True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office Part 7

In the McCord case, the defendant had falsely pretended to the complainant, a man named Miller, that he was a police officer and held a warrant for his arrest. By these means he had induced Miller to give him a gold watch and a diamond ring as the price of his liberty. The conviction in this case was reversed on the ground that Miller parted with his property for an unlawful purpose; but there was a very strong dissenting opinion from Mr. Justice Peckham, now a member of the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States.

In the second case, that of Livingston, the complainant had been defrauded out of $500 by means of the "green goods" game; but this conviction was reversed by the Appellate Division of the Second Department on the authority of the McCord case. The opinion in this case was written by Mr. justice Cullen, now Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, who says in conclusion:

"We very much regret being compelled to reverse this conviction. Even if the prosecutor intended to deal in counterfeit money, that is no reason why the appellant should go unwhipped of justice. We venture to suggest that it might be Well for the Legislature to alter the rule laid down in McCord vs. People."

Well might the judges regret being compelled to set a rogue at liberty simply because he had been ingenious enough to invent a fraud (very likely with the a.s.sistance of a shyster lawyer) which involved the additional turpitude of seducing another into a criminal conspiracy. Livingston was turned loose upon the community in spite of the fact that he had swindled a man out of $500 because he had incidentally led the latter to believe that in return he was to receive counterfeit money or "green goods," which might be put into circulation. Yet, because some years before, the Judges of the Court of Appeals had, in the McCord matter, adopted the rule followed in civil cases, to wit that as the complaining witness was himself in fault and did not come into court with clean hands he could have no standing before them, the Appellate Division in the next case felt obliged to follow them and to rule tantamount to saying that two wrongs could make a right and two knaves one honest man. It may seem a trifle unfair to put it in just this way, but when one realizes the iniquity of such a doctrine as applied to criminal cases, it is hard to speak softly. Thus the broad and general doctrine seemed to be established that so long as a thief could induce his victim to believe that it was to his advantage to enter into a dishonest transaction, he might defraud him to any extent in his power. Immediately there sprang into being hordes of swindlers, who, aided by adroit shyster lawyers, invented all sorts of schemes which involved some sort of dishonesty upon the part of the person to be defrauded. The "wire-tappers," of whom "Larry" Summerfield was the Napoleon, the "gold-brick" and "green-goods" men, and the "sick engineers" flocked to New York, which, under the unwitting protection of the Court of Appeals, became a veritable Mecca for persons of their ilk.

To readers unfamiliar with the cast of mind of professional criminals it will be almost impossible to appreciate with what bold insouciance these vultures now hovered over the metropolitan barnyard. Had not the Court of Appeals itself recognized their profession? They had nothing to fear. The law was on their side. They walked the streets flaunting their immunity in the very face of the police. "Wire-tapping" became an industry, a legalized industry with which the authorities might interfere at their peril. Indeed, there is one instance in which a "wire-tapper" successfully prosecuted his victim (after he had trimmed him) upon a charge of grand larceny arising out of the same transaction. One crook bred another every time he made a victim, and the disease of crime, the most infectious of all distempers, ate its way unchecked into the body politic. Broadway was thronged by a prosperous gentry, the aristocracy and elite of knavery, who dressed resplendently, flourished like the green bay-tree, and spent their (or rather their victims') money with the lavish hand of one of Dumas's gentlemen.

But the evil did not stop there. Seeing that their brothers prospered in New York, and neither being learned in the law nor gifted with the power of nice discrimination between rogueries, all the other knaves in the country took it for granted that they had at last found the Elysian fields and came trooping here by hundreds to ply their various trades. The McCord case stood out like a cabalistic sign upon a gate-post telling all the rascals who pa.s.sed that way that the city was full of honest folk waiting to be turned into rogues and "trimmed."

"And presently we did pa.s.s a narrow lane, and at the mouth espied a written stone, telling beggars by a word like a wee pitchfork to go that way."

