EDUCATED CRIME.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 21, 20 September 1873, Page 13

EDUCATED CRIME.

A SINGTJLAB illustration of the amount ©f organization, skill, education, and capital which, now-a-days, can be enlisted in the service of profitable crime is given by the recent" forgery frauds on the Bank of England. The Bank of England takes the utmost precautions against fraud, requiring, an introduction from one of the directors before it will open a " discount account " even with a depositor. But there is a branch bank in Burlington Girdens, in the West End of London, for small local business, in which the regulations are not so strict, and to this bank the forgers went. One of the gang opened with the branch bank an ordinary deposit account, depositing a sufficient cash balance to make the thing look natural. And then for mouths he drew cheques and made deposits, like any other customer of the bank, always keeping his balance at a good figure. After a time he deposited some bills. The bills were perfectly good. Still he moved with great caution, and continued his transactions until he acquired a good reputation with the bank. At length the- moment having come, a great quantity of forged bills—the signatures, acceptances, and endorsements being all forged— were offered, and the bills were discounted without hesitation the gang receiving £100,000. The bills were drawn with the greatest ingenuity, due care being taken to imitate the kind of paper used by the firms whose names were signed, as well as the printed forms on the blanks. The paper was at three months, and, but for a singular oversight, the forgers might have gone off with their booty and got rid of it long before any suspicion attached to them. On two of the bills the acceptances were not dated, and on one of them something was wrong about a printed form. Inquiry was at once made, and the forgery discovered. The gang fled ; their plunder, invested in United States bonds, -was sent to this city, and has been seized. One of them has been arrested in England, one in Bavana, and one in New York • and it seems as if the bank oughfr now to get back as much of their money aa the lawyers, sheriffs, deputy-sheriffs, detectives, informers telegraph companies, and other lovers of justice may not need for themselves.—-* Nation.'