LONDON GOSSIP.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 94, 20 April 1904, Page 4

LONDON GOSSIP.

Tsfc (From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, March 11. VICTIMISING ANGLO-COLONIA. A particularly smart swindler is at present gathering quite a respectable harvest of coins in the Anglo-Colonial field. He has "done" several well-known firms by representing himself as being connected with various families of good position in both Australia and New Zealand, his knowledge of the family history 'of some of those he has chosen to claim kinship with being particularly intimate. In one instance he called at the office of a big Anglo-Australasian firm, anr having pitched a plausible tale to the effect that he had been robbed of all his money whilst travelling overland from the South of Europe, asked the firm to oblige him by cabling out to his people in Australia for a remittance, he being, as he said with a wry smile, unable to do so without leaving himself absolutely penniless. So Well did he tell his tale and bo intimate was his knowledge of the people in Australia he 1 , 3 '. . ... s.

named as the source whence he desired to draw the remittance, and of the firm's own Australian directors, that he quite put the heads of the firm off their guard. They_ not only consented to cable out as.fie desired, but, I understand, gave him a few pounds to go on with. Next morning they discovered, per cable, that they had been hoaxed, and on makinw iuquiries among banks," insurance cony panics and merchants in the Anglo-Col-triiial circle, they had the poor satisfaction of discovering that others bad been "had" quite as neatly as themselves. From the description given of this swindler he seems to be an old friend disguised slightly by the removal of his beard. If it is the individual I suspect he has been carrying on the game at intervals for year's under a variety of names, and numbers his victims by the score. He can certainly boast of having taken in some of the shrewdest business men in the circle he seems to patronise chiefly.