Word: mellone
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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When Attorney General Cummings announced last year that he was going to bring criminal action against Mr. Mellon for fraud in his 1931 income tax return, the old Pittsburgh financier cried "Politics of the crudest sort!" Because Homer Cummings' law firm had handled many a damage suit against the Mellon-controlled Aluminum Co. of America, Mr. Mellon openly accused him of personal animus in going after more taxes. To "General" Cummings' embarrassment, a Federal Grand Jury in Pittsburgh refused to indict its fellow-townsman for any criminality on his tax returns. Mr. Mellon promptly countercharged that, by failing...
...Government entrusted its case to Robert Houghwout Jackson, 43, an able but little known small-town (Jamestown, N. Y.) lawyer who was made general counsel of the Bureau of Internal Revenue last year. Mr. Mellon hired Frank J. Hogan, 58, one of the smartest, slickest, most successful lawyers in Washington...
Characteristically, Counsel Hogan opened his case by presenting Mr. Mellon as a greathearted, cruelly persecuted philanthropist and patriot. Climaxing a long recital of his client's good works, he announced that Mr. Mellon had long intended to build a great public museum in Washington to house his $19,000,000 collection of art treasures (see p. 32). Throbbed Lawyer Hogan: "God Almighty did not create a man who could at the same time and with the same heart be giving such a great gift to humanity and, on the other hand, be scheming to steal from his Government...
...Government contended that: 1) Mr. Mellon had failed to report about $5,000,000 of his 1931 income; 2) he had cut his reported income of nearly $11,000,000 down to a taxable $2,000,000 chiefly through bogus losses achieved by fake stock transfers. Prime instance, of which the facts but not the intent were verified last week by Mr. Mellon's longtime confidential secretary, Howard M. Johnson...
Late in 1931 Mr. Mellon sold to the Mellon-controlled Union Trust Co. of Pittsburgh 123,622 shares of Pittsburgh Coal Co., claiming for tax purposes a loss of more than $5,500,000. Exactly 118 days later Union Trust sold the shares to Coalesced Co. for the exact purchase price plus 6% interest and transfer taxes, even though the market value of the shares had since declined. Created by Mr. Mellon in 1929 as a private holding company, Coalesced Co. is an interesting family treasure chest which Government counsel asserted to be nothing but a tax-dodging device...