“Gross finally returned and said, ‘Listen, the ship is going to be here in a day or two. I’ll have two trunks for you to take with you. You don’t have to do anything. We will put the trunks on board for you and I will show you what to do when you are on the boat. You forget about the trunks. When you are about three days out of Marseilles, go to the purser and say that you want to have the trunks shipped across France to Cherbourg in transit. Then when you get to Marseilles, there’ll be somebody waiting for you to take care of everything. That way they don’t have to open the trunks when they go through France.’”
The Schisoffs had a gay Christmas party at the home of the Greeks, and four days later they boarded their ship and sailed from Shanghai. They were met in Marseilles by one of Lepke’s henchmen, who handled the trans-shipment of the trunks. Then the Schisoffs left the ship at Marseilles and went by train to Cherbourg to catch the SS Majestic for New York.
Lepke’s man told them, “Don’t put those two trunks on your baggage declaration.”
Schisoff said, “How am I going to do it then?”
The hoodlum said, “You’ve got eight pieces of luggage of your own. You put down everything on the declaration that you bought but leave these two trunks out. They will be taken care of. Don’t you worry about that.”
Schisoff replied, “All right. Whatever you say is all right with me.”
On the night of February 4, 1936, the night before the Majestic was to dock in New York, Jake Lvovsky and Jack Katzenberg registered at the Luxor Hotel in New York. A short time after they went to their rooms they were joined by two Customs guards, John McAdams and Al Hoffman. It was agreed that Lvovsky would meet McAdams and Hoffman at the pier the next morning before the Majestic docked and they would turn over to him the stickers to be placed on the trunks brought in by the Schisoffs. The stickers were issued to the guards each morning and a new color was used each day. For that reason the delivery of the stickers had to be made at the pier.
Lvovsky arrived at the pier as the Majestic was docking. He stopped and chatted casually with McAdams, who slipped him the stickers. When the baggage was unloaded, the Schisoffs’ trunks were sent to the section marked with the initial “S.” Schisoff pointed out the two trunks to Lvovsky, who walked over casually and sat down on a trunk to smoke a cigarette, as though waiting for an inspector to check the luggage. Unobtrusively he took one of the stickers and pasted it to the trunk. He moved to the other trunk, sat down, and pasted a sticker on that trunk. And then he strolled away.
A Customs inspector examined the Schisoffs’ suitcases, but he noted the trunks already had the inspection stickers on them so he permitted them to be carted off. They were loaded into taxis by Lvovsky and Katzenberg and hustled off to an unknown destination.
The system worked like a charm. Each time that Lvovsky notified the two Customs guards of an arrival of a “world traveller” the guards would arrange to be on duty at those hours so that they could obtain stickers and pass them on to Lvovsky. Six times the confederates of the gang made the trip safely from Shanghai without any inspection of the heroin-loaded trunks.