TEN MILLION POUNDS SWINDLE

Evening Star, Issue 17764, 12 September 1921, Page 7

TEN MILLION POUNDS SWINDLE

frenzied finance in the states WORK OF GANT! EXPOSED. CHICAGO. August 25. The authorities estimate that the nation-wide swindles carried out. bv the gang headed by Worthington and Charles French mav involve (nominally £10,(XX),000). Reman;able revelations of'frenzied finance, arc developing. In a safety deposit vault at Cleveland (Ohio) securities yorth 9,000,000d0l were found. This f,uiu was obtained from twenty-seven firms. MissLieberroan, an alert businesswoman of twenty-five, told the officials that French took over the American Rubber Company, which was incorporated with a capital of 12,000d01. Ho raised the capital stock to 1,000,000d01, and induced the chamber oi commerce at Centralia, a small town in Illinois, to invest oO.OOOdoI in cash j but a new factorv 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. The story reads exactly like the Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford yarns published a few years ago by Randolph Chester, an American novelist. The'Chicago police regard the Worthington gang as tho greatest swindle trust on record. The authorities have, found 50,000,000d0l (nominally £6,000,000) worth of stocks, bonds, notes, and other securities —somo good and sope bad. Colonel Clinnin, attorney in charge of the investigation, fixes 50,000,000d0l as a conservative minimum for the amount of cash sought by these 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 tsan Francisco, without tho investment of any money, W handle sprious notes.