FRENZIED FINANCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 September 1921, Page 2

FRENZIED FINANCE.

■ AMERICAN REVELATIONS. GREAT TRUST SWINDLE. - Vancouver, Aug. 25. Authorities estimate that the wide swindling operations alleged to have been carried out by a gang headed by .John Worthington and Charles French may aggregate £13,513,500. Most remarkable revelations of frenzied finance are developing. A safety deposit vault was found in Cleveland (Ohio) containing securities worth £2,432,400 obtained from 27 firms. Mies Lieberman, an alert business woman of 25, told officials that French took over the American .Rubber Company Incorporation for £3240, and raised the capital stock to £270,000. He induced the Chamber of Commerce of Centralia, a small town in Illinois, to invest £15,000 cash, on a promise to build a factory there, but the new factory was never built. Wonderful pictures of factories which did not exist were circulated broadcast, and immense sales of stock were made on the strength, of these. The story reads exactly like the Wallingford yarns published a -few years ago by the American novelist. The police regard the operations of the gang as the greatest swindle on record. Colonel Clinnin, the tJnited States attorney in charge of the investigation, fixes £10,000,000 as a conservative estimate of the amount involved. Twenty companies were organised with a total capital of £4,000,000. The purchase of a chain of banks from New York to San Francisco, without the investment of any money, to handle spurious notes was contemplated.