BLACKMAIL AT SEASIDE

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 286, 29 August 1931, Page 23

BLACKMAIL AT SEASIDE

Gangs Operating on a Large Scale

Seaside blackmail gangs have renewed their operations on a large scale at leading South Coast resorts, and during the last few days have extracted “hush money” from dozens of holiday-makers. Detectives who are specialists in this kind of work have been detailed to shadow the gangs in the hope that their victims will have the courage to come forward and give evidence. Most of the gangs employ smartlydressed women -decoys who lurk on the promenades and in the hotel lounges on the look-out for prosperous middleaged men, who make the most remunerative victims. They persuade the men'to drive them into the country or go for an evening walk along the cliffs. The blackmailers follow and sud-

denly pounce upon the couple with threats of violence and exposure. Sometimes the victim iS told that the decoy is a married woman; sometimes she is described as a fiancee or a sister who must be protected. “Any man who accepts the invitation of an unknown woman—however smartly dressed or respectable she may appear—is a fopl,” a detective who has had great experience of this type Of crime told me. “Often the men do nothing wrong; but they are afraid of the construction that mlght .be put upon their actions, and sd they pay. “If they are lucky they escape with one payment, but if the gangsters get to know a victim’s address he is pestered for years and eventually bled white,”