By Jule B. Warren
Raleigh, June 17—Under complaint of D.P. Dellinger of Conover, N.C., Insurance Commissioner Wade has ordered the arrest of Rev. Charles J. Warberig, pastor of one of the churches of that little place. Dellinger complains that the minister fleeced him out of $4,100 through selling him that amount of stock in the Black Panther Oil and Refining Corporations of Delaware.
“For God’s sake help me to get even with him,” writes Dellinger to the Insurance Commissioner after telling him the history of his connection as a shareholder with the Black Panther, which now has such a hold on his purse strings that he can’t help himself. The writer of the letter, like hundreds of other written the Insurance Department in the past few months, says that the agent of the oil company, which happened to be the minister in this case, induced him to buy stock of the Black Panther by telling him that the company had been paying a 100 per cent dividends every year. The preacher told the sucker that he could sell him some of this stock at an attractive price. The preacher got 10 per cent of the sale and sent the remainder of the money back to the Black Panther.
Sometime afterwards, when the 100 per cent dividends did not come with their regularity, Dellinger wrote to the home office of the company engraved on his pretty stock certificate. He got a printed notice back from the Philadelphia office of the Black Panther telling him that owing to the facts that the president and other officials of the company were unavoidably detained the regular stock-holders meeting could not be held., The notice was signed by a lady secretary and brought the investor about as little consolation as such a thing could bring, since it promised nothing and brought no dividend check. The investor then went to the minister salesman, but the preacher told him he could do nothing. He did tell him that the company had misappropriated some funds and suggested that the investor send in about 30 per cent more money in order to give the Black Panther another start on its fortune hunt. That argument sounded so good to Dellinger that he gave the preacher some more money, in all about $4,100. Now the preacher is preaching his last sermon in Conover and going back to New York. Dellinger wants something done to keep him from any more or returning.
Neither he nor his company have license to sell in North Carolina, so if the wire in the post office reaches Conover the preacher will not preach his last sermon and will not return to New York. Wade has ordered his arrest.
From the front page of The Charlotte News, Sunday, June 18, 1922
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