The tip went abroad that the city was "good graft" for everybody, and in the train of the "wire-tappers" thronged the "flimflammer," "confidence man," "booster," "capper" and every sort of affiliated crook, recalling Charles Reade's account in "The Cloister and the Hearth" of Gerard in Lorraine among their kin of another period:

With them and all they had, 'twas lightly come and lightly go; and when we left them my master said to me, "This is thy first lesson, but to-night we shall be at Hansburgh. Come with me to the 'rotboss' there, and I'll show thee all our folk and their lays, and especially 'the lossners,' 'the dutzers,' 'the schleppers,' 'the gickisses,' 'the schwanfelders,' whom in England we call 'shivering Jemmies,' 'the suntregers,' 'the schwiegers,' 'the joners,' 'the sessel-degers,' 'the gennscherers,' in France 'marcandiers a rifodes,' 'the veranerins,' 'the stabulers,' with a few foreigners like ourselves, such as 'pietres,' 'francmitoux,' 'polissons,' 'malingreux,' 'traters,' 'rufflers,' 'whipjacks,' 'dommerars,' 'glymmerars,' 'jarkmen,' 'patricos,' 'swadders,' 'autem morts,' 'walking morts,'-" "Enow!" cried I, stopping him, "art as gleesome as the evil one a counting of his imps. I'll jot down in my tablet all these caitiffs and their accursed names: for knowledge is knowledge. But go among them alive or dead, that will I not with my good will."

And a large part of it was due simply to the fact that seven learned men upon seven comfortable chairs in the city of Albany had said, many years ago, that "neither the law or public policy designs the protection of rogues in their dealings with each other, or to insure fair dealing and truthfulness as between each other, in their dishonest practices."

The reason that the "wire-tapping" game was supposed to come within the scope of the McCord case was this: it deluded the victim into the belief that he was going to cheat the pool room by placing a bet upon a "sure thing." Secondarily it involved, as the dupe supposed, the theft or disclosure of messages which were being transmitted over the lines of a telegraph company-a misdemeanor. Hence, it was argued, the victim was as much a thief as the proposer of the scheme, had parted with his money for a dishonest purpose, did not come into court with "clean hands," and no prosecution could be sustained, no matter whether he had been led to give up his money by means of false pretences or not.

While "wire-tapping" differed technically from the precise frauds committed by McCord and Livingston, it nevertheless closely resembled those swindlers in general character and came clearly within the doctrine that the law was not designed to protect "rogues in their dealings with each other."

No genuine attempt had ever been made to prosecute one of these gentry until the catastrophe which deprived Felix of his $50,000. The "wire-tappers" rolled in money. Indeed, the fraternity were so liberal with their "rolls" that they became friendly with certain police officials and intimately affiliated with various politicians of influence, a friend of one of whom went on Summerfield's bond, when the latter was being prosecuted for the "sick-engineer" frauds to the extent of $30,000. They regularly went to Europe in the summer season and could be seen at all the race-courses and gambling resorts of the Continent. It is amusing to chronicle in this connection that just prior to McPherson's arrest-that is to say during the summer vacation of 1904-he crossed the Atlantic on the same steamer with an a.s.sistant district attorney of New York county, who failed to recognize his ship companion and found him an entertaining and agreeable comrade.

The trial came on before Judge Warren W. Foster in Part 3 of the General Sessions on February 27th, 1906. A special panel quickly supplied a jury, which, after hearing the evidence, returned in short order a verdict of guilty. As Judge Foster believed the McCord case to be still the law of the State, he, of his own motion, and with commendable independence, immediately arrested judgment. The People thereupon appealed, the Court of Appeals sustained Judge Foster, and the defendant was discharged. It is, however, satisfactory to record that the Legislature at its next session amended the penal code in such a way as to entirely deprive the wire-tappers and their kind of the erstwhile protection which they had enjoyed under the law.

