History of John Smith Griffin
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Alhambra   1941-1942

In another case in Arizona, I was assigned to investigate truckers hauling coal out of Gallup, New Mexico, to Arizona without a permit. I had to go to almost every little town in Arizona and so I decided to bring Dot and Bob along. We were gone about six weeks and really got acquainted with Arizona. I recall in particular when we were in Prescot on this trip. I had asked the fellows in Los Angeles to forward my check as soon as it arrived. They were a little slow in sending it along and I ran out of money. I recall that we had a griddle type toaster that we had brought along to help in getting breakfast and so we bought some cheese and bread and some apples and for about two or three days we lived on melted cheese sandwiches and apples, waiting for my check to arrive.

One of the most interesting cases I investigated was against the National Silver Company. Complaints had been made that a certain trucker was able to get National Silver's business which consisted of hauling silverware from the Los Angeles harbor to Los Angels. Silverware took a good rate and so it was very desirable business. The trucking company was a rather small outfit and it seemed rather odd that they should be able to get and hold this business. I started by checking all of the freight bills of the trucker. Then I checked his checkbook and found some checks made out to cash and usually about the same time of the month.

In the meantime a truck driver that used to work for this company came in and told us that every time National Silver paid the trucking company, a rebate was paid back to National Silver in cash. This was of course against the law. With the information given to me by this truck driver I was able to tie in the dates of payments of the rebate with the checks and on two occasions I found slips of paper where the amount of the rebate had been figured out and attached to the check. After photostating all of this evidence, I confronted the manager of the trucking company and when he saw that I had the goods on him he confessed that they were paying a rebate of 4 cents a pound back to National Silver. The amount of the rebates over a period of years ran into the thousands of dollars. The manager of the trucking company agreed to cooperate with us, as we were most anxious to prosecute the National Silver Company.

So after taking his statement and getting all of my evidence together, I called in Morton Bernstein, manager of the National Silver Company in Los Angeles. At first he tried to deny it but after hearing the truckers statement and seeing all of the photostats we had, he finally admitted that they had been accepting rebates. He then took the attitude that there was nothing wrong in doing this. Bernstein tried everything he could to get me to promise that I would not prosecute. It seems that he and his brothels owned National Silver and that he was much more afraid of the ridicule of his brothers over being caught than he was of the penalty that would be imposed by the court. He even told me that it would be worth $5,000 to him to have the matter dropped. I tried to set up a situation for offering a bribe to a federal officer but he never did follow through. As I recall, he finally pleaded guilty and was fined $1500.

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