Show GIGANTIC FORGERY SCHEME Salt Lake Business Men SaH to Do Among the Victims Butte Mont July 8Speclal to Tribune Trib-une The preliminary trial of H A Sloan and William McMahon today developed a gigantic forgery scheme affecting bankers and merchants In nearly every large city In the United States The two men were arrested several weeks ago when they presented themselves at the First National Bank and tried to collect J83 on a contract for an advertisement In a publication called Lairds Industrial Gazetteer The bank at once declared the signature to the contract a forgery and after the arrest hundreds of similar contracts wore found on the men bearing the signatures of different merchants and mining companies Some of the signatures signa-tures were so well executed that their owners could not dispute them At the trial today a copy of the al leged Gazetteer was produced and found to be an old book with new in troductory leaves pasted In The advertisements ad-vertisements on which collections were attempted to be made were also pasted In the same manner The address of the publishing house Is given as 61 to 69 Gold street New York How the men obtained the signatures of the merchants Is unknown They have advertisements of firms In Chicago St Louis Denver Omaha Salt Lake Spo kane San Francisco Helena and many other cities and estimated to represent over 520000 When the men were first arrested a telegram was received from some party In New York signing the Laird Company stating the men were all right and that tho company was responsible Since then nothing has been heard from the party |