Citations
- 128 F.2d 463
Full opinion text
HEALY, Circuit Judge.
Appellants, with four others, were indicted on a charge of conspiracy to violate, and of violating, the provisions of § 17 (a) (1) of the Securities Act of 1933, 15 U.S.C.A. § 77q (a) (1), and the mail fraud statute, 18 U.S.C.A. § 338. Each of the appellants was convicted on various of the 17 counts. Of the four others indicted, one, McBride, entered a plea of nolo contendere ; and-two, Baskette and Finnerty, were convicted but have not appealed. Black, the remaining defendant, was acquitted. The basis of the substantive counts is that the defendants conceived and carried into effect a scheme to defraud through the sale of partial assignments of oil and gas leases and undivided interests in a drill site.
The- venture was promoted under the name of Caloma Oil Company, a partnership formed for that purpose by Baskette, McBride, and one Scott. Scott was shortly eliminated from the picture. In 1936 the Caloma Oil Company, at trifling expense, obtained or revived oií or gas leases on some 2,300 acres of . land in Oklahoma in the neighborhood of the producing Fitts Field. Of the area .under, lease a tract of 160 acres was selected as a drill site upon which it was proposed that; a well. be drilled for the purpose of proving the area. The plan as conceived. and carried out was for the sale of fractional assignments