Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 66, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1917 — ELMER DWIGGINS ARRESTED [ARTICLE]

ELMER DWIGGINS ARRESTED

Wife Aids Authorities in Locating Erring Spouse. Elmer Dwigglns, formerly of Rensselaer, who is alleged to have obtained thousands of dollars from innocent victims through the sale of Liberty bonds, was placed under arrest at Montgomery. Alabama, Thursday on a federal warrant charging him with using 'die mails to defraud. Information that led to his arrest was furnished the authorities by his wife. “I am a patriot first—-a wife next,” Mrs. Dwiggins is declared to have toßd a postoffice inspector who sought her assistance in locating her husband. She at first refused to listen to the assumption that Dwigglns was dishonest. When told, that investigation had given grounds for suspicion that Dwiggins had defrauded hundreds oif persons, many of them women and children of small means, through appeals to their patriotism, Mrs. Dwiggins is quoted by the inspector as sayings “If I satisfy myself that what you say is true, I will render you all the aid in my power in searching for my husband. IHte is (unworthy of consideration if he has done what you say and I am a patriot first and a wife next.’’ A dispatch from New York concerning Dwiggins’ affairs reads as follows: The police examined the books

of Dwiggins, who was general agency manager in this city of a i western Wife insurance company, w'hich revealed that he had sold SBIO,OOO worth of Liberty bonds on the installment plan on which $300,000 had been paid. The police say that they found $35,000 in a safe deposit vault, and considerable money and five SIOO Liberty bonds in a safe in the. raided office. Eighty complainants against Dwiggins declared they paid him $96,000 in cash. The federal authorities declare that they know of- $57,000 which Dwiggins should have turned over to the federal reserve bank for the account of the Liberty bonds. Hundreds of persons who had bought bonds through Dwiggins on the “dollar down and a dollar a week” plan stormed his office hoping to get their money back or to obtain the bonds on which they had made payments. Dwiggins claimed to have beer working the sale of bonds undei direction of the Bankers' Life com pany of Des Moines, but this was repudiated in a statement made by the federal reserve bank, which de dared he was not authorized to soi'icif* subscriptions to the, Liberty loan. The statement adds: “The federal reserve bank, the United States attorney’s office and the postoffice inspectors are all cooperating to conserve the assets for the benefit of the members of the so-called ‘Liberty loan extension club,’ and are also conducting further inquiries to ascertain the responsibilty in the matter of the Bankers’ Life Insurance company. “I. M. Earle, vice-president and general counsel of the Bankers’ Life Insurance company, who arrived here tonight from Des Moines, lowa, intimated there is a possibility that the company may make good the money paid to Dwiggins by investors in bonds. He said such a step would be ‘up to the directors.’ “In the first loan,’’ Mr. Earle said, “we accepted a degree of responsibility <for Dwiggins, authorizing him to accept subscriptions for the Liberty bonds. We tried to push the loan as hard as we could in al! our offices, apd in this loan an examination of the stationery shows that he used the name of Bankers Life, representing that the company was behind him. We knew absolutely nothing of this second venture of his when the campaign for the second loan started. The first thing we knew of it was when the federal reserve bank wrote us on October 27.”