V

The Franklin Syndicate

When Robert A. Ammon, a member of the New York bar, was convicted, after a long trial, on the 17th of June, 1903, of receiving stolen goods, he had, in the parlance of his cla.s.s, been "due" for a long time. The stolen property in question was the sum of thirty thousand five hundred dollars in greenbacks, part of the loot of the notorious "Franklin Syndicate," devised and engineered by William F. Miller, who later became the catspaw of his legal adviser, the subject of this history.

Ammon stood at the bar and listened complacently to his sentence of not less than four years at hard labor in Sing Sing. A sneer curved his lips as, after nodding curtly to his lawyer, he turned to be led away by the court attendant. The fortune s.n.a.t.c.hed from his client had procured for him the most adroit of counsel, the most exhaustive of trials. He knew that nothing had been left undone to enable him to evade the consequences of his crime, and he was cynically content.

For years "Bob" Ammon had been a familiar figure in the Wall Street district of New York. Although the legal adviser of swindlers and confidence men, he was a type of American whose energies, if turned in a less dubious direction, might well have brought him honorable distinction. Tall, strong as a bull, bluff, good-natured, reckless and of iron nerve, he would have given good account of himself as an Indian fighter or frontiersman. His fine presence, his great vitality, his coa.r.s.e humor, his confidence and bravado, had won for him many friends of a certain kind and engendered a feeling among the public that somehow, although the a.s.sociate and adviser of criminals, he was outside the law, to the circ.u.mventing of which his energies were directed. Unfortunately his experiences with the law had bred in him a contempt for it which ultimately caused his downfall.

"The reporters arc bothering you, are they?" he had said to Miller in his office. "Hang them! Send them to me. I'll talk to them!"

And talk to them he did. He could talk a police inspector or a city magistrate into a state of vacuous credulity, and needless to say he was to his clients as a G.o.d knowing both good and evil, as well as how to eschew the one and avoid the other. Miller hated, loathed and feared him, yet freely entrusted his liberty, and all he had risked his liberty to gain, to this strange and powerful personality which held him enthralled by the mere exercise of a physical superiority.

The "Franklin Syndicate" had collapsed amid the astonished outcries of its thousands of victims, on November 24th, 1899, when, under the advice and with the a.s.sistance of Ammon, its organizer, "520 per cent. Miller," had fled to Canada. It was nearly four years later, in June, 1903, that Ammon, arraigned at the bar of justice as a criminal, heard a.s.sistant District Attorney Nott call William F. Miller, convict, to the stand to testify against him. A curious contrast they presented as they faced one another; the emaciated youth of twenty-five, the hand of Death already tightly fastened upon his meagre frame, coughing, hollow-cheeked, insignificant, flat-nosed, almost repulsive, who dragged himself to the witness chair, and the swaggering athlete who glared at him from the bar surrounded by his cordon of able counsel. As Ammon fixed his penetrating gaze upon his former client, Miller turned pale and dropped his eyes. Then the prosecutor, realizing the danger of letting the old hypnotic power return, even for an instant, quickly stepped between them. Miller raised his eyes and smiled, and those who heard knew that this miserable creature had been through the fire and come forth to speak true things.

The trial of Ammon involved practically the reproving of the case against Miller, for which the latter had been convicted and sentenced to ten years in State's prison, whence he now issued like one from the tomb to point the skeleton, incriminating finger at his betrayer. But the case began by the convict-witness testifying that the whole business was a miserable fraud from start to finish, carried on and guided by the advice of the defendant. He told how he, a mere boy of twenty-one, burdened with a sick wife and baby, unfitted by training or ability for any sort of lucrative employment, a hanger-on of bucket shops and, in his palmiest days, a speculator in tiny lots of feebly margined stocks, finding himself without means of support, conceived the alluring idea of soliciting funds for investment, promising enormous interest, and paying this interest out of the princ.i.p.al intrusted to him. For a time he preyed only upon his friends, claiming "inside information" of large "deals" and paying ten per cent. per week on the money received out of his latest deposits.

