CRIME OF IMPORTING AUSTRALIAN SILVER.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 173, 23 July 1931, Page 9

CRIME OF IMPORTING AUSTRALIAN SILVER.

WOMAN IS FINED £125 AND LOSES HER MONEY. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, July 23. Fines totalling £125, costs £6 6s and f of £1157 w T as the penalty inicted on Irene Dobson, aged thirtyve years, to-day for importing Australian silver coins.

The Crown Prosecutor said accused had made a series of trips from Sydney under various names. On May 17 she landed at Wellington with £650 in silver. This was seized, but she had explained that it was her own money, which she was transferring to New Zealand. Her explanation was accepted, and, after being warned, she was allowed to take the silver back to Australia. In July she brought over £I4OO, which two ships’ officers took to her hotel in Auckland after the arrival of the Marama. Those two men had been fined in Wellington, and the police in Auckland had seized £989 in the hotel. The total imported was £I4OO. The offence had been committed deliberately after a warning. Accused’s counsel pleaded that, like many others in Australia, accused was terrified of the possibility of losing all she had in Australia, and that apprehension was reasonable. She had paid the ships’ officers’ fines. The Crown Prosecutor said the court must deal with the offence and make the punishment sufficiently deterrent. Counsel’s proper course was to apply to the Minister of Customs.

William Bennett M’Gregor, aged fifty-two years, a millhand, was fined £25 for being in possession of Australian silver. He was described as the tool of Dobson In getting silver changed.