GOLD BAIT FOR RICH MEN.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 308, 3 October 1929, Page 3

GOLD BAIT FOR RICH MEN.

THE CONFIDENCE GAME. This is the season of the year when rich men blessed with a sense of big business are rooked by crooks playing the confidence game, which is as old 1 as crime, remarks R. E. Corder, in the “Daily Mail.” Scotland Yard is bored during the summer months by two types of victims. One is the eternal flapper, who, having accepted the invitation of a motor ride from a strange man who had a cinema face, complains that she had been left stranded on a country road miles away from home because her gentleman friend was no gentleman.

The other regular victim is the astute business man, who has been beaten on a deal by a confidence man who specialises in human nature. Magistrates and lawyers with whom I have discussed the confidence trick say they cannot understand why business men, a man of the world, can be duped by such an obvious fraud. But the fraud is not obvious until it is exposed. The confidence men who are now concentrating on London are not obvious. They spend hundreds of pounds in preliminary expenses before they make their coup. Their hook has a golden bait, and the poor fish swallows the gilded hook. There are many variations of the confidence trick, but all are based on the human desire to get something for nothing. In plain words, the besetting sin of evarice gives the confidence man his chance.

“Patsy,” one of the cleverest confidence men known, but not so far arrested by the police, plays the religious game. Having traced and placed his real dupe, he drops a rosary in the street. The dupe, who is a Roman Catho’ic, picks up and restores the Dominican emblem, and the confidence man, who oozes benevolence, after several dinners and lunches, reveals his mission, which is to bestow, say, £20,000 in Roman Catholic charities.

The dupe, he says, is the very man he has been looking for, and on him he presses a big wad of notes. “But,” says the confidence man, “although I trust, I must in justice be sure that you are a man of substance. I mean, you must be the sort of man who has a recognised standard, a man whose cheque will be honoured at the bank.”

f dupe, holding, as he thinks, se

curities for a fortune, places real money to the extent of thousands, in the hands of the confidence man, who leaves him with a few hundred pounds of good money and the remainder “ home-made” money Another profitable confidence trick requires a lot of capital. A rich man from, say, Chicago, is found on the boat from New York, traced and cultivated in the cafes of Paris, on the hills and plains of Switzerland, on the shores of Deauville, and in the winelike sea of Lido. I

Money is spent like water by the confidence man, who, having secured the friendship of their dupe, meet him lu Paris or in London. A stranger comelfc'along with a wonderful proposition about a gold mine, or an oil well, or business merger. Five thousand pounds invested now will mean a hundred thousand in a few weeks. And the dupe falls, falls to the appeal of a pleasing personality. Still another profitable and popular confidence trick is based on racing. The confidence men tell their selected victim that they have found a way to beat time. The dupe is persuaded to invest, say, £5 on the “system.” The “system” wins. He puts on £lO, and j again he is allowed to win. He is con- j vinced that he is on a good thing, and I he plunges, and the rogues get away I with more than £IOO profit. This sort of thing goes on ewery , day in London during the season. The j confidence man rarely comes before I the courts, because the victims are too j ashamed to prosecute. ' Scotland Yard detectives know their i men, and very charming men they afe. Thrilling it is to stand at a bar with a detective at one side, and an international crook on the other, with the password “Same again.”