TURF FRAUDS EXPOSED.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1366, 9 October 1883, Page 1

TURF FRAUDS EXPOSED.

BY "THE HERALD" DETECTIVE. (AVom The Sydney Herald, Sept, 6th, 1883) Fsavd No. 8, “ Boxahza." iIOOO .£lOOO THE “ GREAT BONANZA ” CLUB CONSULTATION On the MELBOURNE CUP, 1888, to bo run about the end of October. Capital, £7500. Divided into 150,000 Shares at Is each. 500 prizes Guaranteed. To be distributed as followi First horse, £lOOO j Second horse, £5OO j Third horse £250 ; Starters divide £5OO j Non-starters divide £250 j 10 prizes of £lOO —£looo j 20 prizes of £so—£looo j 40 prizes of £2s—£looo; 100 prizes of £l6— £lOOO ; 200 prizes of £s—£looo. 21 tickets for £l. Not less than 5 tickets sent, to any single address. Send P.O. order or bank notes. If coin be enclosed please register letter; if stamps are sent, add exchange at the rate of is. in the £l. Exchange should also be added to cheques. Please enclose 3d. extra for membership fees. No charge for reply or result. Drawing will positively take place on or before the 25th October, and will be conducted by a committee of the shareholders. Tickets promptly sent by return post, and results posted immediately after drawing. Prospectus forwarded. Enclose an addressed envelope unstamped. Address “Bonanza,” care of J. Thomas, 2C Swanston-street, Melbourne. Cool, determined, and unscruplous, is a very mild description of the character of the Croesus sounding cognomen of Bonanza ; an individual whose aliases are so innumerable that occasionally, 000 l and collected as he is, he forgets his last nom de plume and makes a faux pas. When 1 first knew this gentleman, he had but recently arrived in Victoria from ’Frisco, —shortly after the “ lottery ring swindle ” had been repressed in that cradle of Califorian “ spielers ” and refuge of levanting Victorian sweep swindlers. When under the influence of of liquor Mr " Bonanza ” is slightly loquacious, and were it not for the risk of disclosing my own identity, I would relate the rather amusing circumstances which led up to my being in a position to identify that personage. However, it was as a result of a lapsus Ungue which he made when under the influence of the rosy god that first proved to me that I was on the right track, About thirty years of age, clean, gnodlooking, and well-built, “ Bonanza” is a great fovourite with the waitresses at the Coffee Tavern, at which restaurant he dines daily ; and amongst the barmaids at all the firstclass hotels he is probably the beat known man in Melbourne.

A gambler by nature, the subject of this notice has probably seen more ” life ” and gone through more vissitudes than most msn of double his age, and I fancy it would be less difllcult to enumerate the various professions he has not adorned, than those lines which at various periods of his career ho has found it profitable the work. A smart, shrewd well-informed man, quick at repartee aud clever at retort as a barman in a well-known city hotel, he naturally soon became popular ; and if that innate, unlucky propensity for change, which characterises the dispositions of all these gentlemen, had not predominated so largely in his composition, the probabilities are that he would even now, with one hand on the handle of the beer machine, be giving his customers the straight tip, “ A moral for Monmouth, sir, I saw the wire,” while drawing half pints of two alee.

But a cultivated taste for the fine arts prompted him to turn his attention to photographing young ladies in a state of deshabille which would have shocked Chloe, made the worthy owner of the painting of that unadorned female blush, and actually raised the hat off the head of the Dean of Melbourne with holy horror, brought him under the notice of Mr Panton, who afforded him an opportunity of acquiring an ineight into the medical profession ; for I next hear of him rusticating at Pentridge, where his ready wit and natural ability for adapting himself to his surroundings, procured him the billet of hospital nurse to the sick prisoners. If I remember aright his roving proclivities did not trouble him for two years, as he kept this billet during that term.

Shortly afterwards—in 1882—he commenced running a sweep on the Melbourne Cup, and this little fact is a further proof of my assertion that it is after a man has gone crooked in other respects, that he turns his attentions to the sweep business. In drawing some of his sweeps he appears to have u method peculiar to himself. The majority of the other bogus sweep-holders merely hold imaginary drawings, and after weeding out all the horses which have not already been scratched, allot one here and there to good customers. But “ Bonanza’s ” modus operand! is more original— he apparently draws some at least of his sweeps squarely and then writes a letter to the lucky (?) prize winners to the following effect “ I am very pleased to be able to announce that you have succeeded in drawing such and such a prize in my drawing. Enclosed, please find cheque for £ , and please accept my hearty congratulations for this good luck, and my hopes for your future success. ”

