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An Example of Mail Fraud in 19th Century Samoa (Article) [2004] JSPL 22; (2004) 8(2) Journal of South Pacific Law

AN EXAMPLE OF MAIL FRAUD IN 19TH CENTURY SAMOA

Professor Dirk HR Spennemann*

Mail fraud, the purchasing of items via mail order without paying for them, is a common mode of operation of modern day small time crooks. As a 21st century legal problem it is particularly associated with e-commerce.^[1] It is not new however. Trawling through the pages of nineteenth century newspapers published in Apia, Samoa (South Pacific) in the course of research on various aspects of Samoan history,^[2] brought to light an example of Alexander Pritchard, a European trader living in Samoa, defrauding the wine wholesaler Edward Patrick Fallon of Albury, NSW, Australia.

BACKGROUND

This paper will outline the fraud case in hand as an example of European traders in Samoa trying to make the most of a politically volatile situation at the frontier of colonial powers.

The wine trade in Southern New South Wales was pioneered in the mid 1860s by James T Fallon (–1886), who could draw on his own production from the Murray Valley Vineyard, but also the wine production from a large number of small land holders, many of them Germans, as well as larger vineyards.^[3] By 1873 the wine and spirits business was sold to his younger brother Patrick, who further expanded the business. Both brothers Fallon had been very active in developing a wine export industry for the British colonies in Australia. The elder Fallon had gone to England, for example, to successfully convince the authorities the alcohol content of the Albury-region wines was naturally high, that the wine was undoctored and should be imported with the appropriately lower duty imposed on wines than on spirits. Both brothers Fallon were keen to develop markets wherever they showed an opening. Samoa was one of them. This eagerness made them easy prey to a shrewd operator.

THE FACTS OF THE CASE

In early January 1892 Alexander Pritchard, European resident on Samoa, ordered ‘one or two cases of port, claret and sherry in quarts and two cases of sherry in pints and other wines you think would suit this market.’ Pritchard gave clear instructions on how to ship the wine. In his letter he claimed that Fallon had been recommended to him by J. Despeissis, then the NSW Government’s agricultural expert on viticulture. As an added stimulus, Pritchard stated that ‘we are desirous of importing our goods from the colonies instead of San Francisco,’ playing on the recipient’s nationalistic or jingoistic tendencies. Both the, most certainly spurious, reference to Despeissis, and, more influentially, the hope of breaking into a new market so far dominated by Californian sellers, seems to have influenced Fallon in filling the order on the promise that payment would occur by return mail.^[4] Fallon obliged on trust alone, delivering goods worth £14 5s (incl. shipping). But, to his unpleasant surprise, no payment followed.