FRAUD RAMPANT IN AMERICA.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1020, 9 January 1911, Page 5

FRAUD RAMPANT IN AMERICA.

AN OFFICIAL REPORT. The annual report of Mr. Wickersham, tho United States Attorney-General, presented to Congress on December 12, is one long story of frauds against the Government. Trusts, so called and real, their alleged conspiracies to defeat the law; land frauds, Custom frauds, frauds on tho internal revenue, rebates, bucket shops and fraudulent uses of tho mails have made 1910 the most strenuous year in the history of the Department of Justice. Prosecution for violations of the anti-trust law were foremost in the work of the year. Actions, says tho AttorneyGeneral, are now under way or pending against the following so-called trusts: Tobacco Trust; Standard Oil Company, Sugar Trust, Harriman lines, Hard Coal Trust, Powder Trust, Terminal Railway Association of St. Louis, Towing Trust on the Great Lakes, James A. Patton and others, for an alleged corner in cotton; Beef Trust, Wholesale Grocers' Trust, Butter and Egg Trust, Brick Trust, Bathtub Trust.

The following convictions were secured and fines imposed during the year;— , Paper Trust, fined 57,000 dollars; Night Riders, fined 3500 dollars; Window Glass Trust, .fined 10,000 dollars. • ,

After the Attorney-General's report came from tho press, however, tho American Naval Stores Company, known as tho Turpentine Trust, and six co-defendants were convicted of violations of the antitrust law. Two oi" the individual defendants were sentenced to three months each in gaol and fines aggregating 17,500 dollars were imposed.

Prosecutions of the Sugar Trust for frauds upon . the Government .in the weighing of raw sugar recovered for the Government 3,135,363.88 dollars. Convictions and sentence. of individuals were secured,'

Most extensive of all frauds against the Government yet discovered 'aro those in the undervaluations of imports into tho United States. ..There are now suits under way to recover 700,000 dollars, of which the Customs revenue is said to have been defrauded, in imports of cheese and figs from Mediterranean ports, .indictments aro pending and somo convictious have been secured. A highly organised system to defraud the-Government has boen disclosed.

The Attorney-General recommends ihat a general immunity statute, such as exists under tho interstate commerco laws, should be enacted to apply to criminal prosecutions generally. The Department won signal victories during the year against unlawful fencing of the public domain. In 9S civil suits' and 28 criminal prosecutions more than 400,000 acres of land illegally fenccd were restored to the Government.

Prosecutions against the Oregon and California Railroad Company and 45 other defendants to recover 2,300,000 acres of land, valued at 50,000,000 dollars, which the Government claims are illegally held, are now pending. There are also under way 21 suits against the Central Pacific Railway Company and others to recover thousands of acres of valuable lands which the Government contends were illegally patented,' probably with the pri-' vato knowledge that .they were valuable for the minerals and oil underneath.