Surely the history of civilization is a history of credulity. Miller prospered. His earlier friend-customers who had hesitatingly taken his receipt for ten dollars, and thereafter had received one dollar every Monday morning, repeated the operation and returned in ever-increasing numbers. From having his office "in his hat," he took an upper room in a small two-story house at 144 Floyd Street, Brooklyn-an humble tenement, destined to be the scene of one of the most extraordinary exhibitions of man's cupidity and foolishness in modern times. At first he had tramped round, like a pedler, delivering the dividends himself and soliciting more, but soon he hired a boy. This was in February, 1899. Business increased. The golden flood began to appear in an attenuated but constant rivulet. He hired four more employees and the whole top floor of the house. The golden rivulet became a steady stream. From a "panhandler" he rolled in ready thousands. The future opened into magnificent auriferous distances. He began to call himself "The Franklin Syndicate," and to advertise that "the way to wealth is as plain as the road to the market." He copied the real brokers and scattered circulars and "weekly letters" over the country, exciting the rural mind in distant Manitoba and Louisiana.

There was an instantaneous response. His mail required the exclusive attention of several clerks. The stream of gold became a rushing torrent. Every Monday morning the Floyd Street house was crowded with depositors who drew their interest, added to it, deposited it again, and went upon their way rejoicing. n.o.body was going to have to work any more. The out-of-town customers received checks for their interest drawn upon "The Franklin Syndicate," together with printed receipts for their deposits, all signed "William F. Miller," by means of a rubber stamp. No human hand could have signed them all without writer's cramp. The rubber stamp was Miller's official signature. Then with a mighty roar the torrent burst into a deluge. The Floyd Street quarters were besieged by a clamoring mult.i.tude fighting to see which of them could give up his money first, and there had to be a special delivery for Miller's mail. He rented the whole house and hired fifty clerks. You could deposit your money almost anywhere, from the parlor to the pantry, the clothes closet or the bath-room. Fridays the public stormed the house en ma.s.se, since the money must be deposited on that day to draw interest for the following week. The crush was so enormous that the stoop broke down. Imagine it! In quiet Brooklyn! People struggling to get up the steps to cram their money into Miller's pockets! There he sat, behind a desk, at the top of the stoop, solemnly taking the money thrown down before him and handing out little pink and green stamped receipts in exchange. There was no place to put the money, so it was shoved on to the floor behind him. Friday afternoons Miller and his clerks waded through it, knee high. There was no pretense of bookkeeping. Simply in self-defense Miller issued in October a p.r.o.nunciamento that he could not in justice to his business, consent to receive less than fifty dollars at one time. Theoretically, there was no reason why the thing should not have gone on practically forever, Miller and everybody else becoming richer and richer. So long as the golden stream swelled five times each year everybody would be happy. How could anybody fail to be happy who saw so much money lying around loose everywhere?

One of Miller's Franklin Syndicate Receipts.

But the business had increased to such an extent that Miller began to distrust his own capacity to handle it. He therefore secured a partner in the person of one Edward Schlessinger, and with him went to Charlestown, Ma.s.s., for the purpose of opening another office, in charge of which they placed a man named Louis Powers. History repeated itself. Powers shipped the deposits to Miller every day or two by express. Was there ever such a plethora of easy money?

But Schlessinger was no Miller. He decided that he must have a third of the profits (Heaven knows how they computed them!) and have them, moreover, each day in cash. Hence there was a daily accounting, part of the receipts being laid aside to pay off interest checks and interest, and the balance divided. Schlessinger carried his off in a bag; Miller took the rest, cash, money orders and checks, and deposited it in a real bank. How the money poured in may be realized from the fact that the excess of receipts over disburs.e.m.e.nts for the month ending November 16th was four hundred and thirty thousand dollars.

