MILLIONAIRE WHO AVOIDED GAOL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15252, 15 March 1913, Page 2 (Supplement)

MILLIONAIRE WHO AVOIDED GAOL.

SEQUEL TO SUGAR TRUST FRAUDS. After managing to keep out of prison for nearly three years by lodging appeals and technical objections, in the raising of which American lawyers show such skill, Mr. Charles R. Heike, the millionaire exsecretary of the Sugar Trust, will have to serve the sentence of eight months' imprisonment and pay the fine of £1000 imposed upon him by the United States District Court in connection with the sugar weighing frauds, for which the trust itself was fined £400,000. The United States Supreme Court, the final Court of Appeal, has confirmed the conviction and sentence, and the newspapers comment caustically on the system which permits wealthy men to hamper and delay the administration of justice. It is nearly three years since Mr. Heike and other officials of the American Sugar Refining Company were indicted as the result of the revelations made at the Sugar Trust investigation, and in September, 1910, the former was convicted and sentenced. The charges were of complicity in an elaborate scheme of short-weighing sugar, whereby the Customs was defrauded of large sums. Mr. Heike, as secretary of the trust, was held responsible for the frauds, and was accordingly convicted. Minor officials who were sentenced about the same time nave either served their sentences or have served over two years of the terms of imprisonment imposed upon them* :