THE GREAT TRUST FRAUDS IN AMERICA.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 257, 3 November 1906, Page 13

THE GREAT TRUST FRAUDS IN AMERICA.

STORY OF THE CRIME. Sow (says the New York correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph") we have the true story of how 6000 depositors, moFSy pooc, straggling people In the Phila'delpljia Heal Estate Trust Company, were looted and, robbed. Te evidence against A'dblph Segal, the American promoter, of Austrian origin, and two of the Trust's officers, who were arrested on Thursday, demonstrates clearly why Mr Frank Hippie, chairman of ;the concern, committed suicide. It shows that Mr Hippie terminated a career not only of theft from poor people, but of amazing hypocrisy, because while he posed as a pillar of the Presbyterian Church he was at the same time supporting the wildest "get-rich-quickly" schemes, and bringing an Institution which -was regarded as one of the soundest In America to ruin with a shortage not of £14,000,000, as was at first estimated, but of nearly £20,000,000. Before the Public Prosecutor at Philadelphia the cashier of the wrecked concern related how, he had gone time and again to Mr Hippie with warnings that the cash, supply was perilously low because of the enormous overdrafts of Mr Hippie and Mr Segal, which on occasions, he. said, reacnea £140,000; now Mr Hippie would fill out a blank note signed by Segal, endorse it, and then order the cashier to place It with and ledger it as part of the cash supply of the uank; and how he had appealed in vain to jir Hippie, to Mr William North (the treasurer , and Mr N. B. Collingwood (the assistant treasurer) when cheques amounting to hundreds of thousands signed by Segal nad come in, even when his account had already been far overdrawn. These men had always said the drafts must be paid, the cashier testified. Keceiver liarle identified a note written by Mr Hippie eariy on the morning of the day on which he ended his life. It was a brief line scrawled in an unsteady hand on an envelope, and read, "There is no one to blame but myself. Segal got all the money. He fooled mc." . . . . Every cent went to Segal, and by the time the bank was forced to close its doors the amount thus abstracted had reached nearly £1,100,000.