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MAXIMUM TERM IS IMPOSED FOR BANKING FRAUDS
Dodge Center Man Gets 5 Years Each on Two Counts-U. S. Attorney Disputes Claim of No Criminal Intent.
(Continued From Page One.) that time. In 1921, they explained. the president of the Farmers National Bank of Dodge Center was killed in an automobile accident in California and Harmer was drafted to take charge of the bank when it was impressed on him that otherwise the cashier would go to an Insane asylum and the bank go down to destruction. Took Over Second Bank. mer was persuaded to take control of another neighboring bank when federal bank examiners represented to him that the other bank would be closed If he did not, there would be a run on his bank and both banks would be ruined. The examiners assured him, Mr. MeCaughey asserted, that the bank's paper was good, but It afterwards was found that from $75,000 to $125,000 of It was "absolutely worthless.' "The burden of sustaining these two banks was an impossible task for one man to perform," the attorney declared, "although Mr. Harmer made every possible effort. When the crash came he did not skip off to South America and bask in the sunshine, as some others have done in similar cases, but he put on bis old clothes and went out into the country and worked to save as much of the assets as he could. He stuck like man and is still doing so, and if he is granted stay of sentence he will go back to Dodge Center and continue to work to make the loss as small as possible. "This is not case which requires the maximum sentence, for feel that in his heart this man never committed crime." Mr. Wharton answered the attorneys' statements by declaring at the outset that "the district attorney's office to not one whose business It is to prescute. No prosecution of Mr Harmer would have been brought, he said, If there had not been Indisputable evidence that he had deliberate"Confidence Sometimes Misplaced" "The foundation of the banking business is confidence." he declared. "If that is lost bank could not last ten minutes. When a bank falls through criminal actions It shakes the confidence of people in banks and in their neighbors and acts to destroy the foundations of business success. Someone is responsible for that destruction. "In many banks, especially country banks, the institution becomes what called 'one-man bank. meaning that one man has the confidence of the directors and the depositors and to given full control. The directors are merely 'rubber stamps.' approving the man's actions without question because of their confidence in him. "Sometimes, however, this confidence laste longer than It should. as it did in this case, and the people who trusted their money to this man find It gone through bad paper or criminal actions. wish could belief that Mr. Harmer had no crimloal intent. but the facts do not support that belief." Mr. Wharton then gave in detail various transaction in which Harmer was alleged to have misappropriated funds and concluded by saying: "There is wave of crime sweepIng over the country, some of It atfecting banks from the Inside. The only thing to do with one of the men responsible for It when he is caught to to give him a punishment that he will not forget so that It will deter others from following in his foot-
