THE SKETCHER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9736, 31 December 1909, Page 1

THE SKETCHER.

READING FOR EVERYBODY.

RUSSIAN RAILWAY THIEVES

A Owl* with Huatoads of tfemtors *&& Elaborate Organisation. (Warsaw Correspondent Chicago , ; "Tribune.") Now awaiting their trial in Moscow prisons are tho two leaders and one hundred and fifty niembefs of the biggest band of railway thieves Europe 'has ever seen. They worked' chiefly in the south of Russia, and had no less than four hundred accomplices, of. whoiOt the larger half wertt^l^chressißd, plausible women. Xhe^sain Was, .not 1 to rob passengers;' but freight trains and luggage vans, and so successful „ were they that since the foundation ■^Df the gang, four years ago; they have been spiriting away goods to the manual value of over three millions of ■'■■3dPbM»? ;: .-' ' ■ ••■•'.. v'-B^Were not for the letter one of them *wrote to a newspaper, and the policeman, Dotblenko, who watched tlie writer oi the letter until he" caught him making up imitation consignments, ttey' might have been going on now. Several policemen were in their pay, but Dotolenkp refused to be bribed, »nd, by his honesty and perseverance, did much; to run the thieves to earth. Their impudence and coolness were the Chief reasons for the success they so 'Tneir organisation was well managed. It coasted of ihe two leaders—Soko:£»w and pietrenko, who, being employTed as track* engineers, knew the ins and outs of the railroad business. Under their guidance the band organised a number of departments, of which the Qhief was the intelligence department, Irhiph informed them when and where goods of value, were being sent. . The chief workers here were ,_ well-dressed •women, ..Wjhq used- to go into the /big - lhppi and warehouses, and, under pre-,text-of hating eome trifles they had bought there sent >ell packed, would ask Questions which led to their getting. all the , information they wanted. 3CnSp women worked chiefly in St Petersburg, Warsaw, . Moscow " and ! :Q(Uki»V ; When they heard that some valuable goods were just going' to be Bent from Odessa to the Caucasus, for instance, they would telegraph to the nearest "agent" at Tiflis, who, ifneoessary, would ride to the station on a motocycl© in order to get the things in time, y^ry- often the same goods were sent -back 4o Odessa* where the band had, large warehouses, under the name of ; firm. So quickly were the goods stolen and sent to the various warehouses in all the big cities that even jjuch things as fancy goods, which ttijfci and g°* out of fashion iraiokly; iwn>' sold, as their books snow, W : a<i^<^^prioes as > were originally, asked by the makers. . :'.*. •' . node, wTiich was changed' twice a year, und when the goods were found in the •.Petersburg warehouses invoices and ■ 7>Ufi;<if lading; exactly imitating the J jegnlaiien -forms issued by the railways were found. Another important 1 branch was the so-called " railway de--partment," which, needless to say, included shipp« IS_clerks1 S_ clerks at *, he ? hief J al r way station. The despatch of goods is > very slow in Russia. Before all the formalities are over and a freight train is at liberty to take the stuff several days, and even weeks, must elapse. '. The goods, packed and labelled, are ■ placed in railway warehouses, to which i the shipping clerks have entrance. •tThey worked as follows: — \ A r wholesale dealer sent a crate or two of valuable goods from St Peters- - btirg to Moscow. The spies at St - Petersburg gave notice of this to the <ftarid*s chief office, which was at Rosi tqff-on-Don,; giving, as near as possible, the date of despatch. Then the Ros-tpff-on-Don thieves wired oh the information to the stations at Petersburg and Moscow in cipher, addressing it to •"fie clerk who happened to be in their Berried. He looked out for these particular crates, an easy task, as he knew ! vie name of ! the sender and the day they .would come, and made put bills ;df lading, whioh he gave to the firm's representative. The crates went into . the storehouse to await the time of departure. • Then the expedition clerk made out another invoice like the one he had ' given to the merchant, and sent it to • the 'band's agent at Moscow, making it in the name of a station a few nfiles „ from- Moscow on the Petersburg side. In all other respects the paper was identical with the other. Then, with a . couple more accomplices, he went to the station warehouse, had the crates exactly copied, put stones or dirt into the sham ones, which were addressed , to Moscow itself, while the real ones were addressed to the little station before Moscow. By this means the thieves were enabled to claim their crates before the faked ones reached the station at Moscow. If necessary the accomplices there would be advised by wire to make difficulties about for- . warding the sham crates for a day or two. WHEN COMPLAINT WAS BAISED. Of course, when the man at Moscow found that he had got stones instead of the goods he had ordered, he wont to the station and demanded compensation, but as the bills were all in order and the numbers tallied, he did not get it. For ye^-rs complaints were made about this, and last spring all the papers were full of indignant letters from merchants \ who had been robbed. One openly accused the shipping clerks of robbery. " This epistle was answered shortly in the same paper by a clerk from Wiino, who wrote thus :— "Dear Mr Editor,— Your reader, X, accuses us shipping clerks of having a hand in the robberies that" go on in the various railways. Of course we steal. x I not only admit but am proud of it. And what is more, we shall go on stealjag until our chiefs grow honest and we are paid a living wage for our hard work. As to X., if he likes to know, 1^ had a hand in getting his last consignment turned into stones. ' I will tell him how I did it, if he wants to know. Yours trulv, "A SHIPPING CLERK AT WILNO." Some people thought this a joke, but It turned out afterwards that it was true, and, thanks to this imprudent piece of "cheek," the police were able to find out who sent it, and thus discover some of the band, though two hundred and fifty more are still at liberty. OTHBB METHODS EMPLOYED. When there was not time to make new crates the goods were simply taken out of those to be sent, which were then filled with stones, or sometimes, only paper. This method had one great

