CHANGING OFFICIAL STAMPS
Though in the early days of the war it had not been necessary for the applicant to give to the Federal authorities anything more than a general description of himself, the reports of German spies in the Allies’ countries became so insistent that the Government directed that the document, bearing the United States seal, must have the picture of the person to whom it was issued. The Germans, however, were not worried. It was a simple matter to give a general description of a man’s eyes, colour of hair, age and so forth, that would fit the man who was actually to use the document and then forward the picture of the applicant, who, getting the passport, would sell it. Even though the official stamp was placed on the picture, the Germans were not dismayed. Federal Agent Adams rushed into Ruroede’s office one day waving five passports which had been issued to him in a batch by Uncle Sam. Adams seemed proud of his work. Ruroede was delighted.
“I knew I could get these passports easily,” boasted Ruroede. “Why, if Lieutenant Hans von Wedell had kept on here, he never could have done this. He always was getting into a muddle.”
“But how can you use these passports with these pictures on them?” asked the agent, curiously.
“Oh, that’s easy,” answered Ruroede. “Come into the back room and I’ll show you.” The agent followed the German, who immediately soaked one of the passports with a damp cloth and with adhesive paste fastened a photograph of another man over the original upon which the imprint of the United States seal had been made.
“We wet the photograph,” said Ruroede, “and then we affix the picture of the man who is to use it. The new photograph also is dampened, but when it is fastened to the passport, there still remains a sort of vacuum in spots between the new picture and the old, because of ridges made by the seal. Well, turn the passport upside down, place it on a soft ground made with a silk handkerchief, and then, taking a paper cutter with a dull point, just trace the letters on the seal. The result is that the new photograph looks exactly as if it had been stamped by Uncle Sam. You can’t tell the difference.”
Through the work of Adams, four Germans, one of them an officer of the German reserves, were arrested on the Norwegian-America liner Bergensfjord, outward bound to Bergen, Norway. They had passports issued to them through Ruroede’s bureau under the American names of Howard Paul Wright, Herbert S. Wilson, Peter Hansen and Stanley F. Martin. Their real names were Arthur Sachse, Pelham Heights, N.Y., who was returning to Germany to become a lieutenant in the German Army; Walter Miller, August R. Meyer, and Herman Wegener, who had come to New York from Chile, on their way to the Fatherland. Ruroede pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in Atlanta, Ga., prison. The four Germans, also pleading guilty, protested they had taken the passports out of patriotism and were fined $200 each.
Von Wedell, himself, was a passenger on the steamer Bergensfjord, but when he was lined up with the other passengers, the Federal agents, who did not have a description of him, were deceived, and let the vessel proceed. He was taken off the ship by the British and placed in prison.
The arrest of Ruroede exposed the New York bureau, and made it necessary for the Germans to shift their base of operations; but it did not put an end to the fraudulent passport conspiracies, as will be shown. In the face of the exposures, so daring were the German agents that they continued to commit fraud upon the United States, and to put in danger every honest American travelling in Europe with an American passport.