THE GOLDEN HARVEST

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 28, 3 February 1930, Page 11

THE GOLDEN HARVEST

£200,000 NETTED

CONFIDENCE MEN'S RECORD

Confidence tricksters have established a great record which keeps thorn smiling- ■, . • According to their own estimate— they are always quite frank about their achievements— they netted last year at least £200,000 from their credulous victims in London and other parts of the country. . ' Most of these swindlers are now on their way to various parts of the world —the Biviern, Madrid, Florida, New Zealand—to lead a life of ease and luxury and to look for unsuspecting "pigeons" who will be plucked this year. A £40,000 COUP. The tigure of £200,000, huge though it is, does not err on the side of exaggeration, writes a special correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph." Never before have confidence tricksters reaped such a prolific golden harvest. There have been fewer men engaged in "telling the tale," thanks to Scotland Yard's ban on criminal aliens, but the members of the English gangs have brought off a larger number of really big coups, one of them —and this was not officially reported to the police —amounting to £40,000. In that particular instance the victim, as is tiequontly the case, nursed his woes privately rather than risk public ridicule.

The confidence trick has many variations, but its basic principle is the same. It succeeds because the trickstors cleverly lead the victim to believe that they are fools with an amiable desire to'make a large fortune for him for nothing. Men who have by hard work and thrift accumulated riches are the principal target. They cannot resist the temptation to make moro money. Hence they are profitable prey in the hands of confidence tricksters, who are really the only people in this world who can and do get money for nothing.

A PALTRY £12,000. The tricksters themselves toll amusing storica. Ono of their clients was very mean. They complained that they entertained him in a princely manner for a month, but he never bought them as much as a cigar. Ho was so mean that one rainy day he and his wife walked from Charing; Cross to Bond street rather than spend a penny on a bus ride. Tho man had a bank balance of nearly £100,000, but all the confidence men could extract from him waa a paltry £12,000. Women are rarely tricked. They are too careful with their money and too suspicious. I have heard of only one ■woman victim. She was brought over from Paris in a specially chartered aeroplane, and swindled of ~£BOOO.