Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1917 — U. S. IS SEEKING MISSING BROKER [ARTICLE]

U. S. IS SEEKING MISSING BROKER

Elmer Dwiggins Kept Proceeds of Liberty Bond Sales IS WELL KNOWN LOCALLY Where He Was at One Time Connected With a Chain of Banks That Later Collapsed. * . s New York, November 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. iH>e has been missing lor several days and his office on the fourteenth floor at 165 Broadway is in charge of secret service agents.

Dwiggins, who lives at 204 West Seventieth street, arranged with the Liberty loan committee to sell, honds of the 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 he arranged with purchasers to receive the installments. It is charged 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 him, 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 York under the name of J. R. Willard A Co. All the banks and the bucket ehop 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 disclose the amount of the 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 postofflce inspectors and expert accountants have been looking over his books. I don’t know tne 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 office stated this afternoon that the company had had no part in Dwiggins’ Liberty loan sales, and that if he had made any sales it had been on his own 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 banks in 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 died some years ago in Nebraska. —Yesterday’s Chicago Herald.