But unfortunately for the fortunate recipient uf his congratulations and his hopes, that is about all he ever does receive, for in the exurberance of his spirits and in his haste to congratulate his victims “Bonanza’ forgets to enclose the cheque, and when they remind him by wire of this fact, he solmenly swears by post that the cheque wasenclosea, and ascribes the loss to the thievish propensities of the Post Office officials. The followidg letter which appeared originally in a South Australian paper, tends to prove these facts : — “ I took some tickets on the great Bonanza Sweep ou last Australian Cup, aud drew second horse (VVilleroo), being entitled to £lOO less 10 percent, commission. I forwarded ticket to J. Thomas. In due course got reply, ‘ please find cheque £9O enclosed, etc,but there was no cheque in the letter. I found the envelope had been torn open, and some stamp edging pasted over the tear. The letter was registesed, and the usual cross put on registered letters was ou ihe top of the stamp-edging. 1 wrote Thomas informing him of this. After some further correspondence he sends me a

cheque drawn on the Bank of Australia, Elizabeth-street Branch, Melbourne made payable to 8.D., and drawn by B. Foster (who in a subsequent letter, he informs me, is treasurer of the club), which had been paid into Commercial Bank, Melbourne, and collected by them from Bank of Australia. I have written both banks, but can get no satisfaction. The manager of Commercial Bank informs me a respectable firm paid it, but declines to give name of firm. 1 also wrote the Postmaster General of Victoria on the subject, as Thomas intimated that the letter must have been tampered with after reaching the Post Office. At last I wrote Thomas, telling him I con* Sidered the whole affair a swindle, threatening to expose him through the medium of the Press ; also to put the affair into the hands of the police. In reply to which he informs me, ” The police are deluged with complaints from victims who entrusted their money to bogus companies,' JR® exposing him he ccoly replies, ’ Such a proceeding would undoubtedly prove a good advertisement to us than otherwise, as you would admit having drawn the second hone in our Australian Cup sweep, thus proving the bona fide of the drawing, &c.’ He winds up by offering me a corresponding number of tickets in his sweep now open on next Melbourne Cup. He also kindly informs mo that I have his greatest sympathy for my loss. Unfortunately I don’t value his sympathy to the tune of £9O. To enter fully into the matter re the correspondence which had passed between us would take up too much of your valuable space. If the cheque was paid into the Commercial Bank by a highly respec’able firm, and, as the manager further alleges, * eaid firm appears to have received it from a genuine source,’ surely there can be no difficulty in tracing it. I have already written the Commissioner of Police, and briefly explained the affair to him, as well as sent him the cheque above alluded to. There is evidently something very shady in the affair, and I have come to the conclusion the Great Bonanza Sweep is nothing but a swindle. I think it only right the public should be warned against investing their money in such a swindle as this evidently is. Trusting you may find room in your valuable columns for this.—l am, &0., Chableb Chapple. “Mundi, Mundi, Barrier Ranges, N.S.W.” This season of the year is ” Bonanza's ” harvest, it being a common occurrencefor him to receive 100 letters daily from all parts of Australasia, the fairly-prosperous individuals going for £5 worth of tickets, (getting five extra in this case), while the humbler classes content themselves with investing a few shillings at a time. It is noticeable that “ Bonanza ” gives away one extra ticket in the pound—this amounts to 5 per cent., and he has agents in Canterbury, Dunedin, Hobart, Sandhurst and Ballarat, whom he allows a further commission on their sales of tickets. This alone would be enough to show that the affair was a swindle.

Advertising, as Mr “ Bonanza ” does, throughout Australia, and in the principal cities in India, and even in Fiji, I am afraid that he would lose money by his liberality to customers and agents if he paid his clients the full amount of the prizes they are supposed to draw j but on the principle, I suppose, that they “ can’t have their cake and eat it,” he gives them the extra ticket gratis, and sticks to the prizes they draw. The following extracts from some of his advertisements will give the readers of The Herald a capital illustration of the cool audacity of the man who wrote them, and the gullibility of those individuals (and they are many) who believe them.

“ It is worthy of note, as a statistical fact, that there are to be seen in the club’fl offices, in Melbourne, a stack of used letters reaching from fioor to ceiling, numbering in the aggregate between 30 and 40 thousand. (These italics are mine).

The club has also about 100 letters containing tickets on various events which had never reached their destination, but had been returned from the Dead Letter Office unclaimed. gome of these tickets drew valuable prizes. The club has about 30 letters from persons who positively state they forwarded money for tickets but got no reply. Their money, if forwarded, had never been received by the club.

The public are hereby informed that the “ Bonanza Club ” holds the sum of £672 public money unclaimed. This amount represents a number of prizes which have never been applied for. The promoters now announce that the above amount will be forfeited if not claimed before the end of the present vear. Should there be a surplus then in hand, it will be added to the prizes in its New Year’s programme.”— [AdVT.] From the heading of these articles and the general tenor of my foregoing remarks, it is hardly necessary for me to add that the Great Bonanza Consultation is a swindle, only excelling “ Orient’s ” in impudence, and “ Australasia’s ” in magnitude.