disadvantage; and that was that the crates often bore marks of having been "opened. When the goorls reached the various thieves' repositories "a new consignment" was advertised in the, local papers, and they were sold almost at once. The agents in charge of these were experienced warehousemen and vendors, and large numbers of office-books, supposed fc» contain accounts of transactions with various big firms, were 'found by the police. These were shown to customers, to prove that the goods came from reliable houses*: Sokolow and Pietrenko, the original organisers- of the. band travelled about to the ,varie«s* depots and stations and kept %' faithful account of all the transactions. • As they inspected the railways for the Government nobody was ■surprised to see tJiem at stations, talking with railway clerks. .As time went on the band grew rich and motor cars were bought to allow the various accomplices to get about quicker. The strongest feature of this organisation was the department of spies, some 250 in number, who were familiar with every large shipping bouse in Southern Russia, and so well organised; that not one large consignment left Moscow for the Caucasus but they knew of and reported it. Not only did they frequent business houses ; but they did a great deal of their work in restaurants, where they talked to merchants' clerks, invitee! thein to supper and unloosed their tongues '^^ talk about their employers' business. v ' ' A STRANGE STOHY. One strange story is told, of one of the women spies. She had scraped acquaintance with a young manager of a forwarding house in 1 Moscow, and used to meet him at cafes, restaurants and places of amusement. One day he went to a public telephone, and as he was about tb be connected a voice said: "Is that the police station?" "Yes," answered the youth, half in fun. To his surprise the answer was taken seriously, and the voice at the other end of the wire gave orders that the police should search a certain flat in the next street. The name and address given were those of the lady the youth had been friendly with. Little guessing that she was of the thieves' band, he immediately went to tell her what he had heard and, think-* ing that she had been dabbling in politics, advised her to burn all compro-f mising papers before the police discovered their mistake and came to search. When he called again later in the day he found the bird had flown, warned by him.- The police Fad been suspicious of her, and ne had helped her to rob his own firm and get off soot free. , ■' # Another case occurred m which a man bought his own stolen goods. A large consignment of laces had been ordered by a Tiflis firm and. stolen. The band sent the things back to their Moscow repositories. The Moscow merchant, on hearing that his first e 9O!isjgp,raeni bjJeiv stolen, 6nß wanting to send some more to the Tiflik customer, could not find any in his own warehouse. Somebody sugeested he should go to a new firm in the town, which had often a large 'choice. He did so, and found just what he wanted, paid cash for it and sent it off to Tiflis. It was not until the capture of the gang that he found out from the false invoices found in the repository, that he had paid for his own stolen goods. ■

So far very few of the stocks of papers found in the band's repositories and at Rostoff-on-Don, have been examined, but those already gone over prove that' all of the four hundred members profited according to their activity* The band was formed toward the end of 1905, and eopn numbered over two hundred members, scattered over Southern Russian railway lines. Sokolow and Pietrenko seem to have bfbn its life and eoul from the beginning, and, naturally, made most but of the business. Their accounts show that they have robbed the railways of ho less than £2,800,000 worth of goods.