EXPERT CONFIDENCE MAN.

Shannon News, 18 November 1924, Page 4

EXPERT CONFIDENCE MAN.

"GENTLEMAN JlM' ' CASEY. ARRESTED IN ENGLAND. News, has reached the Australian police that a well-known confidence trickster, James Francis. Casey, commonly known, as "Gentleman Jim," who was formerly in Australia, has fallen into the hands of Scotland Yard officials: This caused considerable satisfaction in Sydney police.circles as it was by a clever trick at the expense of the police that he gat away from custody! there sonie two years ago. He • had previously served a number of terms of imprisonment in Australia. Casey was in custody at the Dariinghurst station in 1923 on remand, waiting, for the waggon to take himhelf and another prisoner •to ?Long Bay Penitentiary, to await their trial there. He was in ordinary clothes, and with his fallow prisoner was waiting in the conidor near the cells. The constable who had opened' the cell doors was busy at the far end of the corridor, and the constable in charge of the van opened the grille and said "Come . on." Casey grasped the other prisoner by the arm, and, posing as a detective, said, "Only one man to go to-night, constable," at the same time leading the second; man towards the van door. The trick worked well and Casey assisted the other prisoner in the van.

Casey borrowed a cigarette and a match from the policeman, then asked him to lock the door so that the other prisoners could not get out of the cells, and sauntered away. He had disappeared by the time the trick was discovered, and he was not heard of in Australia again. The case for which Casey was waiting trial was typical of him. An accomplice made friends with an Englishman on a boat between Adelaide and Melbourne, convincing the latter that he had a friend, a bank manager in Melbourne, who could change his English notes into; Australian , currency without deducting the commission. They visited a Melbourne bank together and met Casey at the- door. He posed as the bank manager, took £4OO from the visitor, and pretended to go inside to get the Australian notes. Instead,, he disappeared out of another door, and his accomplice, after waiting with the victimVfor a few minutes, also disappeared on the pretence that he was going to hurry Casey along. Casey was later arrested in Sydney. He has now been arrested in England on another charge.