The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-10-01
POOR ROAD TO RICHES
Detective Bob PinkertOn Talks
About FOrgers.
EXPERTS MADE MILLIONS
NEARLY ALL OF THEM DIED
PAUPERS Or ARE IN JAIL.
New York PressA


evil - said Robert A. Pinkerton to a
reporter for the Sunday Press. Mr..
Pinkerton had been discussing the i'm
pelling motives of certain crimes and
moralizing upon some of the queer in
cidents that have come to his knOwl-
edge through a life long connection
with the great private detective agency
founded by Allan Pinkerton- Money
is a good thing in ITSELF he went on
You can work wonders with it. In
fact, you cannot work wonders without
it. 1t is nor money, but money. greed
the desire to obtain money quickly and
without Iabor-that is the source of
evil. 1t is this desire which makes the
bank burglar, the highwayman, the
train robber, the forger, and all the
long catalogue of fraud workers
1.-The StrangeSt part of it is he con-
tinued. that not one thief in a thous-
and gets any profit or any pleasure
out of the proceeds of his thievery- He
is either cheated in turn by his agents,
fences, middlemen and accomplceS, or
the law gets its clutch on him. In the
first instance he dare not protest too
loudly for fear of betrayal; in the sec
ond, he spends the proceeds of his
crimes in a vain endeavor to retain his
liberty.
'-One would think, quite naturally,
might serve to deter intelligent men
and women from crime for moneys
sake Yet they do not. The boldest,
the most successful and consequently
the most dangerous rogueS known to
the police of the world are those who
have been we'll brought up and well
educated. They have the intelligence
to plan and the knowledge of affairs
necessary to carry off a big coup. 1t
is not the ignorant thief who is TO be
-, s~c Trly toll Nrra11
that 1t is the man who knows as
much, if not more, than the laws
agent, who tries for big game and com
mits big crime.
And yet-this is trite, perhaps, but
strange neVertheless-the intelligent
thief nearly always is deficient in one
thing: He has the sense to plan, and
the nerve to accomplish, yet lacks the
skill necessary to a thorough conceal
ment of his trail. Sooner or later the
law gets him, and when II does his
intelligence counts against hint at
once stamps him a dangerous criminal
and insures him long term in prison.
Consider the big forgers, say, of the
last forty years, and let US see how
they bear me out. We will, 1 think.
find that most of them died in poverty
or in prison"
Mr.. Pinkerton consulted a memOran-
dunn book lying upon his desk He
thumbed the pages for a few moments,
then went on:
Career of E. S. Piper.
''Here Wen begin with E. S. Piper.
From 1855 to 1865 he was in the height
of his career. He obtained large sums
by forgery. His method was to obtain
the official letter heading of a banking
institution and some samples of the
cashiers handwriting. Then he would
forge a letter of Introduction to that
banks exchange in another city and
p
signature of the person thus introduced
and who might be expected to
present drafts that We're to be hon
ored upon presentation This letter ne
would send through the maIls. Then
he would call at the bank 10 which he
had sent his forged letter, produce an
other forged letter of introduction, and
without difficulty secure advances upon
fraudulent drafts He was a man of
good education, of splendid personal
appearance and of fine address. But he
left his trail in his method, and in
course of time he was run 20 earth.
He was sent to the Vermont state pris-
on under long sentence, and died
there.
James Buchanan Cross, known as
Colonel Cross, was a contemporary of
Piper, and was considered the most
expert fOrger of that day. His method
was for time almost identical with
that of Piper. He had sense enough
to change his style of work when the
chase grew warm vet lacked sense
enough to change it with every job
The scheme by which he obtained the
most money was one which required
patience and address. He would pick
out his bank and open q legitimate ac-
count, to the credit of which he would
deposit genuine checks and drafts He
made his account an active one. He
would check against IL laViShly, using
his own money TO obtain new lots of
genuine commercial paper, which were
at once turned in TO the credit of his
account When he felt that his deal
ings had inspired the necessary conf
dence he would exhaust his account
and then build IL up again with fraUdu-
lent deposits of forged checks and
drafts. drawing against these before
time had been allowed for. detection
and then decamping.
Colonel Cross had operated in near
ly every state in the union before the
war. He was twice taken, once in New
York and once in Pennsylvania, before
he fell into the hands of Allan Pinker-
ton.
Forged His Way Out of Prison.
He was probably the first man in
this country to forge his way out of
prison after having forged his way into
IT. And he did that not once. but twice.
While in the New York state prison
Cross, through a confederate, obtained
a blank pardon. This he filed in very
carefully counterfeiting the signatures
of the governor and secretary of state
from tracings sent in to him with the
pardon blank. Then he got the forged
pardon into the hands of his outside
confederate, who presented it to the
warden and secured Cross release In
almost the same way he got out of the
Pennsylvania prison, this time forging
the name of the secretary of war to a
federal pardon blank and filing it in
so that his release was ordered for
having furnished valuable aid and in
formation to the government.
Gross finally obtained a large sum
of money from the First National bank
of Chicago by forgery The case was
given into THE hands of our agency,
and the forger was recognized by his
style of work. After a long chase Allan
PinkertOn caught him and took him
back to Chicago, where he was tried,
convicted and sentenced TO fourteen
years in Joliet. He had been educated
for a physician. He perfected his
knowledge of medicine while serving
mis- time as an assistant in the prison
hospital Cross obtained hundreds OF
thousands of dollars by forgery but he
ran through IL all endeavoring to eS-
cape punishment for his crimes and
he was a poor man when released. He
went into the northwest and took I'D
the practice of medicine. He has never
been crooked since, His experiences
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