Friday, Mar. 17, 1967

The Queen Bee Gets Stung

Each time the judge strode into the court, the dark-haired defendant bowed respectfully in best Canadian courtroom tradition. Viola MacMillan, 63, has had occasion of late to learn about such legal amenities. A shrewd, if unlikely-looking prospector who amassed a fortune in sundry Canadian mining ventures, tiny (5 ft., 100 Ibs.) Viola has been under government investigation ever since a mercurial trading binge on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 1964 left investors in her Windfall Oils & Mines Ltd. holding an empty sack. Called "the Queen Bee" by mining men, who elected her president of the Prospectors and Developers Association 21 times, Viola herself got stung last week when she was convicted in Toronto on a charge that could bring her up to five years in prison.

"Good Turn." Viola was accused of "wash trading," which involves the manipulation of stock-market transactions to create a false impression of brisk activity--and is illegal in both the U.S. and Canada. On July 10, 1964, the prosecution charged, she arranged to sell 244,000 shares of Consolidated Golden Arrow Mines Ltd., another of her companies. At the same time, she bought up the entire block for the accounts of ten persons, including her husband George. Since Golden Arrow stock had been sluggish up to that point, the sudden burst of activity was enough to send its price soaring within an hour from 25-c- to over 60-c-.

Viola's attorney insisted that by buying stock for the benefit of others, she was merely "a good friend doing a good turn." Indeed, aside from a relatively small chunk of Golden Arrow stock that her husband sold at the bloated price, there was no testimony indicating that the MacMillans enriched themselves from the 1964 transactions. But York County Court Judge Garth Moore pointed out that Viola had called her broker to check on the market price of Golden Arrow after placing her orders--a move that helped convince the judge she had intended to stimulate her company's market price artificially. At the time, noted Moore, the Toronto stock market was "in an explosive condition." Viola, he added, "supplied the match."

Grimly Defiant. Her conviction, which she plans to appeal, was just a start. For one thing, her broker, Robert J. Breckenridge, a former president of the Toronto Exchange and onetime chairman of the city's Better Business Bureau, has also been charged with wash trading in the Golden Arrow case. And Viola herself, together with her husband, will stand trial on more serious fraud charges because of their Windfall dealings. For all her troubles, the Queen Bee remains grimly defiant. "They can't take my love of mining away from me," she said last week. "I'll have that till the day I die."

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