The weekly union record., 1865-03-18
Stupendous Frauds.

The New York correspondent Of the Flag.
under date of Feo. 18th, says:
II has been Known for some time lha. while
counties, cities and patriotic individuals have
been giving large bouDties TO obtain recruits,
and while district after district have celebrated
with speeches and cannon -hrlngs the filling up
Of its quota. yet few men actually went TO the
front, compared with the figures pat forward
10 each case. There was evidently great
lack somewhere. The authorities al the War
Department determined to discover it. As
New York is the centre of sharp practices.
detectives were sent here to observe the whole
l0iuS 0perGndi of enlistment and forwarding
of recruits. While our city and county COM
mittees have been pleading with the authorities
of Na>hngton for reduction OF our quota
and the application of hypothetical credits for
various reasons, Col Baker. of the detective
service, with several assistants, has been in the
city unravelng the whole mystery of large
credits aud few recruits. Ee has discovered
mighty system of fraud. having It's centre ID
New York and Brooklyn, and spreading
through several cities and States. Bounty
brokers are the chief actors subordinate mill
tary officials, careless or corrupt, dishonest
examining surgeons, bribed guards, and regu
larly trainedi bounty jumpers, are the instru
ments.
Col Baker has arrested ard sent 10 the Old
Capitol prison thirty men. mostly bounty
brokers, who have for eighteen months OF more
been engaged in defrauding the Government
by enlsting bounty jumpers and aiding them
in deserlng after their arrival in camp, and by
forging certificates of enlistment and obtaining
credit on these al the Provost Marshal Generals
Office. Several OF these maletacors have made
fortunes of from $4,000 TO $3.50, 600 through
these frauds since the beginning of the war.
A bnatman whom The Colonel has arrested has
S45 900 TO his credit at the Broadway Bank;
one John Fay, q hackman, has realized
S200,000; Sergeant Mulhern of the Twentieth
New York Battery, has been enabled to pur-
chase farm in New Jersey valued al $4,000.
Aided by corrupt surgeons, the brokers have
been suffered to enlist men who are physically
unfit for service; aud by forging guardians
papers, they enlisted boys of fifteen. 1t is
alleged that United States officers in the civil
service have winEed at the bounty brokers
proceedings. Col. Baker thinks that nearly,
if not quite two thirds of our recent credits are
based upon forged certificates of enlistment, or
on recruits who have deserted and are now
walking the streets; and therefore he inchnes
to the opinion that Provost Marshal General
Fry's demand for u 900 men is not unjust.
There is q man now confined in Castle
William as deSerter who confesses to having
been put through the formaliteS of enlistment
seven times by the bounty brokers. Another
man was enlisted twcbly seven times. These
trained bounty Jumpers had an understanding
with the brokers that by paying the Sergeant
in charge of recruits certain sum, they were
TO escape aud be free to enlist again and so
on, as long as any bounties were TO be had.
Of 1900 volunteers and substitutes enlisted or
claimed to have been enlisted in this city in
January, only about 400 went to the front
Col. Baker has also secured about l,000
fraudulent certificates of enlistment, all of
which have been placed to the credit of this
county in reducing the quota Of former calls.
He has discovered also, that these fraudulent
certificates were sold TO other county and town
communities, they purchasing them in good
faith, supposing the men TO be sent forward,
and their quota fairly iiled.