GULLIBLE INVESTORS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 231, 4 February 1911, Page 9

GULLIBLE INVESTORS.

LOSS OP f-25,000,000. The raid executed on November '29 at the palatial establishment in New YorS of a firm of company promoters alleged to l>e of the "get-rich-quick" variety, winch for years has been selling shares in mining and oil companes advertised to yield 50 per cent, profit, brought to light remarkable evidence of the gullibility of a large section of the American public. According to the United States Post-master-General, Mr. Hitchcock, small investors within tho last Ave years have been fleeced to the extent of at least £25,000,000 by the officials of corporations bearing., high-sounding titles whose only business is to sell ornamental pieces of paper purporting to be shares in fabulously profitable concerns. The people who invest in such concerns are technically known in America as "suckers," and it is a maxim with the "get-rich-quick" promoter that there is a fresh "sucker" born every minute. A detective engaged in the exposures declared that these speculators meet somewhere in the Adirondacks, exchange lists of "suckers," and propound fresh devices for securing their savings. When the authorities searched the premises occupied by the three arrested directors they found fresh contracts for advertising involving an expenditure of £OO,OOO. At the time of their arrest the corporation officials were arranging at tueir own expense to send a private cat with seventeen customers to California to inspect the oil wells. The police authorities allege, that the only oil well owned by the corporation is worthless, and that the prisoners' scheme was to exhibit to their customers real spouting wells belonging to someone else. The prisoners, despite their immense revenue, were unable to obtain bail, the Government having attached their bank accounts in some dozen towns. Every day postmen were bringing to the raided ollices letters containing post office orders amounting to some £4OOO, sent by people of small means anxious to invest in onei or other of the advertised mines or wells. This money was being sazed by the Government and will be returned to the owners. Widows and old men who have, it is .said, entrusted all their sav•r intra to the prisoners formed a pitiable assembly outside tho ollices. One old lady who invested .€BOO of insurance money left by her husband in an oil company refuses to leave the offices, declaring 'tearfully, "They told me just to ' wait and that then I should get the money. Surely they wouldn't deceive 1 an old woman!"