AN IMPUDENT FRAUD.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1027, 24 January 1882, Page 3

AN IMPUDENT FRAUD.

A Liverpool gentleman, holding a good position in a local bank, was recently the victim of an audacious swindle on the part of a New York long firm. This gentleman’s son went out to seek his fortuna in the New World, and his resources having dwindled down to a five-pound note, thanks to sightseeing and travelling, he determined to get something to do. He therefore answered an advertisement for a traveller to a New York firm, and finding they wanted references and security, he gave his fathers name and address in Liverpool, and told his prospective employers that his only worldly goods were a five-pound note, a gold watch and chain, and an extra suit of clothes. After some apparent consideration, the firm agreed to accept the security, and the note, watch, chain, and clothes were lodged with them, the traveller being handed a list of accounts and other matters, with which he was despatched up country on a journey. He went on hie way rejoicing at his good luck, but he soou had cause for a very different feeling. He discovered that the firm to whom he was sent not only did not know the New York house be represented, but also repudiated any indebtedness to the firm. A suspicion that he had been swindled at length dawned upon the traveller, and he made haste back to New York to find that the birds had flown and the place of business was emp y. He being left altogether without resources, was obliged to communicate with his friends at home, when he learned to his surprise that they were bewailing him as dead. His father had received a communication from the New York firm who had so kindly given him employment stating that his son, who had been travelling for them, had, they regretted to state, been seized with an attack of fever, from which he had died. Knowing that he was respectably connected and without friends in New York, these good Samaritans had they stated, given him decent interment and performed the last offices for their servant in a manner consistent with his position. An undertaker’s account was enclosed which,

although it was evidently an exorbitant one, the stricken father paid, sending the amount to the address of the firm. Ho received an acknowledgment, with the further suggestion tlrnt he would perhaps like to have a handsome monument erected over his poor boy. Almost simultaneously with this audacious communication was received a letter from the “ poor boy,” relating the story of the swindle of which he had been tho victim. The father’s feelings can be better imagined than described. He, however, consoled himself with the reflection that though he had been victimized to the extent of being induced to pay fora fictitious funeral he had at least been spared tho cost of a handsome monument.