£10,000,000 SWINDLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 214, 8 September 1921, Page 5

£10,000,000 SWINDLE.

FRENZIED FINANCE XN U.S. WORK OF GANG EXPOSED. CHICAGO, August 2.-,. The authorities estimate that the nation-wide swindles carried out by the cans headed by Worthinfrton and Charles French may involve 50,000,000d0l (nominally £10,000,000). Remarkable revelations of frenzied finance are developing.

In a safety deposit vault at Cleveland I Ohioj "securities worth P .000.000 dol 'were found. This sum was obtained from 27 firms.

Miss Lieberman, an alert business woman of 2T>, told the officials that French took over the American Rubber Oompany7""Wiieh was incorporated with a capital of 12,000d01. He raised the capital stock to 1,000,000d01, and induced the Chamber of Commerce at a small town in Illinois, to invest r>o.ooo dol in cash, but a new factory which he had undertaken to construct was never built.

Wonderful pictures of factories which never existed were distributed broadcast, and immense sales of stock were made on the strength of these. Th<? story reads exactly like the Ctet-Rieh-Quick Wallinfrford yarns published a few years ago by Randolph Chester, an American novelist.

The Chicago police regard the Worthington gang as the greatest swindle trust on record. The authorities have found 30,000,000d0l (nominally jD>,ooo,ooo} worth of stocks, bonds, notes, and other securities—some good and some bad.

Colonel Clinnin, U.S. Attorney in charge of the investigation, fisos 50,000,000d0l as a conservative minimum for the amount of cash sought by theso operations. Twenty companies were organised with a total capital of 21,000,000d0l ( £4,200.000). This scheme contemplated buying a chain of banks in New York and -San Francisco, without the investment of any money, to handle spurious notes.