FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                          AT
THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 1996                           (202) 616-2771
                                               TDD (202) 514-1888

               WEST VIRGINIA METALS PRODUCER PLEADS
           GUILTY TO NATIONWIDE PRICE-FIXING CONSPIRACY

     WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A West Virginia metals producer pleaded
guilty and agreed to pay a $100,000 criminal fine today for
conspiring to fix prices of products used to make steel and cast
iron, said the Department of Justice.  
     The criminal case, filed by the Department's Antitrust 
Division in U.S. District Court in Buffalo, New York, charged
American Alloys Inc. of New Haven, West Virginia, with
participating in a conspiracy between late 1989 and mid 1991 to
fix prices of commodity ferrosilicon products sold in the United
States.  Annual U.S. sales of commodity ferrosilicon products are
more than $100 million.
     Commodity ferrosilicon products are alloys of iron and
silicon, used primarily as alloying agents in the production of
steel and cast iron to improve the properties of the finished
product, such as its strength and corrosion resistance.
     Anne K. Bingaman, Assistant Attorney General in charge of
the Antitrust Division, said the charges resulted from a grand
jury investigation in Buffalo, New York, into suspected collusion
by companies in the ferroalloys industry.  The ongoing
investigation is being conducted by the Division's New York Field
Office with the assistance of the Buffalo office of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation.
     The maximum penalty for a corporation convicted of a
violation of the Sherman Act committed after November 16, 1990,
is a fine of $10 million, twice the pecuniary gain the
corporation derived from the crime, or twice the pecuniary loss
suffered by the victims of the crime, whichever is greater.
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96-175