ALLEGED SWINDLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 16, 20 January 1931, Page 7

ALLEGED SWINDLE.

Plumber Who Bought Castles

Faces Trial.

GIGANTIC FRAUD CHARGE

(Received 11.30 a.m.)

BERLIN, January 19.

Following upon the trial at Dusseldorf of a man who declared that he could manufacture gold from sand, the trial has commenced at Munich of another pscudo-goldraaker named Tausend, who is charged "with swindling people of nearly £100,000.

Tausend was originally a plumber whose machinations were lucrative enough to enable him to buy a castle in the Tyrol and another at Dresden, where lie lived in great state with his wife, aji ex-barmaid.

Financing a Hitlerite newspaper to the extent of foOOO, he piochumed his discovery of the art of goldmaking after having studied the- history of the mediaevel alchemists.

A company wae formed to exploit the "invention," including Gqneral Ludcndorff, Herr Alfred Mannesmann, Prince Hermann and Prince Ulrich of Schon-burg-Waldenburg, and eminent scientists and business men.

Experiments which had convinced investors failed, however, when Tausend after his arrest attempted 'to repeat them under the supervision of analytical chemists.

Heinrich Kursehiklgen was found guilty at Dusseldarf on December 20 of defrauding the public of £12,000 by declaring that he had invented a machine which, by bringing about the destruction of the atom, could produce enough gold to pay off the £ German reparation debt. The investors included a Cologne"professor of chemistry, lawyers, businessmen, and a big British syndicate, at whose expense Kurschildgen stayed at a good London hotel during the negotiations. A Swiss merchant also for a time engaged him in Switzerland at a salary of £1000 a year.