LONDON CROOK’S AMAZING FRAUD.

Grey River Argus, 26 February 1927, Page 1 (Supplement)

LONDON CROOK’S AMAZING FRAUD.

“JEWELLERY GEORGE” PLANNED BIG COUP. London’s criminal world lias lost one of its most remarkable personalities by Ike sentence of three years’ penal servitude passed at the Old Bailey yesterday on George Spiers (57), commission agent, for receiving property which was included in the haul obtained from the Hatton Garden diamond mail van some months ago. Spiers was known not only tu his criminal associates, but also to Scotland Yard as “Jewellery George” and for many years he had led a tlouble life. He owed his arrest to one of the ! smartest bits of detective work ever accomplished by Scotland Yard. After the mail van was raided the heads of the C.I.D. began to look round for criminals big enough to attempt such an ambitious coup. Their inquiries led them in the direction of Jewellery George, and from then onwards his downfall was only a question of time. His Shadow. He never moved from his home at Highgate without his “shadow.” Little did he suspect that the disreputablelooking loafers who hung around his favourite haunts were detectives in disguise. In Highgate, where he occupied a well-furnished flat, ho was vaguely regarded as a man who was “something in the City. Jewellery George was one <»f the most cunning organisers of crime who

ever operated in London. Apart from a sentence of 1S months’ hard labour, he has not been in ] risen, although years ago he was acquainted with some of the most notorious of the “flash” crooks of London, inelmling Kammy Grizzard, one of the most famous international diamond thlevss. Spiers prided himself on his astuteness. He preferred to play the princi pal in any crime. He was not a fence nor was he a burglar, but he managed to draw commission, as a rule, from both sides. Formerly Spiers had a prosperous jewellery business in Clerkenwell Road