£1,000,000 MADE BY FRAUD

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVIII, Issue 81918, 7 March 1907, Page 4

£1,000,000 MADE BY FRAUD

AMAZING CAREER OF BOGUS OXFORD DON. NEW YORK, Sunday, Jan. 0. The American police, after a three years' chase, liave succeeded iu capturing Dr. Richard C. Flower, who is a leged to be the most ingenious mining swindler in the States.

Flower has been operating for some tiiue. in Philadelphia under the guise of an Oxford don who had discovered a remarkable method of making artiticial diamonds. He issued a remarkable prospectus, which stated that he hid produced diamonds of greater value than the finest products of Kimberley, and that some of the most prominent business men in the city were allied with him in his enterprise. He has adopted so many disguises and assumed so many aliases that when the police entered his offices yesterday with the warrant for his arrest they emild uot believe that the scholarlylooking old man with the venerable beard and the blue spectacles was tiie notorious criminal they wanted.

flower is believed to posses remarkable hypnotic powers, and he is credited with having made in the course of his career at least £1,000.000 which he extracted from about 10.000 victims. Many of the latter were women who gave their fortunes to support his wildcat mining schemes. He was accused in 1004 of having lloated a bogus copper mine in Montana. He bribed a district attorney to have the charges against him distroved, and then broke a bail of £4,000 for' which one of his women friends stood, and decamped with about £IOO,OOO.