Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1865-09-05
The Greatest SwindIe of AII.--
Frauds i'm fhe' Army Pay DE
partment..n H5i . 0fE .s!4il ,go.l '.


The embezzlement, fraud aritl forgery that
are discovered to have been carried on in
the Pay Department of the United States
Army will prove to be the, gigantic opera
ton of this swindlingr period. KetchuW,,
with his two millions, will sink out of sight
wfen all the facts Of this affair are made
public. "a' 10 ioGyj,9llc4 aL1 luba2lia gsu2G
: This grand piece of yillainy first comes
to light in the Richmond pay district, and
that it comes t. light at present, perhaps
results from quarrel Between the National
Banks here and those at Norfolk. The
rogues fellout.1it a. m... ......y, ... ie..i
How the swindlers operated is, not yet
certain; but it appears to have been by
means of the seven-thirty bonds. In one
statement it is alleged that seven7thirties
were drawn by the paymasters anterior to
the date at which their interest. began, and
that the Government allowed Interest from
the date of sale; that the officers paid the
troops in the bonds and pocketed the in
terest allowed above what was borne on the
face of each note. And the statement is
that the paymasters, being in collusion with
all the brokers and bankers .ih the Rich-l
mond district, paid gtbe soldiers inseven-
thirties and then, realized a large discount
for the exchange of the bonds for legal
tender notes. But these epatiletted fnan-
purposes to any such slow or inadequate
machinery as this. ...,r.
The forgeries spoken Of in the arrests
here point also to a larger operation. We
have heard throughout the war of the dis
crepancy between thenumbers of men who
appeared on the pay rolls and those who
appeared in the line of Battle. Perhaps
these forgeries willslet us further into the
history OF that discrepancy. 1t there were
thousands of bogus soldiers there would
also, be thousands of bogus discharges, for
which the.forger would get not five, ten or
| fifty dollars from poor devil OF aisoldier,
but tens ofi.thousands of dollars, drawn
from Government as the supposed pay of
whole regiments that never had any eXis-
tence. The forgeries are III chat direction.
The Pay Department of the Unitedftates
ArmysYas constituted, to agreat extent, for
Just such result as this. There are in it,
and through the war have been, hundreds
of men who went in purposely to takeBvery
chance to make money--men utterlytwith-
out patriotisnlj Ippnor or conscience, Never
was such an immense amount of money
disbursed so 1o6Sely, and if ever the full
history is known the records OF all other
thievery will be white to it. .rJust now the
proper authorities owe it to public senti-
ment to vigorOuslyexamine into theserOp-
eratiOns, and to punish1the swindlers to the
utmOstpossible exteut.G The miserably mis-
taken notion that all this Nillainy should
be hushed up and the Villains Stroud
cd out of regard for theoarmY should be
gottenIrid of at once. ANY failure on the
part. of the Government to act with the ut
most yigor on this case will have great
demorafizing tendency, and the pHblic will
inevitably confoundl all who ishieldl the
rogues with the rogaes- -themselyes.-N.Y 4,
Herald. aff,-,...o,,,I ,5- ..,,.a.,.,...,..,., ..,.,