FORTUNES OF THE CONFIDENCE MEN

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 138, 7 December 1935, Page 27

FORTUNES OF THE CONFIDENCE MEN

London is not the only place in the world where . visitors fall victims to the confidence trickster, says the "Sunday Graphic and Sunday News."

In the United States, for instance, gullible citizens are being swindled to the extent of £8,000,000 each year.

Canadian detectives tell the story of a wealthy English business man who was swindled of £140,000 by one set of confidence men in the country, and then allowed himself to lose another £30,000 at the hands of another gang.

Although detectives tracked some of the swindlers, the victim made no charge because he feared letting the world know of his gullibility. The biggest confidence swindle on record was that worked by "Scarface" Spencer, an Italian, who was reputed to have swindled an English family of £150,000 while they were spending a holiday in Italy. Spencer went to prison—but the money was never found. An Australian named Mack is—or was, for it is not known whether he is still alive —the leader of one of the greatest confidence gangs in the world. English visitors to all parts of the globe had been warned about him, but the swindles went on with unceasing regularity.

"Australian Mack" must, so detectives state, have piled up a huge fortune. He had been reported dead, but it is thought he may be living in retirement in comfortable ease on his victims' money. Many • Britishers have cause to remember him. Another big haul was the £30,000 which Dick "Buttermilk" Davis took from a British drug-store owner in Honolulu in 1927. Davis died in Los Angeles last year. A police lieutenant in Los Angeles is said to have fallen a victim to Stew Donnley, "the best-dressed man in Indianapolis." Donnley is awaiting trial on the lieutenant's charge that he swindled him o£ £4400. According to the Chicago police, one of the oldest men in the confidence racket is John J. Van Camp, known as "Peaches." He is seventy-five years old, and the police say he has been working the confidence trick for forty years. Three men are leaders of the "ring" which operates the confidence trick in the "divorce city" of Reno. The ring is said to have had seventy victims in three years and obtained more than £400,000.