Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 139, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1910 — Defendants In Sugar Trust Case are Convicted. [ARTICLE]

Defendants In Sugar Trust Case are Convicted.

New York.—Charles R. Heike, the white-haired secretary of the American Sugar Refining company, was convicted on one count of an indictment charging conspiracy to defraud the government of customs duties on sugar. Ernest W. Gerbracht, former superintendent of the Williamsburg (Brooklyn) refinery, was convicted on all six counts. For James F. Bendernagel, former cashier of the refinery, the jury stood seven to five for acquittal. He will be tried again. This ends the government’s second attempt to imprison the group of men responsible for the vast underweighing frauds to which the so-called trust has virtually confessed by the restitution of more than $2,000,000 in duty. Heike is the highest official of the company upon whom blame has been fixed and he now faces a possible sentence of two years in the federal penitentiary and a fine of SIO,OOO. He is sixty-five years old and broken in health and spirits. His counsel in summing up declared repeatedly that a prison term meant nothing less than death. Convicted on all six counts, Gerbracht can be sentenced to twelve years in prison, with a maximum fine of- SIO,OOO. Like Heike, he is past middle age, being sixty-three years old. The trial was started on March 16th with six defendants included in the and Bendernagel, there were three minor employees—Harry W. Walker, assistant dock superintendent, and G. M. Volker and James F. Halligan, checkers. The trial had not progressed far, however, when the testimony had so far incriminated these men that their counsel entered a plea of guilty. They have not yet been sentenced. —— Bendernagel had been tried previously with Oliver Spitzer, the pardoned dock superintendent, who testified at the trial Just closed but as was the case in this trial, the jury disagreed. Spitzer got two years and four checkers were sentenced to one year each. They are still serving time on Blackwell’s Island, but Spitzer, conscience stricken, made a complete confession and though denounced by the counsel for the defense, told a story that resulted in Heike’s conviction. The sixth count on which Heike was found guilty charged him with “unlawfully and wilfully conspiring with Oliver Spitzer and others in making and effecting and aiding in effecting entries of raw dutiable sugar at less than their true weight, by means of false and fraudulent statements as to those weights prior to March 1, 1907.”