“SPANISH PRISONER”

Taranaki Daily News, 26 September 1933, Page 10

“SPANISH PRISONER”

OLD CONFIDENCE TRICK.

LETTER REACHES NEW ZEALAND.

The old confidence trick known as the “Spanish prisoner” continues to inspire someone with hopes of obtaining easy money. A resident of Helensville this week received a copy of the fammar letter, which has turned up in all parts of the world in the course of very many years, and has forwarded it to the New Zealand Herald. The letter, indifferently spelled and punctuated, is as follows; — “Dear Sir,— Being imprisoned here by bankruptcy, I beseech you to help me to obtain a sum of 2,700,000 Swiss francs I have in Switzerland being necessary to come here to raise the seizure of my luggage paying to the register of the Court the expenses of my trial and recover my portmanteaux containing a secret pocket where I have hidden three checks payable to bearer for that sum. “As reward I will give up to you the third part, viz., 900,444 Swiss francs. I cannot receive your answer iij prison, but you can forward a cablegram to a person of my confidence who will delivers it me addressed as below. Awaiting your answer to instruct you all my secret, I only sign . . .” There follows what purports to.be an initial and then a postscript:—“First of all answer by cable, not by letter.” An address in Spain is at the foot of the letter.

There is no doubt that a cablegram sent as directed would evoke a further request, this time for a definite sum of money. The “prisoner” would doubtless find many obstacles placed in the way of his recovering the portmanteau, and still further requests for money would be made. The recipient of the letter states he believes the ruse is not well known in New Zealand, and possibly recipients of similar letters may be duped..