"WIZARD OF WALNUT STREET"

Robert Joseph Boltz was born into the world with an asset beyond price--an old Germantown family name. Conservative, religious, ultra-scrupulous in business matters, Philadelphia's Germantown families yield nothing to Boston's Brahmins. Among them the highest recommendation is the simple phrase "He comes from a fine family." Robert Boltz did.

He went to Germantown Academy. The discovery, in his teens, that he was totally color-blind dashed his ambitions to go to West Point. For a time he attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the vague idea of becoming an engineer. The Boltz family business was fine Havana cigars, and in 1914 they sent Robert to work in the family plants in Cuba and Tampa. He was 27, headstrong and stubborn, and he thought he had a new system of cigar making. Two years later the business was busted.

Unable to hit on a permanent occupation, Boltz made a quick comeback by marrying Hazel Huckel, daughter of a prosperous Germantown architect who soon died, leaving his daughter $100,000. With his wife's money, Boltz went back to school--this time to study law at the University of Pennsylvania. He lived in a big house in the old part of town on the Main Line, had a law practice of sinecures tossed his way by friendly bankers and fellow Academy and Penn men. He founded the Juristic Society, an exclusive little legal and social group. Religious, he became a deacon and trustee of Germantown's Second Presbyterian Church.

This righteous and easy life did not satisfy Boltz. He discovered the stockmarket, and, in the '20s, made money at it. Soon he began to tell his friends about his North America Investment Fund, Inc., of his success in increasing its original $100,000 assets to over $1,000,000 by 1929. They bought $165,000 worth of its preferred stock. The common was good for loans from conservative National Bank of Germantown & Trust Co., from big, respectable Philadelphia National Bank.

By 1933 Boltz was a full-fledged investment counselor. His N. A. I. F. balance sheet listed assets of $1,914,000. Word got around that he was a financial wizard. His friends in the Juristic Society gave him their money to invest and sent others to him. His church affiliations were helpful too; several ministers advised members of their flock to put their worldly goods in his care. All in all, he acquired over 160 clients, among them such distinguished old Philadelphia names as Biddle. Chew, Bullitt, Gest, Truitt, Pilling. During the parlous days of New Deals I and II they were gratified at their lucrative returns from "Honest Bob" Boltz's private 1929.

At 53, Boltz was a tall (5 ft. 11 in.), gaunt (140 lb.), begoggled man with close-cropped greying hair and parchmentlike skin which had a tendency to chap and crack in winter time. He had a large nose, deeply indentured cheeks, an exaggeratedly erect carriage. His walk was peculiar: legs stiff, knees high, feet thrown toward the outside and brought down hard on each heel--a modified civilian goose step. He usually wore high brown shoes of English make, white shirts with starched bosoms and cuffs. His voice (deep, resonant, deliberate) and demeanor were those of a parson.

Surprise!--Last week there was hell to pay in Philadelphia. For two months a Federal grand jury had been exploring the affairs of Honest Bob Boltz. It had indicted him for mail fraud and failing to register while practicing as a broker and dealer. There was a warrant out for his arrest. Estimate of SECsters John Timothy Callahan and Edward Charles Jaegerman was that Boltz had bilked his clients of a neat $2,500,000.

As the grand jury, the SEC, and N. A. I. F.'s receiver unraveled the tangled affairs of Boltz day after day, Philadelphians' faces got redder & redder. Several ministers reportedly took to their beds. Friends recalled that Boltz sometimes laughed when he told them : "You shouldn't give me your money. I might run off with it some day." At the time it was very funny. One socialite client, who had turned $1,000 over to the investment counselor, said Boltz later joshed him about it, remarking: "I spent that $1,000 for a tractor on my farm and now it's only worth $500." Reddest of all was the face of John Knox, the Boltz family banker, president of the National Bank of Germantown & Trust Co., who used to introduce investors to Boltz with the words, "This is the most honest man I know." He had approved loans to Boltz over a period of some 13 years without discovering whether North America Fund was in deed a Delaware corporation. In fact, the investigations disclosed that the N. A. I. F. was a pure invention.

A lesser man than honest, solid, God fearing Robert Boltz could never have covered up his peculations. He had promised his clients from 6 to 30% interest on their money and sometimes paid it--out of their capital. None of the dozen or so employes in his Walnut Street offices ever saw an original document. The statements he sent clients were false. North America Fund's $5,000,000 assets were merely conversation. Some of its directors were phony, others were prominent Philadelphia businessmen who were unaware that Boltz had forged their names to the stock certificates. What trading he did was mostly in cats & dogs, generally cost him money.

If Boltz had been more prompt in paying for and delivering securities to the New York Stock Exchange, he might have kept up his confidence game indefinitely. Suspicious, the Exchange sent a man to see his books early in October. Boltz said he didn't keep records. The man found out he did, told the SEC. This time the five Bibles scattered about his office and the phony $349,000 check he kept on his desk for window dressing couldn't save him. On the morning of Oct. 18 he arrived at the office to find that the Exchange had removed his stock ticker. He leaned against the wall, faint, his mouth open. Four days later he drew $3,200 from the Germantown bank, drove his wife to 17th and Walnut Streets, and vanished.

Pola. Month ago Boltz's receiver estimated that he had left only $7,846.30 worth of assets behind. Where the rest of the money went was a mystery. Part of it was accounted for by a big manila envelope marked "Pola," containing affectionate letters, receipted bills and match packet memoranda. Pola turned out to be dark, comely Mrs. Leopoldine Kohlemann. She readily admitted to reporters her friendship with Boltz, which began one day in 1937 when she waited on him at the Bellevue-Stratford, where he often ate his lunch of shredded wheat and milk. His gifts to her had been lavish--an expensive radio, a fur coat, a trip to Europe. Asked whether they might total as much as $100,000, she said: "It can't be possible he gave me that much." Often, her husband said, he went along with the couple on their journeys to Atlantic City for dinner.

Investors were certain that some $200,000 of their money had gone into an elaborate 260-acre Bucks County estate, Foxwood Farms, which Boltz acquired during 1934-39. Stocked with blooded Guernsey cattle, swine, pigeons, poultry and fine saddle horses, it was equipped with electric fences, a private water system large enough to serve the whole township. Last week most of the animals and more salable movables had been auctioned off. Mrs. Boltz and her daughter still lived there. Although her own inheritance had disappeared along with the funds of the rest of her husband's clients, she badly wanted him to return and explain. She was sure there was an explanation. So, apparently, was many another Philadelphian. Said one after another, waiting to appear before the grand jury: "He comes from such a fine family."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.