Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 256, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1917 — IN SEARCH FOR ELMER DWIGGINS [ARTICLE]

IN SEARCH FOR ELMER DWIGGINS

U. S. AGENTS ON TRAIL OF FORMER CITIZEN—CHARGE OF TAKING FUNDS. U. S. agents are hot on the trail of Elmer Dwiggins, charged with appropriating the proceeds of Liberty bond sales whidh he made in the capacity of a broker in New York City. Mr. Dwiggins is a son of Robert Dwiggins, formerly a lawyer anc banker of Rensselaer, and a nephew of Zimri Dwiggins, who conducted a chain of banks throughout Indiana and Illinois in connection with his banking house in Chicago, practically all of which failed in 1893. The Dwiggins family will well be remembered by our older citizens, as they were for a great many years one of our leading families, hence the following article may prove of general interest to all:

New York, Nov. 12. —Announcement was made by the local branch of the Department of Justice today that Elmer Dwiggins, ’ until recently manager of the New York agency of the Bankers’ Life Insurance Company of Des Moines, lowa, is a fugitive from justice, charged with misappropriating the proceeds of sales of Liberty bonds which he had made in the capacity of a broker. He has been missing for several days and his office on the fourteenth floor at 165 Broadwfiy is in charge of secret service agents. —Dwiggins, who lives at 204 West Seventieth street, arranged with the Liberty loan committee to sell bonds of she last issue on the installment plan. He is credited with having sold at least $300,000 and perhaps $500,000 worth of the-bonds. He advertised through the mail for installment purchasers of Liberty bonds. His sales were all made on the installment plan and h e arranged with purchasers to receive the installments.

It is eharged that he placed these installments to his own credit in his bank. Until everybody who bought bonds from him is questioned there is no way of telling the extent of his operations. Secret service men went to his office last Saturday to arrest lim, but he had already gone. With his brother Jay and his uncle, Zimri Dwiggins, he conducted in 1893 a bank in Chicago, a chain of banks in Indiana and Michigan and a bucket shop in New oYrk under the name of J. R. Willard & Co. All the banks and bucket-shop failed. Dwiggins is 55 years old. His arrest was ordered at the request of the federal reserve bank. The Liberty Loan committee, which set the investigation in motion by appealing to the federal reserve bank, refused to discuss the amount of shortage. “Dwiggins will be arrested on sight, charged with fraud,” said John C. Knox, an assistant United States district attorney, this afternoon. “For

a week postoffice inspectors and /expert accountants have been looking over his books. I don’t know the amount involved. The federal reserve bank may know. It is at their solicitation that the Department of Justice was called into the case. Shortly after the examination of his accounts began Dwiggins disappeared.” A representative of the insurance company sent out to take charge of the this afternoon that tU-compan y T»ad had no part in= Dwiggins’ Liberty Loan sales, and that if he had made any sales it had been on his owf responsibility. Zimri Dwiggins came to Chicago in 1891 from Indiana and organized the Columbia National Bank with a capital stock of $1,000,000. The institution had connections with country ban ks of Indiana controlled by Dwiggins, and apparently did a flourishing business for a couple of years. In 1893 it was closed by the bank examiner and following that action fully fifty small banks in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio which had been depending upon the Columbia were forced to close their doors. Associated with Zimri Dwiggins were his nephews, Elmer and Jay, Zimri Dwiggins difed some years ago in NeI>N!WW- i; .'