A LOTTERY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19624, 19 October 1933, Page 5

A LOTTERY

MANAGER FINED. By Telegraph—Press Association AUCKLAND. October 18. Reserved judgment was given to-day by Mr W. Wyvern Wilson, S.M., in the case of George Kennedy Elliot McLean, charged with managing a lottery known as the Multiplication Bureau. The Magistrate said the defendant was the manager of a company called "Multiple Systems Ltd.”, which conducted what he might call a scheme of finance. The nature of the scheme vas set out in a pamphlet entitled “The Magic of Multiplication,” which was put :n as evidence. After summarising the sen erne, the Magistrate said the evidence of Professor Segar told him that assuming the bureau began with only one member. on the completion of the sixteenth cycle of succession membership, it would have reached many millions. The business term “commission" as applied to moneys to be received by members was a misnomer. Moneys so promised might be more rightly designated “prizes to be paid on the happening of future events.” Th? present scheme was quite unsound economically, and if extended to the whole population it must cease for want of new members, and result in a deDlt balance. It seemed to him that only the first or early members were likely to receive any substantial reward and that the possibility of even the first member receiving payments amounting to £ISOO per annum were too remote to be worth consideration. The receipt of the so-called indirect "commissions” and the winning of cash prizes was an entirely fortuitous happening, beyond members' control, and dependent upon quite unpredictable facts. It depended upon the ever changing circumstances of the lives, and upon ” e impulses of many thousands of unknown persons. He thor.ht It was a matter of chance, and he was of the opinion that the scheme v-s a lottery.

Defendant was fined £5/1/- and costs.