UNGAOLED GENIUSES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 91, 7 October 1911, Page 10

UNGAOLED GENIUSES.

CLEVER SWINDLERS WHO XKKD XOT BE CAUGHT.There sin: scores of clever swindlers abroad, but most of them go in ilnily fear of every man in blue. The cheat who invents a method of making a dishonest livelihood with hardly the slightest risk of detection is, fortunately for his fellows, a rare bird; yet that he does exist the following examples prove. I luce upon a time the City or Lioncon had to pay a county rate, but this was legally abolished many years ago. A certain attorney, who had at one time been connected with local taxation, hit upon the brilliant idea of re-levying this obsolete, rate, and turning the proceeds to his own use.

tie got the proper demand notes printed, distributed them in the usual fashion, and the recipients paid up like lambs. The swindler had a regular ollice, a. collector, and all the usual accompaniments. It is said that he made over iCUUUO a year, and no one ever thought of questioning the legality of the rate. if the crooked genius hail been satislied with a couple of years' profits, and then quietly discontinued the collection of the rate, the chances are that no one would ever have been any the wiser. Hut he was greedy, and kept on, year after year, until, by chance, a demand note fell into the hands of someone who knew. And then the city learnt how it had ben hoaxed.

Equally clever in his way was the Frenchman, Georges Petit. During the past two years advertisements have been appearing iu French newspapers from a linn of alleged lawyers who desired to iind a respectable family willing to adopt the natural child of a wealthy man. The father was willing to pay a sum of 25,0'J0 francs to satisfactory persons. There was a stipulation that a fee of twenty francs should be enclosed to cover cost of enquiries. Thousands of people replied, and the lirm of solicitors—otherwise Georges l'etit —reaped a splendid harvest in, iees. Needless to say, the whole thing was a fabrication, yet one very dillieult to prove. And in Petit's case there is no doubt but that if ho had been contented with his lirst profits he could have cleared a modest fortune.

But, like the rate-collector before mentioned, lie was greedy, and the constant repetition of the same advertisement ended by attracting the notice of the police, with the result that enquiries were made, the fraud brought to light, and the ingenious Petit found things too warm for him.

Germany has produced another genius of a similar type in the shape of a man named Baumann. Baumann conceived

a brilliant idea for turning the conscription law to proiit/ble account by enabling recruits to escape military service.

He did not adopt the usual but clumsy methods of mutilating the men who wished to avoid service, or of administering drugs. All he did was to make it his business to know at which conconscription depots the army doctors were most exacting in the matter of physical condition and most likely to bar a recruit for slight physical defects. For this special information he was

able to secure considerable sums of, money, sons of well-to-do parents paying him as much as £IOO a-piece. It was a long time before he was caught, and even then it seemed very doubtful whether he had brought himself within reach of the law.

He was tried at Elberfeld, and the charge was "intent to procure fraudulent exemption." It served its purpose, however; and he. got seven years' imprisonment. Some of his clients, too, were also sent to gaol.