AN ARTFUL SWINDLER.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 630, 19 February 1879, Page 2

AN ARTFUL SWINDLER.

A unique and. thorough rascal has lately been on trial in a Brussels Court. His name is Eugene T'Kindt Keodebecke,' a young man who a few, years ago started in life aa a clerk in the Bank of Belgium. The orime he is charged with is having embezzled or stolen no less than 4,600,000 dollars. He had not been long in the bank before hej found a weak spot in its system. Whensecurities were deposited there, no accurate note was taken so as to enable them in each case to be exactly indentified with the names of owners. It is related in the London Idegraph thuttfiia young man, with a salary of 800 dollars a year, had sole charge of these secutitie?, amounting m value to many million pounds sterling. When he wanted money he merely took scrip or any valuable security deposited in the bank. When a depositor asked for delivery of the scrip, he blandly handed him scrip similar in kind and amount than had been deposited by somebody else. Ae nobody took note of the number of their shares, and "as the bank kept no record of anything but their amounts, nobody knew on withdrawing his. /property ..that what he got was identical with what he had lodged. One day the bank was startled by an eminent finßnnier, who complained that 1358 shares of railroad stock belonging to him, the numbers of which he had noted, had, without hi«i knowledge, been taken from the bank and deposited in another establishment, of which he was a director. But the young clerk managed to recover the shares and return them to the financier as if nothing had been wrong 'in ; the transaction. So well did he defend himself before the directors,, and so artfully dwell on the record of the bank, that instead of having his accounts examined he was accorded a vote of thanks. But he did not deem it wise to remain in the bank, and took flight, intending to come to New York, At Liverpool! he was captured with 1,600,000 dols. bf other people's money in his carpet bag. It never occurred to his|worthy chief, remarks the Telegraph, as odd that a clerk" with 800 dols. a year could live like a lord and enjoy life with the prodigality of a prince ; that he could have a town house, and a rural villa, a picture gallery, a box at the opera, a racing stable, and all sorts of expensive luxuries. Belgium is a cheap place to live in, and his ohief seems . to : have thought his clerk had a genin* for thrift, and could make the income of a beggar go as far as the revenue of a king, . .