CARDSHARPERS’ VICTIMS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22826, 10 March 1936, Page 16

CARDSHARPERS’ VICTIMS

“FOOLS AND THEIR MONEY” WEALTHY PEOPLE DUPED. One of the oldest and most profitable rackets conducted in Britain concerns “ easy money ” collected by men and women who have misspent a lifetime on cards,' writes Mr Cecil Bishop, late of New Scotland Yard. Until quite a short time ago there existed a private house, beautifully furnished and staffed by men servants who knew their jobs, not half a mile from Hyde Park Corner, London. It was owned by a charming, white-haired woman of about 05, whose pretty daughter had married, a Frenchman, who had apparently made a pile. Their friends were mostly French and Italian, with a sprinkling of British sportsmen and racing enthusiasts. When I saw a friend coming down the steps of that house, and handing a very pretty girl into his sports car, I thought it time to take a hand. Next morning I went round and interviewed him at 10 o’clock over a belated breakfast in bed. “ Don’t think I am casting any aspersions,” I told him, “ but do you know exactly who your new friends are?” “Of course,” he replied. “ Jolliest crowd I have ever struck in years.” “Ever play cards?” I asked. He shook his head. “No. They have never even suggested it, though I know they play among themselves.” I gave him a warning and, like most prophets, got snubbed for my pains. It was all the more amusing to find about three months later that he had gone to the Mediterranean on a yacht hired by the Frenchman, and had paid out cheques to the tune of £6000! Some people prefer to buy their own experience, which is quite a sound idea if you are prepared to pay handsomely for it. There was one crook, well known in the London and Continental underworld, who admitted freely to me that ho made anvthing from £6OOO to £7OOO a year in fleecing “mugs.” He helped me time and again, giving me hints as to how and where I could find various criminals who had to be “pulled in,” and about his own affairs he was quite expansive. Moreover, he would never take any money for helping me. Six feet of dark good looks, with an attractive smile and well tailored, lie looked an athlete and was certainly a dean liver. He ran a bachelor establishment just off Oxford street, a threebedrooined flat nicely furnished and in charge of a valet and his wife. I happen to know that he held at least one or two card parties a week, working with three girls who frequented night clubs to get° hold of the right sort of rich voungster “ on the bust. The girls took a percentage of his profits and as a result were always dressed in the very latest fashion. Moreover, the whole affair was so cleverly stage-managed that men who had “ lost a packet” night after night returned with their friends to try to recoup themselves, having not the least suspicion that the play was “rigged.” There are many places, known to those with inside information, to which night after night hilarious parties of wealthy men and girls are lured. There is an excellent dinner up-river, swimming,

maybe a diving competition, and at about midnight tbe real business commences.

Dancing palls after a little, and someone suggests a game of poker. So the sheep are slaughtered, not too brutally at first for fear that they will never return, but artistically, so that over four or five weeks they win, lose, win, and then go over the high jump to tbe tune of thousands. The business lias been brought to such a pitch of perfection that only one man in three or four suspects anything, and he has got no shadow of legal proof. Further, very few youngsters will face publicity in a police court, and the racketeers rely on that fact. In one way gambling is certainly the most profitable and easy racket in Britain, since it is comparatively safe. No one can prevent a husband and wife renting a riverside bungalow and asking their friends down for the week-end. It is only when the police receive definite complaints that they can act.