People v. Meadows

THE COURT.

The defendants were jointly charged, tried, and convicted of the crime of obtaining money by false pretenses. Each was .sentenced to a term of three years in the state prison. This appeal is by them from the judgment and from an order denying their motion for a new trial.

The principal point on which defendants rely for a reversal is that there is a variance between the false pretenses charged and those proved in this, that the information charges that the'defendants represented to the complaining witness that a state license would be necessary to authorize him to employ certain laborers, whereupon he paid them money for the purpose of procuring such license for him; whereas the evidence shows that the suggestion as to the necessity for the license came from the complaining witness. •

[312]

The specific charge in the information was that the defendants on the twenty-ninth day of April, 1912, obtained from Tony Raptis sixty dollars by means of the following false pretenses:

(1) That there was in existence a corporation known-as the “Great Western Power and Development Company” of California, engaged in the business of transmitting electricity through several counties in the state;

(2) That Meadows and Hickey had entered into an agreement with said Great Western Power and Development Company whereby they were employed to secure three thousand laborers for said corporation;

(3) That said defendants would employ said Tony Raptis to assist- them in securing said laborers;

(4) That a certain instrument which said defendants had in their possession and which they showed to said Tony Raptis was a state license authorizing the bearer to employ laborers, and they would deliver same for sixty dollars;

(5) That after said Tony Raptis had secured said license the defendants would employ him to collect two dollars and fifty cents a head from all those employed, and to deliver the same to defendants, after which the defendants would pay him five hundred dollars for his services;

(6) That defendants had also been employed to secure a general foreman and that they would employ Tony Raptis as general foreman.