Success Story

With a quick smile, a fine Irish tenor and a flair for charitable fund raising, Denis W. Delaney traveled a long way. From a job as pick & shovel laborer in the Lawrence, Mass, sewer department, he rose to be Boston's Collector of Internal Revenue, and in the Roman Catholic Church he rose to be a Knight of Malta.

Last June, when tax scandals were in the news from New York to San Francisco, Delaney was summarily suspended by the President. In September he was indicted by a grand jury on nine counts of bribery and malfeasance in office.

A Good Friend. Brought to trial four weeks ago, Delaney was confronted by Maxwell Shapiro, a Boston wool merchant, who testified that in April 1949 a couple of men named Daniel Friedman and Hugh Finnegan had come to his office. Somehow they had discovered that Shapiro owed the Federal Government more than $140,000 in back taxes. According to Shapiro, the conversation was as follows:

Shapiro: How do you know so much about me?

Friedman: I just came from a friend of yours.

Shapiro: Who?

Friedman: Denis W. Delaney.

Shapiro: What's the story?

Friedman: I'm a tax expert. I'm a very good friend of yours. I want to help you . . . But it's going to cost you money.

Shapiro: I know that anything that is going to be done for me will cost me money. What is the cost?

Friedman: About 25% of what it will save you.

Shapiro: How good are you?

Friedman: We are in business. We do a tremendous business. We take care of all kinds of things.

At that point, said Shapiro, "I walked into my office and called Mr. Delaney. I said, 'Mr. Friedman and Mr. Finnegan are in my office and claim they are tax experts. Are they all right?'

"He said, 'They are O.K., coach.'"

Friedman was indeed an expert from the Estate Research Bureau in New York City. Quiet Hugh Finnegan is a brother of the then St. Louis Tax Collector Jim Finnegan, who himself is under indictment for bribery.

Shapiro testified that on the spot he paid his visitors $5,000 on account. After a trip to Washington, Friedman reported that everything was "under control" and asked for more money. Again, said Shapiro, he called Delaney, and Delaney told him to pay, that everything was O.K. "I made out the check for $5,000," Shapiro told the jury, "and here I am." In two years thereafter, said Shapiro, the fix worked so well that no one from the collector's office ever had tried to collect his taxes.

The urbane Friedman, called to the witness stand, readily confirmed Shapiro's story. He had sold his services to a number of Boston firms. All his success as a fixer, he claimed, he owed to his friend, Denis Delaney. What had become of the fix money? He and Delaney had split it between them.

Reduced to tears, Delaney denied everything--or almost everything. All he had done, he said, was arrange to steer Friedman to likely insurance prospects. Then Delaney's health went bad. Commission checks from Friedman began to roll in. What could he do but deposit them? He had conscientiously reported $10,000 of extra income from this source on his tax return for 1949.

Brought in to testify for the defense, Dr. Lewis Glazer of Chelsea Soldier's Home agreed that Delaney had indeed been a sick man. Glazer added that he had never sent Delaney a bill, and Delaney agreed that he had not paid for Glazer's services.

Then how, asked the prosecutor, did Delaney explain the $825 deduction for medical fees paid to Glazer that appeared on Delaney's tax return? Delaney could not explain.

A Humanitarian. Delaney's lawyer told the jury that President Roosevelt himself urged Delaney to be humane in his administration, to keep people in business whenever possible. "What would you do in a similar circumstance?" the attorney asked the jury. "Would you turn 100 men and their families out on relief ...?"

Last week, after the court had struck out three counts of the indictment, the jury found Delaney guilty on the six others, and he was ordered to court this week for sentencing. Punishment: two years in prison, a fine of $10,500.

The first Collector of Internal Revenue to be convicted in the tax scandals, Denis Delaney had come to the last chapter of his success story, found that the writing of it had been taken over by other hands.

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