COUNTERFEIT NOTES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 41, 18 February 1932, Page 7

COUNTERFEIT NOTES

UTTERER SENTENCED SERIOUSNESS OF OFFENCE AUCKLAND MAN’S STORY [ Per Prc.’B Association. ] AUCKLAND, Feb. 17. The seriousness of the crime of culating forced banknotes, was emphasised by Mr. Justice Herdman when sentencing Harry Dawson in the Supremo Court. Dawson had pleaded guilty to charges of uttering six Bank of New South Wales £1 notes and of having 475 of them in his possession. Counsel said that Dawson was a married man with four young children. He lost his position when the company that was employing him went into liquidation. He was doing relief work, and during this time he found a tin containing a number of banknotes. He thought if ho brought this under the notice of the police he might get into trouble, so he took the notes home. He became completely out of work and succumbed to tho temptation and circulated about 10 of tho notes. The Crown Prosecutor said that the passing of spurious notes was a serious matter, but there was nothing to indicate that Dawson was in any way a party to the original forging of them. He might have known of it, but there was nothing to link him up with the forgers. How he became possessed of the notes was not, known. His Honor said he had looked through the deposition and agreed with counsel for the Crown that there appeared to be nothing in them that showed that Dawson was actually a party to the manufacture of the notes. Nevertheless, he knew they were forged, and on several occasions he circulated them. A serious feature was that he was found in possession of n largo number. “Distribution of these banknotes among the public is a matter that I regard as a very grave clr’ence indeed, and I am bound to mete out punishment. This will warn those who contemplate practices of this kind that the consequences are serious,” said His Honour. Dawson was sentenced to be detained for reformative purposes for a period not exceeding three years.