FALSE PRETENSES, OBTAINING MONEY BY. By the common law of England, a man is not punishable 5.9 a criminal who has induced another, by fraudulent representa tions to part with the property of money or goods, unless the loss occasioned by the deception be of a public nature. Larceny or theft was the only species of wrongful abstraction of articles of value which was recognized, and where the consent of the owner to the transaction was obtained, no matter how fraudulently, the loser was left to a civil action for his relief. To remedy this effect in the law, the 33 Henry VIII. c. 1 was passed, whereby it was enacted that if any person should falsely and deceitfully obtain any money, goods, etc., by means of any false token or counterfeit letter made in any other man's name, the offender should suffer any punishment short of death, at the discretion of the judge. This statute, however, only reached the case of deception by use of a false writing or token; the 30 Geo. II c. 24 was therefore passed for the purpose of including all false pretenses whatsoever. Further alterations were made by subsequent statutes, until, by 24 and 25 Vict. c. 96, the previous legislation on the subject was consolidated. This is now the ruling statute in regard to false pretenses. The general principle is that, wherever person fraudulently represents as an existing fact that which is not an existing fact, and so gets money, etc., that is an offense within the act (Reg. v. Woolley, i. Den. C. C. 559). The false pretense must relate to some present fact, and therefore a promise merely to do some act is not such a false representation as will sustain a conviction. It is not necessary that the deception should be by words or writing, but any act tending to deceive will bring a person within the statute. Thus, a man at Oxford wearing a cap and gown, in order to induce a tradesman, of whom he ordered goods, to believe that he was a member of the university, is sufficient to warrant a conviction. The deception practiced, however,
must not be simply as to the quality of an article, for this is regarded as merely a dishonest trick of trade, and not criminally punishable; it is also necessary that the owner should be deceived by the pretense; and where a tradesman is induced to part with goods to a regular customer, making a false statement, not on account of the state ment, but from his belief in the credit of the party, the transaction is not punishable under the act. By 24, 25 Vict. c. 96, ss. 88 to 90, it is enacted that it shall be no bar to a conviction that the crime, on being proved, amounts to larceny, and that it shall not be necessary to prove an intent to defraud any particular person ; that the delivery of money, etc., to another person, for the benefit of the party using the deception, and also the obtaining signature to, or destruction of, a valuable security, etc., by a false representation, shall subject the offender to punishment. The same statute, ss. 46 and 47, contains a salutary provision, that any person attempting to extort money by threaten ing to accuse another of certain felonies, or of an infamous crime, is liable to penal servi tude for life.
In Scotland, this offense is known as falsehood, fraud, and willful imposition. Each species of the offense which in England is punishable under the statute, in Scotland is indictable at common law. Thus, false personation, as where a man, in the assumed character of an exciseman, received money as a composition for smuggled goods, has been held to warrant a conviction of falsehood. So, also, where the deception consists in fictiti ms appearances; as where a man, by fitting his shop with false bales, induced another to trust him with goods. Obtaining money by begging-letters, and the common practice of chain-dropping, fall under this denomination of crime.