As young go-getters in Rochelle, Ill. (pop. 5,400), Frank and James Spellman were doing nicely buying, selling and trucking grain. Then they expanded, and bought a grain elevator. In 1949, they got a contract with the Agriculture Department's Commodity Credit Corp. to store 200,000 bu. of grain. The Spellmans, both in their early 303, began expanding faster. They added to their fleet of trucks, worked into real-estate deals, began shipping grain to Chicago by rail.
But their bubble burst. Last week they were indicted on 28 counts by an Illinois federal grand jury for fraudulently selling $282,000 worth of CCC's grain...
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