Examination of his papers resulted in a protracted imprisonment, which daily grew more painful, and finally Goltz agreed to turn state's evidence against his former confrères. It was not until March 31, 1916, that Captain Tauscher was interrupted at his office by the arrival of agents of the Department of Justice, who placed him under arrest. He was held in $25,000 bail on a charge of having furthered a plot to blow up the Welland Canal.
Meanwhile Goltz's confession had implicated him in something more than a casual acquaintance with the plot; stubs in the check-book of Captain von Papen established payment made by the latter to Tauscher of $31.13, which happened to be the exact total of two bills from the du Pont Company to Captain Tauscher for dynamite and hemp fuses delivered on September 5 and 13 to "Bridgeman Taylor." Prior to the trial in June and July, 1916, Tauscher offered to plead guilty for a promise of the maximum fine without imprisonment, but his offer was rejected by the United States attorneys. A letter was introduced as testimony to his good character from General Crozier, the then head of the Ordnance Department at Washington. Goltz made an unimpressive witness, and Captain Tauscher, protesting his innocence as a mere intermediary in the affair, was acquitted of the charge.
Of the smaller fry Fritzen was arrested in Los Angeles in March, 1917. He stated then to officers that he had made trips to Cuba after the outbreak of war in 1914, had traveled over southern United States in two attempts to reach Mexico City, and had finally found employment on a ranch. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Tucker and Busse were witnesses at the Tauscher trial and were treated leniently. Covani turned from his previous occupation as hunter to that of quarry, and was not apprehended.
Information gathered by the Federal authorities and produced in court proved that Captain von Papen and reservist German army officers in the country planned a second mobilization of German reservists to attack Canadian points. That the project was seriously considered for a time is evidenced by a note in the diary found on the commander of the _Geier_, in Honolulu, in which he said that the German consul in Honolulu, George Rodiek, had had orders from the San Francisco consulate to circulate a report to that effect. Hundreds of thousands of rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition that were to be available for German reservists were stored in New York, Chicago and other cities on the border. Many a German-American brewery concealed in the shadows of its storehouses crates of arms and ammunition. Tauscher stored in 200 West Houston Street, New York, on June 21, 1915, 2,000 45-calibre Colt revolvers, 10 Colt automatic guns, 7,000 Springfield rifles, 3,000,000 revolver cartridges and 2,500,000 rifle cartridges. When the New York police questioned him about this arsenal, he said he had purchased them in job lots, for speculation. As a matter of fact they had been intended for use in India, but had been diverted on the Pacific coast and returned to New York.