Sheriff W.O. Cochran and his deputies were looking Saturday and Saturday night for F.M. Perkins and F.S. Westbrook, respectively president and treasurer of the Southern Trading Company, which has been in business here for a bout a year, with offices under the Stonewall hotel annex on West Trade street.
The officers had warrants based on findings of the Mecklenburg grand jury before its adjournment charging them with embezzlement of $1,200 from J.W. Little, with violation of the “Blue Sky” law of North Carolina and with false pretense. The men had not been found up to a late hour Saturday night, although it was said they were in the city at least as late as Friday night. The officers had instructions from Solicitor George W. Wilson, who was working on the case Saturday afternoon, to hold the two men against whom the warrants were drawn in $5,000 bond each when they had been apprehended. A civil suit is also filed against them and against the Southern Trading company by J.W. Little, who seeks to recover $4,000, which he claims the company fleeced him out of. Col. T.L. Kirkpatrick has been retained by Mr. Little as his attorney in the civil action.
It was stated by Solicitor Wilson that Mr. Little claims to have lost between $4,000 and $7,000 because of the alleged failure of the company to make good on its pretense to be a going concern which was disposing of stocks of various kinds and promoting several ventures of a stock-selling, insurance, real estate and building enterprise.
It is further alleged that T.T. Griffith, a banker of Gaffney, S.C., is a loser of about $7,500 because of the firm’s failure to make good and that he will also enter civil action in an endeavor to recover as much of his loss as possible. Between $30,000 and $40,000 is the amount that various complaining witnesses say will probably result from the company’s activities. Whether these allegations will be sustained remains to be seen. Solicitor Wilson did not divulge Saturday afternoon all the information he claimed to have as to the company’s alleged irregularities and did not give out the names of other members of the company than Messrs. Perkins and Westbrook, whom it was understood he is investigating.
The Southern Trading Company is organized and operated under a system that is said to be somewhat new in this state and to be based on principles of the “common law.” The prosecution, it is said, will contend that the company has been evading the strict laws of North Carolina as to operation of stock-selling agencies by failing to observe the state statutes governing such matters. It is alleged that it has failed to make the required periodical report to the state insurance commissioner and to comply with other requirements of the law.
From The Charlotte News, Sunday morning, June 19, 1921
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