Soon afterwards Shep was transferred to Auburn Prison to serve out his maximum sentence of five years.
Bold Counterfeiters in Auburn Prison
A few years ago the authorities of Auburn Prison were startled by the discovery that two of their convicts were engaged in the work of counterfeiting, which is a crime against the United States Government.
The two prisoners who were caught red-handed were Louis Julien and Adelbert Chapin. They are good mechanics and know how to handle tools. The curse of our prison system is that those who are sentenced to a term for hard labor have only child’s play for work, hence it is that many convicts find that time often hangs heavily on their hands.
Julien and Chapin, the Auburn counterfeiters, were indicted by the United States Grand Jury at Syracuse, in June, 1904, but were left to fill out their unexpired sentence before being put on trial for the crime of counterfeiting.
On June 14th, 1905, Julien and Chapin, after they had finished their imprisonment in Auburn, were placed on trial in the United States District Court for the crime of counterfeiting while in prison. As both were caught “red-handed,” or as they say “dead to rights,” and with the goods on them, they, on advice of counsel, pleaded guilty and were sentenced, Chapin to two years in Clinton Prison, and Julien to one year in the same place.
It may be of interest to know that these convicts worked in the same shop in Auburn. Their benches joined each other. In their idle moments they conceived the idea of coining money. It was not difficult to carry out this plan, even under the eyes of the prison guards. They succeeded in making a mould for silver dollars and one for nickels; one of the two men was engaged in work that required the use of molten metal. At the proper time Chapin had the moulds all ready and Julien at intervals would carry over the metal in ladles and fill the moulds, until they had made several hundred dollars worth of money, the guard supposing all the time that they were doing their regular prison work. The counterfeit money is said to have been well made and before long much of it placed in circulation.
Two female friends of the convicts came at intervals to visit them during each month and carried away pockets full of the spurious coin and exchanged the same for commodities, which they sent to Julien and Chapin. When one of the women was arrested for passing bad money she confessed everything and then a watch was put upon the men in prison, who were afterwards caught “red-handed.” The astonishing thing is not how they made counterfeit money, before the eyes of the keepers and guards, but how they were able to carry pockets full of the “stuff” to the women in the waiting room.
This is not the first time, however, that counterfeit money was made in a prison. A few years ago a full set of dies, moulds, etc., were discovered accidentally by secret service officers of the Government in the Eastern Prison of Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia.
This was one of the biggest finds ever discovered in a prison and it made a sensation at the time.