"MODERN FAGIN"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22949, 29 January 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

"MODERN FAGIN"

CRIMINALS FINANCED FATAL THUMB-PRINT FOUND GREAT HAUL OF STAMPS "This man is rightly regarded as a modern Fngin. He has financed criminals, and has been the medium through which stolen property has been disposed." Detective-Inspector Greeno, at the Old Bailey, London, applied this description to Samuel Cohen, aged 33, warehouseman, who, with Henry Fiertag, aged 30, was convicted of receiving 30,406 postage stamps, valued at £472.

It wa,s alleged by tho prosecution that tho stamps were part of a haul, valued at £6BOO, stolen from post offices in all parts of England. Mr. G. G. Raphael, prosecuting, related that Cohen was seen in a car in which Fiertag was a passenger, Fiertag saw the police, and a chase ensued.

When tho gong of the police-car sounded, Cohen's car accelerated. It was, however, jammed between two police cars and stopped. Cohen, when told his house would be searched, replied, "You don't think I would be fool enough to keep there." Stamps in Case The police later recovered an attachecase containing a large quantity of stamps. In the case was a cigarette tin bearing Cohen's thumb-print. This print is said to have sealed his doom. In evidence, Cohen declared ho obtained some of the stamps from a man who came to his shop. Fiertag stated ho bought Silver Jubilee and King Edward stamps as a speculation. Summing-up, the Recorder, Mr. Gerald Dodson, drew the jury's attention to the fact that among the stamps found in the attache-case were national health insurance stamps, unemployment stamps, stamp booklets, and postage rolls The jury were more than an hour and a-half considering their verdict. Afterwards, Detective - Inspector Greeno related that Cohen, who was living with his wife at Maid,a Vale, had no convictions.

In 1929, the officer went on, the man took a shop at Edgware Road, Paddington, and carried on business as a tobacconist and supplier of toilet requisites. In 1933 he moved to othefr premises in the same road. Bankruptcy proceedings instituted against him stood adjourned. "Active Criminals" The officer went on to allege that Cohen had been disposing of other stolen property, and the Recorder asked: "Not only stamps?" "All sorts of property," replied Inspector Greno, adding that Cohen had been receiving stolen goods for the last eight years. He had been charged before. "He is a constant associate of most active criminals., some of whom have been mentioned in this particular case," Inspector Grceno declared. Fiertag, the officer went 011, was a single man with no convictions. He was a Polish citizen, born at Warsaw, and arrived in England in 1911. He bad not been naturalised. The police believed him to be the dupe of Cohen, who had found customers for stamps and other stolen property, and had stored the goods. Sentencing Cohen to two years' imprisonment, the Recorder declared he had not been sure whether or not he ought to be sentenced to penal servitude.

Of Fiertag, whom he sentenced to nine months' imprisonment, the Recorder observed it was probably true that he was a subordinate, used by Cohen for his own purposes.