Hitherto Miller had been the central figure. Col. Robert A. Ammon now became the deus ex machina. Miller's advertising had become so extensive that he had been forced to retain a professional agent, one Rudolph Guenther, to supervise it, and when the newspapers began to make unpleasant comments, Guenther took Miller to Ammon's office in the Bennett Building in Na.s.sau Street. Ammon accepted a hundred dollars from Miller, listened to his account of the business and examined copies of the circulars. When he was handed one of the printed receipts he said they were "incriminating." Miller must try to get them back. He advised (as many another learned counsellor has done) incorporating the business, since by this means stock could be sold and exchanged for the incriminating receipts. He explained the mistakes of the "Dean crowd," but showed how he had been able to safeguard them in spite of the fact that they had foolishly insisted on holding the stock in their company themselves instead of making their customers the stockholders. Nevertheless "you do not see any of the Dean people in jail," boasted Ammon. From now on Miller and he were in frequent consultation, and Ammon took steps to incorporate, procuring for that purpose from Wells, Fargo & Co. a certificate of deposit for one hundred thousand dollars. Occasionally he would visit Floyd Street to see how things were going. Miller became a mere puppet; Ammon twitched the wire.

It was now well on in November, and the press of both Boston and New York was filled with scathing attacks upon the Syndicate. The reporters became so inquisitive as to be annoying to the peaceful Miller. "Send the reporters over to me!" directed Ammon.

The Post (of Boston) said the whole thing was a miserable swindle. Ammon, accompanied by Miller, carrying a satchel which contained fifty thousand dollars in greenbacks, went to Boston, visited the offices of the Post, and pitched into the editor.

"The business is all right; you must give us a fair deal!"

The pair also visited Watts, the chief of police.

"You keep your mouth shut," said Ammon to Miller. "I'll do all the talking." He showed Watts the bag of money, and demanded what he had meant by calling the enterprise a "green goods business." If the thing wasn't all right, did Watts suppose that he, Col. Robert A. Ammon, would be connected with it? The chief backed down, and explained that he had jokingly referred to the color of one of the receipts-which happened to be green.

In spite of Ammon's confidence, however, there was an uneasy feeling in the air, and it was decided to put an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Post offering to allow any customer who so desired to withdraw his deposit, without notice, upon the following Sat.u.r.day. This announcement did not have precisely the antic.i.p.ated effect, and Sat.u.r.day saw a large crowd of victims eager to withdraw their money from the Boston office of the Franklin Syndicate. Powers paid the "Pauls," of Boston, out of the bag brought on by Miller containing the deposits of the "Peters," of Brooklyn. Meantime, Ammon addressed the throng, incidentally blackguarding a Post reporter before the crowd, telling them that his paper was a "yellow paper, had never amounted to anything, and never would." Some timid souls took courage and redeposited their money. The run continued one day and cost Ammon and Miller about twenty-eight thousand dollars. Ammon took five thousand dollars cash as a fee out of the bag, and the pair returned to New York. But confidence had been temporarily restored.

The beginning of the end, however, was now in sight-at least for the keen vision of Bob Ammon. He advised stimulating deposits and laying hands on all the money possible before the crash came. Accordingly Miller sent a telegram (collect) to all depositors:

We have inside information of a big transaction, to begin Sat.u.r.day or Monday morning. Big profits. Remit at once so as to receive the profits.

WILLIAM F. MILLER,

Franklin Syndicate.

A thousand or so were returned, the depositors having refused to pay the charges. The rest of the customers in large measure responded. But the game was nearly up. There were scare-heads in the papers. Miller saw detectives on every corner, and, like a rat leaving a sinking ship, Schlessinger scuttled away for the last time with a bag of money on the evening of Tuesday, November 21st, 1899. The rest of the deposits were crammed into Miller's desk and left there over night.

The next morning Miller returned to Floyd Street and spent that day in the usual routine, and also on Thursday remained until about twelve o'clock noon, when he placed thirty thousand five hundred dollars in bills in a satchel and started for Ammon's office, where he found Schlessinger-likewise with a satchel.

