A SWINDLER'S CAREER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 156, 30 December 1911, Page 10 (Supplement)

A SWINDLER'S CAREER.

EXTRAORDINARY EXPLOITS. Having laid their hands on M. Auguste Durand do Bellefond de Gournay, the iFrench police have discovered that they know the gentleman who tried to swindle* the little town of Granville, in Normandy, under another name. He is simply Louis Cognel, and ever since he came to man's estate he has been among the most daring criminals in Europe. He was the son of a university professor, and received a good education. At the age of twenty-two, in 1898, he married a banker's daughter. Soon afterwards he established an insurance company, which brought him in some thousands of pounds and secured him nine years' imprisonment. Miking his escape, he abandoned his wife and two children, married a charming girl at Le Mans and borrowed £6OO from her father. With this capital he 'became a banker, taking l into partnership a man who had been whistling for a living in the music-halls. Cognel had a trick telephone in his office and used it to inspire confidence in his clients, the whistling partner, in the next room, playing the part of Baron Rothschild, or some'other great financier who was alleged to be "behind the bank-." In 1906 the bank dabbled in a Russian loan, and Cognel disappeared with about £IOO,OOO. He went to Athens, and appeared in a magnificent uniform as "Ambassador of the Republic of Liberia," but he got into trouble and left hurriedly for Salonica. There he. was baptised in the Greek Church, and married a rich and beautiful widow. She found him out and had him arrested and sent home to France. He escaped, but was recaptured and served a term of imprisonment. At the. beginning of last vear he opened in Paris a concern which he called the' Colonial and Agricultural Bank, and he managed to find a partner, whom he robbed of £IOOO. This year he established an association for exi ploring territories in Africa and South America, making large profits in his own i way, and after another tour in Greece he undertook the big selieme at Granville, which lias put an end for some time to his career.