Fraudulent Telephone Calls
| Published date | 01 July 1957 |
| Date | 01 July 1957 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002201835702100313 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Fraudulent Telephone Calls
A
SUBSCRIBER
on the Victoria exchange asks
the
operator
to
put
him through to a
Durham
number and, when
asked for his own number, he deliberately says
that
it is
Victoria 6912 (which happens to be
the
number of the Director
of Public Prosecutions).
The
operator does not notice
the
substitution, which was made by
the
subscriber with a view
to
the
cost of the call being borne by someone else.
What
offence has
the
subscriber committed?
By
the
Post Office Act, 1953, s. 66 (b), a person commits
asummary offence if he sends a message by telephone which
he knows to be false, for the purpose of causing annoyance,
inconvenience or needless anxiety to any other person.
In
the
present case a false message has been sent to the operator,
but
it is much more doubtful if it was done for any of
the
purposes mentioned.
That
any subscriber will be annoyed
and inconvenienced if he is asked to pay for a call he has never
made is certainly plain,
but
can it be said
that
our defrauder
of
the
Director gave the false number with
the
intention
of annoying or inconveniencing some other subscriber?
Obviously, he gave it for
the
purpose of having
the
call
charged otherwise
than
to himself. As
that
was
the
purpose of
the
false message,
that
surely exhausts
the
ambit of s. 66,
which was intended for quite different purposes;
the
doctrine
that
aman intends
the
natural consequences of his acts has,
it is submitted, no place here.
Has he obtained anything by false pretences?
He
has
clearly made a false pretence as to an existing fact and there is
an intent to defraud,
but
the
offence
under
s. 32 of
the
Larceny
Act, 1916, arises only where
"a
chattel, money or valuable
security" has been obtained by means of the pretence.
The
electricity used and the opportunity to talk to someone in
Durham
are not within
the
words quoted.
279
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