Section I. The Larceny Act, 1916, Section 32

Section 32 of the Larceny Act provides that:

Every person who by any false pretence

1. (1) with intent to defraud, obtains from any other person any chattel, money, or valuable security, or causes or procures any money to be paid, or any chattel or valuable security to be delivered, to himself or to any other person for the use or benefit or on account of himself or any other person; or

2. (2) with intent to defraud or injure any other person, fraudulently causes or induces any other person

3. (a) to execute, make, accept, endorse, or destroy the whole or any part of any valuable security; or

4. (b) to write, impress, or affix his name or the name of any other person, or the seal of any body corporate or society, upon any paper or parchment in order that the same may be afterwards made or converted into, or used or dealt with as, a valuable security;

5. shall be guilty of a misdemeanour and on conviction thereof liable to imprisonment for any term not exceeding five years.

Under this provision five points arise for consideration: (a) the subject-matter of the crime, (b) the right obtained over that thing, (c) the pretence, (d) its effect, and (e) the intent.

(a) THE SUBJECT-MATTER

Although the statutes which have regulated this crime have nowhere so stated, it has always been held that the words ‘chattel, money, or valuable security’ do not include things which at common law were not the subject of larceny. Thus since, as we have seen, a ‘difference in value’ as such cannot be stolen, it cannot be obtained by false pretences. Accordingly the section does not cover a fraudulent obtaining of real property, or of anything ‘savouring of the realty’, or of a dog (however valuable). Yet it has been held that a railway ticket, although it is evidence of a chose in action, may be the subject of an indictment for obtaining it by false pretences since it is a chattel.