Thefts from Lighters in Whangpoo 'A racket on the river by which a Lnumber of: foreign and Chinese exporters and insurance companies have been made to suffer serious losses was exposed with the arrest of two men-believed to be ringleaders of the bank responsible. The two men are now under detention, awaiting judgment in the District Court here.
Consignments of hats destined for Europe had been found—tampered with on arrival at their destination, In some Instances half the contents of a case had been removed and the remainder shaken up so that they filled the case. In other instances the cases had been emptied of their original contents and refilled with rubbish and old cardboard boxes. Thefts of this nature continued over a number of months, with no clu 85 to who was responsible for them until about two weeks ago the River Police found what they had been looking for.
In a series of raids in the Nantao area, the two suspects now awaiting the "court's verdict were arrested. Three others, plicated, fact. that their racket had been discovered and fled before the polls could get to them.
As a result of the investigations it was established that the thefts curred efter the cases had passed the Customs and while they" were on registered lighters, "The methods employed by the gangsters varied according to the circumstances. The most common was to remove two cases from a lighter under some pretext such as that they had been loaded by a mistake, take them the gang, rifle lain so that they exactly as before, and return them to the lighter as the two cases which should hay the frst place
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.