foreign country,; such as Tahiti. It was obvious that they could not promote the scheme, but he did not suggest that it was exactly' a fraudulent scheme. Counsel for the defendants interjected that there', .was no suggestion of fraud. He regarded Detective-Sergeant Revell’s remarks as a breach of faith. The Commissioner of Police had been interviewed in connection with the matter and given an assurance that there would be no allegation of fraud. Detective-Sergeant Revell: “I do not suggest that these men went out to defraud people, but I suggest that they could not possibly sell the required number of tickets.” . * , . -

Mr. Page: “You mean that the scheme would have fallen through?” Detective-Sergeant Revell: “Yes.” He added that Ingle was on two gears’ probation for theft Craighead was married and had never previously been before the court. • ,