I heard of a medium who employed a quiet couple for the express purpose of attending funerals, mixing with the mourners, and gathering information which was eventually turned into gold, and what is known as a “sure-fire” method is to dress some little woman demurely and place her in the reception room where she greets the visitors, telling them her troubles and naturally receiving their confidences in return.
I have even known of two cases in which these human wolves, apparently out of the kindness of their hearts, sent girls to a young ladies’ seminary where they were able to wheedle from their roommates secrets which caused the loss of several fortunes.
One of the biggest scoops and one that is talked of in hushed tones even among the fraud fraternity is that of an old-time circus grafter who, having been cleaned out in Wall Street, was at his wits’ ends to make a living. One evening, tired and weary from a day’s unsuccessful efforts to find honest employment, he overheard his two daughters discussing a bit of scandal they had listened to in the hairdressing parlor where they were employed and which compromised a prominent society woman’s name. The old man pricked up his ears, recognized the possibilities, and a very short time after invested what little capital he had and all he could borrow in a beauty parlor and with the information it furnished him through the aid of his wife and daughters he was able to set himself up as a medium, the venture yielding handsomely the first year.
A most novel method of obtaining information was devised by a man who decided after listening to the conversation in a Turkish bath to open one himself. Most of his attendants were accomplices and while the patrons were enjoying the bath their clothes were searched, letters opened and signatures traced. The end of the first year found him enjoying a country home in an aristocratic neighborhood.
During one of my engagements in Berlin, Germany, I made the acquaintance of the foreman of a safe factory who told me that he made a duplicate key[117] for every safe which passed through his hands and that he sold these keys to mediums but with the express understanding that there should be nothing stolen. The mediums assured him that all they wanted was an opportunity to read the mail and private papers which the safes contained.
I have known of a number of cases in which the medium used a drug addict to secure information giving the poor tortured creature his necessary drug only in return for facts he wanted, knowing that when the addict was suffering for the drug’s stimulus he would stop at nothing to secure it.
In small towns “Bible sellers” have sometimes been employed who were able to get exact dates, names, and birth places which were eventually used in some form. Men employed by mediums to gather information are often disguised as agents. One in particular I know of who goes from house to house trying to sell typewriters and washing machines on the installment plan. Even if he does not make a sale he can at least engage the lady of the house in conversation, drawing on her sympathy by telling of the trials and tribulations of a canvasser and a pitiful tale of how he was driven to such work and in return usually receiving the particulars of some similar case among her friends or relatives. Information which is carefully saved for use in the future.
It has been necessary for the United States Government to assign special men to break up a band of fake census enumerators, which, going from neighborhood to neighborhood, secures complete family histories which are later sold to mediums for large sums of money.
One of the most interesting cases I have heard of lately is that of a young man who was greatly in debt and sought the advice of a medium. The medium offered to pay his debts if he in return would take a position which the medium would secure for him in the Bureau of Records and in addition to his work furnish the medium with copies of certain documents. Fear of his debts becoming known to his parents forced him to accept the offer and the medium got the desired data but before an improper use could be made of it the young man’s conscience led him to make a clean breast of the whole affair to the police and a gigantic fraud was “nipped in the bud.”
The most dastardly and unscrupulous methods that I ever heard of, methods almost beyond belief, were those used by a medium who made arrangements with a ring of “white slavers” by which he paid them a certain specified sum for any information which the “girls” in their “houses” were able to secure. In addition he also established a number of places where, under the direction of a woman, the girls drew out many secrets which would never have been told under any other circumstances.