£20,000 HOUSE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20892, 23 November 1937, Page 8

£20,000 HOUSE

BANK BALANCE OF £l/2/2 LONDON, October 2. A £20,000 house in Malfnir, staff of servants, Rolls-Royce car—and a Lank balance of £l/2/2. In this way lived Robert Beyer, 58-year-old German who is now in gaol. At the Old Bailey, where he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for obtaining £5OO by false pretences from Mrs Maya Villiers, a . wealthy society woman, he was referred to as: An inventor, a chemist, a Doctor of Philosophy, an art collector.

“Paid Nothing” Mrs Villiers later told something of Beyer’s life in the West End. The £20,000 house in Farm Street, Berkeley Square, W., was hers. Beyer said he wished to buy it and was in possession of it for nine months. "But lie never paid me a penny,” she said. “People believed in him and were Impressed by him. He Lad many friends and moved in the best society, spending a lot of money.” In court it was stated that Beyer told Mr and Mrs Williams a story of how Lord Nuffield was to pay him £50,00 for his inventions and float a company for him. Actually Lord Nifffield had never heard cf him.

Beyer has known what it is to be rich. But while in the United States he was convicted for practising as a doctor. It was in November of last year, when he took Mrs /fillers’ house, that he had only £l/2/2 on the bank. When his gaol sentence is served Beyer may face deportation; the judge recommended this.