INTERNATIONAL FORGERS

Taranaki Daily News, 16 July 1929, Page 7

INTERNATIONAL FORGERS

RUSSIANS GAOLED AT BERLIN. MEN’S REMARKABLE CAREERS. Berlin, July 13. Two Russians, Vladimir Orloff and Pavlonovski, were to-day sentenced to four months’ imprisonment for forging international ' documents. The Court took into account the long period the men had spent in gaol awaiting trial. The accused men have had remarkable careers. They were employed by the. notorious Ch-ka (Russian Secret Police) after the downfall of the monarchy in Russia. However, they were found to be monarchist agents and were sentenced to death. They managed to' escape from Ru ‘a and came to Germany. . The men carried on violent antiBolshevik propaganda in Germany. They pleaded at their trial that any measures calculated to rid Russia of her present rulers were permissible. The Berlin police on March 2 arrested Orloff and Michael Sumarakoff. They were believed to be members of a dangerous gang of forgers of international documents. They were suspected of having forged letters accusing the American ° Senators, Messrs. W. E. Borah and G. W. Norris, of having received £20,000 from the Soviet’ Government for services to be rendered in obtaining the recognition of the Soviet by the United States., Detectives discovered two trunks full of documents, written in Russian, together with a number of false rubber and metal stamps. Sumarakoff was formerly an envoy of the Ukraine to Moscow. A message from Berlin on March 3 stated: Orloff was once a chief of the secret police in Russia in the time of the Tsar. He is now ft master spy who is seeking to avenge the murdered Emperor. °Also arrested was Gertrude Duemmler, a girl of bewitching beauty, who was Orloff’s secretary.

The police raided Orloff’s country house at Schandau. They found there a finely equipped chemical laboratory, and an arsenal of small arms. It is believed that many alleged Russian documents published in Europe were manufactured at Orloff’s factory at Schandau. The Berlin correspondent of the New York newspaper Knickerbocker tricked Sumarakoff into lending him some forged documents for a sufficient time to have them photographed. In that way the Berlin political police were able to arrest the gang.