MYTHICAL MILLIONS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21414, 11 February 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

MYTHICAL MILLIONS

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE'S " ESTATE " ; EXPOSURE OF SWINDLE The United States Government has barred the nse of the mails to a number of men said to be collecting subscriptions to help recover mythical millions of the estate of Sir Francis Drake, who died 357 years ago. The authorities are considering prosecution. It is officially announced that there is no unsettled estate that has come down from Drake. The information is a little late for thousands of expectant Americans, who have, during the. past ten years, contributed 1,300,000 dollars (about £260,000 at par) to this huge swindle. This action is the direct result of long investigation and diplomats correspondence, in which the State Department at. Washington requested the co-operation of the British Government in exploding the myth that a £1,000,000,000 estate, accrued from Drake's so-called privateering operations, was to be recovered. Representations to the contributors, whether they had a shadowy claim to descent from the famous navigator or not, were that they would share in the eventual division of the proceeds. Evidence gathered by Federal investigators indicated that the' funds already contributed had gone to an American, who had operated for a time \in the United States and later launched a renewed campaign of solicitation from London, through agents.