Ferguson

The court, sitting without a jury, found the appellant Harold G. Ferguson guilty of grand theft in counts 2 to 6, inclusive; 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 22 to 25, inclusive, 29 and 30, and guilty of violating the Corporate Securities Act (Stats. 1917, p. 673), in counts 34 to 43, inclusive, excepting count 41, all charged in a grand jury indictment. (For convenience we use Arabic instead of Roman numerals as used in the indictment and as sometimes used in the briefs.) The issues of this appeal will be better understood after the reading of the following quoted portion of the trial court’s able narrative as unfolded by the evidence:

“In the year 1927 the defendant Ferguson was engaged in the real estate business in the City and County of Los Angeles and, having handled various realty transactions through the medium of syndicate trusts, conceived the idea of a revolving trust, by means of which comparatively small investments of a relatively large number of persons would be combined in a trust organization with a banking institution acting as trustee, and Mr. Ferguson, through his alter ego, the Harold G. Ferguson Corporation, acting as trust manager. Pursuant to this plan conceived by Mr.…