BIG “BOOZE” RING

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17713, 17 May 1929, Page 11

BIG “BOOZE” RING

SUPER-BOOTLEGGERS WITH SHIPS CONVENT AS STOREHOUSE. A sealed indictment, naming 13 per-sons,-just opened by Federal Judge Coleman, exposes one of the biggest whisky-smuggling rings in the United States. The combine is said to own six big ships and used a former convent at Hempstead on Long Island, a few miles from New York, as a storehouse, and a base of operations. The indictment came as an aftermath of a raid at Hempstead, when £GO,OOO worth of liquor was seized, and eight men were arrested. Robert Watts, the Assistant Public Prosecutor declared that the organisation operated on a more extensive scale than any liquor-smuggling group yet discovered. From the purchase of liquor abroad until its delivery to Long Island residences, used as storehouses, the contraband was bandied exclusively by employees of the ring, and in the boats and trucks it owned. The agents of the ring bought liquor abroad, and the six vessels ' transported it from Europe, Canada, and St. Pierre, a French island off Nova Scotia. The organisation’s small boats carried Lhe liquor ashore .when its ships /cached the coast, and its trucks took it overland to the distributing warehouses. Wireless played a big part in the scheme. A compact, short-wave broadcasting set was found in a motor car seized at tho convent. The ships had wireless equipment, and one of the captured men is an expert radio operator. In the event of conviction on the counts preferred against them, the men in custody are each liable to a fine of £SOOO and six years’ imprisonment, but they have the best lawyers in New York to defend them, and the maximum penalties here for bringing in supplies of “booze” have been the exception and not the rule.