Becker, working on the sunny deck of the _Friedrich der Grosse_, had made numerous bomb cases, rolling sheet lead into a cylinder, and inserting in the tube a cup-shaped aluminum partition. These containers he turned over to Dr. Walter Scheele at his "New Jersey Agricultural Company," where he filled one compartment with nitroglycerine, the other with sulphuric acid. Scheele supplied the mechanics with sheet lead for the purpose. The bombs were then sealed and packed in sand for distribution to various German gathering places, such as, for example, the Turn Verein in the Brooklyn Labor Lyceum. Wolpert appeared there at a meeting one night and berated the Germans present for talking too much and acting too little; he wanted results, he said. Eugene Reister, the proprietor of the place, said that shortly afterward Walter Uhde and one Klein (who died before the police reached him) had taken away a bundle of bombs from the Turn Verein and had placed them on the _Lusitania_, just before her last voyage, and added that Klein, when he heard of the destruction of the ship, expressed regret that he had done it. Karl Schimmel--the same who had negotiated for the Krag rifles--said later to Reister: "I really put bombs on that boat, but I don't believe that fellow Klein ever did."
Following Kleist's information, agents of the Department of Justice and New York police inspected the _Friedrich der Grosse_, and found quantities of chlorate of potash and other chemicals. They brought back with them also Garbode (mentioned in the charge as "Karbade"), Paradis and Praedel, fourth engineers on the ship, who had assisted in making the bombs, and Carl Schmidt, the chief engineer. All of the group were implicated in the plot to the complete satisfaction of a jury which concluded their cases in May, 1917, by convicting them of "conspiracy to destroy ships through the use of fire bombs placed thereon." Kleist and Schmidt received sentences of two years each in Atlanta Penitentiary and were each fined $5,000; Becker, Karbade, Praedel and Paradis were fined $500 apiece and sentenced to six months in prison. Dr. Scheele fled from justice, and was arrested in March, 1918, in Havana. A liberal supply of vicious chemicals and explosives discovered in his "New Jersey Agricultural Company" implicated him thoroughly, if the evidence given by his fellows had not already done so. When he was finally captured he faced two federal indictments: one with Steinberg and von Igel for smuggling lubricating oil out of the country as fertilizer, under false customs manifests; the other the somewhat more criminal charge of bombing.