On May 17, 1900, Sullivan was admitted as a member of the Consolidated
Stock and Petroleum Exchange of New York and under the firm name
of Sullivan & Sullivan advertised extensively and had a system of
wires through New England. It was noticed that his business on the
exchange was very small and upon the complaint of a customer his
trading methods were investigated, with the result that on the 11th of
October he was adjudged guilty of obvious fraud or false pretenses and
expelled from membership in the exchange. He made some threats of a
suit against the exchange, but the firm of Sullivan & Sullivan failed
in November and nothing was heard of him in New York. His customers
and correspondents never received any statements of their accounts and
Sullivan fled the state.
He seems to have come direct to Chicago, and was employed for several
months by bucketshops and private-wire houses as a telegraph operator.
In the fall of 1901 he associated himself with E. F. Rowland,
ostensibly to do a commission business in stocks, grain and cotton.
His methods of advertising were extremely lurid, and he flooded the
country with literature and letters printed in red ink. The employee,
Sullivan, soon forced Rowland out of business and continued under the
name of Rowland until the first of January, 1903, when by degrees
he had worked the name of Sullivan into prominence and the name of
Rowland had gradually been eliminated from his signs and literature.