Treasury Round-Up

Last week the U. S. Treasury Department suddenly dropped a dragnet across the land, snared more than 2,000 smugglers, dope peddlers, bootleggers and counterfeiters. Its aims: 1) to test the effectiveness of a nation-wide crime drive; 2) to train Treasury agents in concerted action; 3) to "impress the criminal element with the tremendous Federal powers against them"; 4) to show the nation that the well-publicized Department of Justice is not the only Federal agency that can catch lawbreakers. Pondered since last summer, the drive had been actively planned for a fortnight. One day last week the Treasury struck with the full force of its 11,517 Alcohol Tax, Narcotics, Customs, Internal Revenue Bureau Intelligence Section, Secret Service and Coast Guard agents. Some raids were made on leads which the Treasury had long been working up, others at random on known criminal hangouts.

In Ossining, N. Y., hard by famed Sing Sing Prison, Secret Servants pounced on a counterfeiting plant primed to turn out $2,000,000 worth of $10 and $20 bills.

In Washington, narcotics agents raided the headquarters of a New York-Cleveland-Detroit-Chicago dope ring, seized $20,000 worth of heroin, arrested 12.

Kansas City yielded 51 dopesters, Chicago 53. A Texas opium den produced eight Chinese, large quantities of opium & equipment, an arsenal of revolvers and automatic rifles.

In San Francisco, customs agents boarded the Japanese ship Tatsuta Maru, got 17 oz. of morphine.

After three days the Treasury reported 2,389 arrests. Confiscated had been several million dollars worth of jewels, narcotics, liquor, stills, livestock, automobiles, boats, lottery tickets and, in Montana, a stump-puller on which duty had not been paid. Alcohol Tax agents, most of whom have worked without pay since Dec. because of a patronage-greedy deficiency bill amendment wangled by Tennessee's Senator Kenneth McKellar, had seized 900 stills, 119 automobiles and 40,204 gal. of bootleg liquor, made 1,583 arrests. Coast Guard cutters were trailing six rum-running ships. Enough evidence had been gathered to hold more than 500 big-time criminals for income tax evasion. Only one Federal agent, in Leesville, Va., had been seriously wounded. Only one "leak" had been discovered--a telephoned tip-off to a Boston opium den.

Also last week the Treasury announced that it had struck a bargain with Federal Prisoner Alphonse ("Scarface Al") Capone, reducing his back income tax debt from $322,842 to $220,980, figured on net income to him for 1924 to 1929, inclusive, of $703,496.

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