Two South African gold mine promoters, who had perpetrated one of the biggest swindles in their country's history (TIME, Dec. 15, 1947), last week got their comeuppance. In Johannesburg, horse-racing Norbert Stephen Erleigh, 46, and his rude, crude ex-partner, Joseph Milne, 53, were convicted on a combined total of 63 fraud and theft counts. The court said that their New Union Goldfields, Ltd., which had once controlled 160 companies valued at some £30 million, "was, in reality, a gambling house."
Erleigh and Milne, the court found, had shifted the assets of their various companies back & forth to run up the shares of the different companies, and had pocketed hundreds of thousands of pounds in profits. When the empire collapsed, holders of New Union shares lost £14 million.
Erleigh and Milne were each sentenced to ten years in prison at hard labor, and in addition Erleigh was fined £95,115 and Milne £88,810, with total prison sentences to run 52 years if fines are unpaid. They were the stiffest sentences ever meted out in South Africa for such crimes. But Erleigh was not crushed. He appealed the verdict and published advertisements in the Johannesburg newspapers touting his new stock promotion, "Union Gold & Base Metals Corp., Ltd."