HEARTLESS FRAUDS

Taranaki Daily News, 24 June 1935, Page 7

HEARTLESS FRAUDS

WOKKLESS MEN ROBBED. SHOPS OPENED AT LONDON. Derek Lazenby, aged 41, of Nottingham, was at London Sessions, found guilty of obtaining money by means of employment frauds, and fraudulently converting £895 to his own use, says the Daily Telegraph. • It was stated that Lazenby opened 10 tobacconists’. and confectioners’ shops in South London and appointed managers who were required to pay £75 as a guarantee of honesty. The men did not get their money back, and in one case four managers were appointed in one. shop. ' * '■ ~ Laxenby asked for fifty-four other cases of obtaining money and-credit by fraud to be taken into consideration. Detective-Sergeant Albert Wells said that Laxenby had two previous convictions. In 1928 he was at the Old Bailey to fifteen months in the second division for obtaining money-by false pretences and fraudulent conversion. He was an agent for various manufacturing firms, and he advertised for canvassers and said he wanted .£2O or ~25 as deposit for their security <sn samples they were to carry. Seven other cases were taken into consideration when, he - was sentenced, and the approximate total involved was £7OO. : • The judge then told Laxenby that he would have been sent to penal servitude If he had fed a previous conviction. Fourteen months after being released, from that sentence he was sentenced to twelve months’ hard labour at Bow Street for obtaining money by falsa pre1926 he had an exceptionally good character. He was a man of suasive and plausible abilities. All the additional fifty-four charges arose out of the same matter. . ♦ , “I have made these inquiries throughout,” said Sergeant Welte, and it is only by this means that one sees the true plight of the victims. - “Some of the men have lost CVftry penny they had, and not only that, but when no wages were coming[ in .and they went to the Labour Exchange, they found thev were not entitled to benefit owing to L stamps not having been on their . cards Others who moved mto rooms over ’the shops word more or less turned into the streets. ■, • Sir Percival Clarke, the chairman, in traded on these • poor men until you brought ruin and havoc among them. r had vour warning when you ja&sw* »«a«« ™ , / “sT’perdval commended q P r«pant Welte, who, it was stated, had i . worked entirely alone and had taken over 300 statements.