The morning news., 1897-11-30
BEwARE OF TORN FIvERs.
Boston People Have just Had n
Clever Trick Played Upon Them.
From the New York world.


From the New York World.
Boston, Nov 2S.-Swindlers have been
flooding this city with a SCHOLAR bill that
curiously enough, while not a counterfeit.
is absolutely worthless, and it is not q
confederate te note at that. Il is made from
pieces clipped from fourteen $5-dollar bills
and is SO cleverly put together that the de-
cepton was not discovered until il had
puzzled the brain of a bank-note expert
The scheme was studied out, and this is
how the work was done:
The first bill would be clipped half an
inch-one of the new $5-dollar bills is
about seven inches long, leaving it with
out its white margin at the right end and
part of the scroll border. This dscrep-
ancy would not be noticed by the average
person, as many new bills are not cut
squarely when they come from the treas
ury.
The second bill is cut an inch from the
end. In place of this strip, the half inch
taken fromethe first bill is pasted to the
end of the second being held by a piece
of tough tissue paper, such as is cotnmcn-
ly used in patching bills that have been
torn. Then the bill is crumoled to give
color to the opinion, if question should
arise, that it was accidentally torn and
had been patched.
The third bill Is cut an inch and half
from the end and to this bill Is pasted
the inch that was cut from the second
bill. This makes the third bill, like the
other two just half an inch short of STAN
dard measure.
The fourth bill is cut two inches from
the end and the piece cut from the third
bill is pasted on to 1t. Thus the cutting
is carried on up to the seventh bill when
the division comes about in the middle Of
the bill, carving the beautiful female fig
ure in twain. Then the piece cut off in
each of the succeeding bills is longer than
the one that remains, until at the last cut
ting the left hand edge of the bill is cut
off, and to it is pasted, in the same man.
ner as in the preceding cases, the piece
cut off the preceding bill.
When the pasting is done a fifteenth bill
remains in the hand of the workman with
it's left border clipped off and nothing to
paste on 1t. 1t is the same sort of bill
that the first one was, only the other end
is missing.
1t was the discrepancy in the number
ing of the clipped bills that first brought
the operations of the clippers to the at
tention of the police last week. One of
the clipped bills came into the hands of
Paying Teller Smith, of the Shoe and
Leather Bank. He noticed that the num-
bers did not correspond on the ends of the
bills. He thought about it sometime, and
sue.
Finally another came that was patched,
and had misfit numbers. Then the paying
teller felt assured that the misflts were not
the result of carelessness In mending torn
bills, and he notified the bank squad of
the police department.
The weak spot in the piecing system Is
that the gap of half an inch on thirteen of
the bills breaks the continuity of the de-
n a degree nj ayq
ination shows letters or figures to be miss
ing. The tissue helps cover up the def
cheney but In the bills that are cut across
the middle the gap is quite pronounced,
owing to the pictorial nature of the de-
sign and the grouping of the figures
The bills caught were traced to shop
keepers, who had not suspected that they
had been defrauded. Other banks have now
reported the present of the pieced bills,
but the police have caught no one and
think the rascals have gone to New York
city