FALSE PRETENCES, in law, indicates the obtaining from any other person by any false pretence any chattel, money or valuable security, with intent to defraud. It is an indictable mis demeanour by statute. The broad distinction between this offence and larceny is that in the former the owner intends to part with his property, in the latter he does not. This offence dates as a statutory crime practically from 1757. In English law the only remedy originally available for an owner who had been deprived of his goods by fraud was an indictment for the crime of cheating. These remedies were insufficient to cover all cases where money or other properties had been obtained by false pre tences, and the offence was first partially created by a statute of Henry VIII. (1541). The scope of the offence was enlarged to include practically all false pretences by an act of George IV. passed in 1757.
The law is now governed by the Larceny Act 1916, which by s. 32 enacts that every person who by any false pretence (I) with intent to defraud, obtains from any other person any chattel, money or valuable security, or (2) with intent to defraud or injure any other person, fraudulently causes or induces any other person to execute, make, accept, endorse or destroy the whole or any part of any valuable security, is guilty of a mis demeanour and liable to penal servitude for five years. Also by s. 4o of the same act, it is not necessary to prove an intent to defraud any particular person, but it is sufficient to prove that the person accused did the act charged with intent to defraud. And on a trial for larceny, if the facts so warrant, a verdict of false pretences may be returned, and if on a trial for obtaining by false pretences it is proved that the defendant stole the property in question, he is not by reason thereof entitled to be acquitted of obtaining such property by false pretences.
The principal points to notice are that the pretence must be a false pretence of some past or existing fact, made for the pur pose of inducing the prosecutor to part with his property, and a pretence of future action is not sufficient. This rule was re cognized in the Summary Jurisdiction Act 1899, for where justices propose to deal with a case summarily they must explain to the accused "that a false pretence means a false representation by words, writing or conduct that some fact exists or existed, and that a promise as to future conduct not intended to be kept is not by itself a false pretence." The property, too, must have been actually obtained by the false pretence. The owner must be induced by the pretence to make over the absolute and im mediate ownership of the goods, for where temporary possession only is given it is "larceny by means of a trick." It is not always easy, however, to draw a distinction between the various classes of offences. In the case where a man goes into a restaurant and orders a meal, and, after consuming it, says that he has no means of paying for it, it was decided by the court for Crown cases reserved in R. v. Jones, 1898, L.R. 1 Q.B. 119, that it is neither larceny nor false pretences, but an offence under the Debtors Act 1869, of obtaining credit by fraud. (See also CHEATING; FRAUD; LARCENY.) In the United States, false pretences in the various States is a crime by statutes, based largely upon the English statutes passed prior to the American Revolution. While the statutes are broad, they do not include every case of fraud and dishonesty whereby one person gains advantage over another.