"The jig's up," announced Schlessinger.

"Billy, I think you'll have to make a run for it," said Ammon. "The best thing for you is to go to Canada."

It still remained to secure the money, which Miller had deposited in the banks, in such a way that the customers could not get hold of it. Ammon explained how that could easily be done. The money should be all turned over to him, and none of the creditors would ever see it again. He did not deem it necessary to suggest that neither would Miller. Accordingly the two, the lawyer and the client, went to the office of Wells, Fargo & Co., Ammon obligingly carrying the satchel containing the thirty thousand five hundred dollars. Here Ammon deposited the contents to his own account, as well as the certificate of deposit for one hundred thousand dollars previously mentioned, and a check for ten thousand dollars, representing the balance of Miller's loot. In addition to this he received an order for forty thousand dollars United States Government bonds, which were on deposit with Wells, Fargo & Co., and later, through Miller's father, sixty-five thousand dollars in bonds of the New York Central Railroad and the United States Government. Thus Ammon secured from his dupe the sum of two hundred and forty-five thousand five hundred dollars, the actual market value of the securities bringing the amount up to two hundred and fifty thousand five hundred dollars, besides whatever sums he had been paid by Miller for legal services, which could not have been less than ten or fifteen thousand dollars. The character of the gentleman is well ill.u.s.trated by the fact that later when paying Mrs. Miller her miserable pittance of five dollars per week, he explained to her that "he was giving her that out of his own money, and that her husband owed him."

Ammon's deposit slips and a receipt signed by Mrs. Ammon.

There still remained, however, the chance of getting a few dollars more and Ammon advised Miller "to try to get Friday's receipts, which were the heaviest day's business." Acting on this suggestion, Miller returned to Floyd Street the next morning at about half past nine, finding a great crowd of people waiting outside. About one o'clock he started to go home, but discovering that he was being followed by a man whom he took to be a detective, he boarded a street car, dodged through a drug store and a Chinese laundry, finally made the elevated railroad, with his pursuer at his heels, and eventually reached the lawyer's office about two o'clock in the afternoon. Word was received almost immediately over the telephone that Miller had been indicted in Kings County for conspiracy to defraud, and Ammon stated that the one thing for Miller to do was to go away. Miller replied that he did not want to go unless he could take his wife and baby with him, but Ammon a.s.sured him that he would send them to Canada later in charge of his own wife. Under this promise Miller agreed to go, and Ammon procured a man named Enright to take Miller to Canada, saying that "he was an ex-detective and could get him out of the way." Ammon further promised to forward to Miller whatever money he might need to retain lawyers for him in Montreal. Thereupon Miller exchanged hats with some one in Ammon's office and started for Canada in the custody of the lawyer's representative.

How the wily colonel must have chuckled as poor Miller trotted down the stairs like a sheep leaving his fleece behind him. A golden fleece indeed! Did ever a lawyer have such a piece of luck? Here was a little fellow who had invented a brilliant scheme to get away with other people's money and had carried it through successfully-more than successfully, beyond the dreams of even the most avaricious criminal, and then, richer than Midas, had handed over the whole jolly fortune to another for the other's asking, without even taking a sc.r.a.p of paper to show for it. More than that, he had then voluntarily extinguished himself. Had Ammon not chuckled he would not have been Bob Ammon. The money was stolen, to be sure, but Ammon's skirts were clear. There was nothing to show that the two hundred and forty-five thousand dollars he had received was stolen money. There was only one man-a discredited felon, who could hint that the money was even "tainted," and he was safely over the border, in a foreign jurisdiction, not in the custody of the police, but of Ammon himself, to be kept there (as Mr. Robert C. Taylor so aptly phrased it in arguing Ammon's case on appeal) "on waiting orders. Ammon had Miller on a string, and as soon as Ammon (for his own sake) was compelled either to produce Miller or to run the risk of indictment, he pulled the string and brought Miller back into the jurisdiction."