Levine, of Atlantic Hop Fame, Held in Alien Smuggling Case
from the Los Angeles Times, January 11, 1942.

Charles A. Levine, the ex-junk dealer who claimed the now-obscured fame of being the first trans-Atlantic airplane passenger in 1927, was jailed in New York yesterday on a Los Angeles indictment of conspiring to smuggle a German alien into the United States.

The confessed alien and an asserted accomplice of Levine are held in the County Jail here.

The man, who called himself the "Millionaire Stowaway" when he and Clarence Chamberlin flew the huge plane Columbia to Germany, waived removal proceedings in New York Federal court and was held in $1000 bail.

Asst. U.S. Atty. Russell K. Lambeau declared yesterday that the illegal entrance of the alien, Edward Schinek, occurred last May 30, when Peter Joseph Walter, Los Angeles hotel man, and the latter's son, assertedly spirited Schinek across the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex.

Lambeau said that Walter went to the Hall of Records here and obtained the birth certificate of an American citizen, Edward Siegel, of Los Angeles, and that Levine supplied the letter stating that Schinek, posing as Siegel, was an American businessman and an old acquaintance of the Atlantic flyer.

With the asserted false birth certificate and Levine's letter, Schinek was brought across the border.

Schinek's wife, in a subsequent operation, according to Lambeau, was hidden in a huge gasoline tank beneath an automobile and brought into the United States at San Ysidro below San Diego.

She was arrested for illegal entry but is now at liberty on her own recognizance.

Schinek has pleaded guilty to illegal entry charges, and Walter has pleaded guilty to smuggling charges, Lambeau asserted. Walter's son, also named by Federal authorities as a co-conspirator in the smuggling, is still in Mexico.

Levine, since his sensational flight with Chamberlin, has received occasional mention in the public print. The latest was in 1934, when he was found unconscious in the kitchen of a friend's home, with five gas jets turned on.

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