A LONG, PATIENT SEARCH,

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume XLVI, Issue 3262, 12 October 1928, Page 6

A LONG, PATIENT SEARCH,

The detective office checked up the activities of all known forgers and counterfeiters and slowly, painfully traced most of them and kept a close observation of their mode of living and movements. Yet their efforts were without the slightest definite success. Nearly three months ago Detectives Alchinf and Young were directed • to find the coiner or coiners, and since then they pursued a number of clues which ended in disheartening failure. The victims of the fraud were invariably unable to describe the man who had exchanged two shillings for a tram fare or some small purchase—the transaction was too small for notice. k The detectives were kept racing from suburb to suburb. Every morning, almost, coins would be passed, always in widely separated suburbs. Working together all day long, the two detectives would return to the detective office, at night to check up their notes and the information they had received, to search the records, and to puzzle their wits.

The detectives recently met with a little more success. A small thread of a clue it was. Yet they followed it with elation. It finally led them to suspect an old, inoffensive man. As far as they could learn, he was a retired man, living quietly on his means. Really, he appeared the last person in Sydney whom they could be justified in suspecting.

DISCOVERY OF COINER'S PLANT. The officers watched the man and soon were able to make an arrest. They followed the man from his home at Darlington to Alexandria, and found that wherever he had been he had left a trail of spurious coins .behind. Finally they closed with him in a hotel, met him face to face, and accosted him j confidently. They informed him of their identity. The old man admitted that he knew what their mission was, and submitted quietly to arrest. Then he handed them a handful of spurious florins. He had 20 left in his pockets.

The old man's residence was visited, i It was found that he had been a respected boarder at the house for some time, and his gentle, quiet demeanour \ had been noticed and commented upon favourably. His room was then search- ; ed, and a complete coining plant was discovered. There were eight cleverlyconstructed plaster of Paris moulds, and in one of them was a coin in process of completion. There was a ladle and a powerful gas jet, and metals and minerals, from which an excellent alloy for spurious florins could be made. Many coins, some complete and others incomplete, were found, and also a simple process by which the florins could be made to lose their suspiciously new appearance. Subsequently the detectives also arrested a youth, aged 19 years. The two men were charged with making and uttering counterfeit coins.