Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World

by Clifton R. Wooldridge

THE PETTY DOLLAR SWINDLERS PUT OUT OF BUSINESS IN CHICAGO BY DETECTIVE CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE.

The cheap little grafter who takes dollars, dimes, nickels and pennies from the poor, while not exactly a great financier, is one of the smoothest propositions with which secret service men and federal inspectors are confronted. His main hold is on the public press, because he operates through the seemingly innocuous want advertisement.

The statements of some advertisers may be taken literally; some should be taken with caution, and some should not be taken at all. In the postoffice department at Washington, in the files of the assistant attorney general, one may study the methods of the black sheep of the advertising fold against whom fraud orders have been issued. A fraud order is an order directed to a postmaster forbidding him to deliver letters to a certain person or concern or to cash money orders for them.

If a man swindles his neighbor without using the mails the postoffice department will not interfere with him, although the police may, but if he attempts to make Uncle Sam a party to the swindle, the old gentleman lets loose on him a horde of postoffice inspectors, who not only put a stop to the business, but frequently put the swindler himself behind the bars. The department issues year in and year out an average of one fraud order a day, and an examination of the reports of the inspectors who have investigated these cases is apt to convince one that the long-accepted estimate that there is a sucker born every minute is much too low. The schemes most commonly employed are here set forth.