TRADE: No Hidden Treasures

With Musica-Coster the impostor dead & buried, a few plain facts about his twelve-year reign and rape of McKesson & Robbins made news last week. It seemed apparent: 1) that the company's $18,000,000 of missing assets would not be found in munitions or anything else because they had never existed in the first place; 2) that they had been written up on the books to keep the company apparently prosperous while Coster swindled it out of $4,000,000; 3) that much of his booty went for blackmail. Revealed by one or another of the various investigations probing the great drug swindle, these general conclusions were partially confirmed by Impostor Coster himself—in a slightly incoherent, wholly melodramatic note written just before he shot himself. Excerpts:

"Bankers, lawyers, auditors, appraisers and incompetent high-salaried executives, have bled McKesson & Robbins white. . . .

"All of a sudden the treasurer and inside 'shotters' gang got cold feet and started a secret investigation with no other objective than to cover their steps and run to cover, making me and underlings the goat and bring shame and humiliation on my poor loving wife. . . . There are no millions lost or hidden, much less narcotics or alcohol involved. . . .

"And know that there are no hidden treasures anywhere. . . .

"McKesson should have been in receivership in 1930 and again in 1932 if its profits had not been bolstered in a frantic effort to save the company—and the alleged millions "lost" are simply "profits" to save the company from the hands of the bondholders. . . .

"In other words, in the main they were wash sales to create a profit that did not exist, and what is missing is the alleged profits plus expenses and blackmail money paid to maintain it. ...

"As God is my judge I am the victim of Wall Street plunder and blackmail in a struggle for honest existence. . . ."