Nazi sabotage hoax

In 1939 career criminal Sydney Ross was sentenced to 3 years 9 months in gaol on charges of breaking, entering and theft. While doing time Waikeria prison, near Te Awamutu, he met Charles Remmers, whose string of convictions featured false pretences and forgery.

Remmers was released in 1941 and Ross on 28 March 1942. Ross met the Minister of National Service, Robert Semple, in Wellington the very next day. He claimed he had been asked by a German agent to join a sabotage cell. Nazi agents had been landed by submarine and were now living at Ngongotahā, near Rotorua. Ross was taken to see Prime Minister Peter Fraser, who referred the matter to Major Kenneth Folkes, a British intelligence officer who had been brought to New Zealand to set up a Security Intelligence Bureau. Folkes decided to use Ross to catch the enemy agents.

According to Ross, the plotters intended not only to destroy key sites but also to kidnap or assassinate Fraser, Semple and other members of Cabinet. He claimed that the enemy cell was headed by a Ngongotahā man named Remmers and produced a list of the conspirators’ names. Ross was put up in Rotorua’s Grand Hotel while Folkes approached the government and top military officers, demanding troops and wide powers to detain suspected saboteurs.

Fraser now asked the police – who had until recently handled security matters – to investigate. They found that the ‘Nazi headquarters’ in Ngongotahā was occupied by an elderly Native Department clerk, a dry-cleaner and three nurses. Ross tried to lie his way out of trouble, but his story was quickly revealed as a crude hoax.

In February 1943 the Security Intelligence Bureau was taken over by the Commissioner of Police, and Folkes returned to Britain. Neither Ross nor Remmers was charged with any offences related to the hoax, although in August that year Ross was convicted of assuming a name, receiving stolen property and false pretences. Released in January 1946, he died of tuberculosis seven months later.