The case of conspiracy to defraud through the medium of alleged bogus insurance was continued at H.M. Police Court last Friday, before Mr. G. W. King, G. Chalmers now answering the charge\in company with the first defendant, A. M. Spence. The original charge against Spence read:—That between May 1 and July 12 he did unlawfully conspire with others to defraud such persons as should thereafter be induced to part with money to them as agents of the German-American Fire & Marine Insurance Ca., of Baltimore, Mary-jand, and the World's Insurance Underwriters, of Jersey City, New Jersey, by falsely representing these companies to be genuine fire insurance companies.
Mr. H. D. Rodger asked leave to watch the case on behalf of the compradore, who, he said, had advanced about Tls. 5,000.
Mr. R. ©. Faithfull, for the prosecution, said that since the adjournment of the case last week the police had been very active making inquiries regarding the machinations of the two defendants, with the result that they had a volume of evidence showing that without doubt defendants were guilty of the charge brought against them, with conspiring with Wallace and others—anyhow, one other—to defraud the public by representing themselves to be the agents of two old, established American insurance companies. No Recorp or Sven Companigs.
Herbert A. Wiley, manager for China of the American Foreign Insurance Association, said he had been in the insurance business for 24 years. He only recently heard of the two. companies in question operating in China. There was no mention of them in the American record last published and officially accepted as being a correct record. Witness had never known agents appointed for a company in the United States without power of attorney, agency agreement or certificate of agency. The American practice was for an insurance company to report and receive a licence from the insurance commissioner of the State of origin. The company was required to register and to file a sworn statement of their entire operations within the period of the current year, and in the absence of any such sworn return, were denied the privilege of transacting business in any State. If a company was registered in America, the operations of a China agency would automatically go to the insurance commissioner of the State of origin. It was not necessary to register here, but it was tha practice of American companies.
Asked how his attention was drawn to these two companies, witness said that his clerk showed him an advertisement in a Chinese newspaper stating that they were American companies. Witness looked up the records and was unable to trace them. He was unable to find that they existed in America. Their names did not appear among the "ins and cuts," a list of companies formed or projected during 1920. Unquestionably, they must have appeared in the record had the companies existed for 50 or 60 years. If defendants had been appointed agents, they ought to ba in a position to produce their agreement and power of attorney.
Defendants, who were not legally represented, didn't question witness.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.