Cheating.

Cheating. In the technical language of the English law, cheating means the offence of fraudulently obtaining the property of another by any deceitful or illegal practice short of felony, but in such a way that the public interest may possibly be affected. In order to constitute cheating, the fraud must be of such a kind that it could not be guarded against by common prudence. Cheating, in this sense, is an offence at common law, and indictable, which is not the case with imposition in a private transaction. The law of Scotland has no such distinction. The following are instances of cheating: Selling by a false weight or measure (which is also a statutory offence under the Weights and Measures Act, 1878); selling unwholesome bread as if it were wholesome. Cheating seems, therefore, to be distinguished from obtaining property or credit on false pretences by the absence of any definite false statement. Cheating is also technically used in connection with frauds at play with cards or dice, but is popularly applied to almost every form of fraud. In Scots law, cheating is generally prosecuted under the name of falsehood, fraud, and wilful imposition, and has by one authority been called practical cheating, as distinguished from those cases in which a spoken or written false pretence occurs. See FRAUD, FALSE PRETENCES.