BUYING PASSPORTS WHOLESALE
The passports which von Wedell, and later on his successor Carl Ruroede, Sr., obtained, were used for the benefit of German officers whom the General Staff had ordered back to Berlin. American passports, then Mexican, Swiss, Norwegian and the passports of South American countries, were seized eagerly by various reservists bound for the front. Stories were told in New York of Germans and Austrians, who had been captured by the Russians, sent to Siberia as prisoners of war, escaping therefrom, and making their way by caravan through China, embarking on vessels bound for America, arriving in New York and thence shipping for neutral countries. Among them was an Austrian officer, an expert observer in aeroplane reconnaissance, who lost both his feet in Siberia, but who escaped to this country. He was ordered home because of his extreme value in reconnoitring. The British learned of him, however, and took him off a ship at Falmouth to spend the remainder of the war in a prison camp.
Captain von Papen used the passport bureau to obtain passports for spies whom he wished to send to England, France, Italy and Russia. Among these men were Kuepferle and von Breechow, both of whom were captured in England, having in their possession fraudulent passports. Kuepferle and von Breechow both confessed.
But so reckless was von Wedell’s and Ruroede’s work that the authorities soon discovered the practice. Two hangers-on at the Mills Hotel called upon the writer one day and told him of von Wedell’s practices, related how they had blackmailed him out of $50, gave his private telephone numbers and set forth his haunts. As a result of this and other information reaching the Department of Justice, Albert G. Adams, a clever agent, started out one day, got into the confidence of Ruroede and offered to get passports for him for $50 each. Meantime, von Wedell had gone on a trip to Cuba, apparently on passport matters, and Adams, posing as a pro-German, got into the inner ring of the passport-buyers. He was informed by Ruroede as to what was wanted.