"DIED" SEVEN TIMES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 306, 4 June 1915, Page 8

"DIED" SEVEN TIMES.

EXPLOITS OF AN INGENIOUS SWINDLER.

Particularly ingenious methods were adopted il>y a Paris swindler named Victor Jadot .but tliese were only discovered when it was too late to (bring him to account. Jadot specialised in buying- .businesses on credit, quickly realising as muc'-i profit as lie could, and then disapeparing. Towards the end of each of his successful operations he would find some unfortunate individual in the last stages of consumption, or some other deadly disease, whom he would house decently until his death when he would have him buried, under the name which Jadot had assumed in connection wiit'-i the business in which he was then engaged. His plans were ably seconded by( his mistress, Valentine Paincau, who, when the swindler's victims arrived on the scene, would be found weeping for her dead "husband." In this way Jadot "died" seven times under different names. At length inquiries by the police revealed the truth. When, however, a detective went to arrest Jadot he foundvValentinc dressed in mourning, and » : ie informed him that her friend was dead. The police were incredulous, thinking that the woman was playing the old trick, and they refused to believe that Jadot was dead until the exhumation of the body proved that the ingenious swindler's career had really been cut short by death. Paincam was then arrested as an accomplice of deceased.