The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-05-28


 "Check workers" said veteran Chi
 cago detective to a reporter of the h.
 ter-Ocean, "are the busiest of all the
 'grafters,' and the hardest to keep track of They are at it the whole year round and cause the police lot of bother be- cause they vary their methods so much. These fellows get up a new scheme eve " day. Some of them are really men of genius who could make a good living with their brains and their tongues in almost any other line if they cared to do so.
 "The most interesting, perhaps, of all this class are not really check workers at all allude to the men who make it their business to get genuine signatures to bona fide checks, unknown to the signers. They are. the modern develop ment of the now almost extinct class of sharpera who used to drive through the country getting responsible farmers to sign machinery contracts, lightning rod agreements, or anything, in fact, which might be torn in two and become pro- missory note which could be negotiated at bank. In spite of the fact that eve ry farmer nowadays takes a paper of some kind in. which these frauds are eX- posed, victims are always found to il- lustrate the 'grafters' axiom that "a new sucker is born every minute.'
 Not long since a new game was sprung with ingenuity enough in it to have been born of the devil. The chief actor in the little financial comedy drove up to the house of a prosperous farmer and represented himself to be a circuit riding minister of the gospel. He requested shelter for the night and was hospitably received. Just about re- tiring time a couple drove up and asked the farmer where a minister could be found to marry them, and, of course, the circuit rider got the job. At the con- clusion of the solemn words that made the supposed elopers man and wife, the farmer was delighted to sign his name, as witness, to an elaborate marriage certificate which the minister fished up from his little black grip. In the morn ing that signature appeared, at bank in the neighboring town, at the foot of a check for large amount and was cashed without question.
 "The certificate was printed on heavy cardboard, and, wherever names or dates were to be written in, the card board was cutaway with beveled edge and the writing was done on smooth paper pasted on the back of the certif1- cate and showing through the beveled holes. Between the two sheets of the pasteboard, however, a bank check had been inserted, so that it's signature line came right under the opening left for the witness, and. in consequence, the farmer was actually signing a check on bis bank when he good-naturedly wit messed the fake wedding.
 "Of a similar nature was more ela- borate operation recently sprung in Washington. A pretty and vivacious young lady appeared there one day and with a handsome, morocco bound and gold and diamond mounted album, slung in a specially made alligator car rying case, with gold-mounted shoul- der strap. She had the autograph ma mia, and wouldn't the dear senator just favor her with his name, there below his portrait In nine cases out of ten the dear senator would. The name was signed through an opening in the card, as in the marriage certificate, and in every case a canceled check was signed.
  for payment until the persuasive young lady had secured all that could be handled in safety, when they were all cashed the same day at the various banks, and the girl and her companion a notorious forger, who had been in hld- ing for some time, left for Europe. As the amounts were in no case tremen- dous, not much stir was made about the matter, but the aggregate sum was a fortune large enough, by judicious man. agement, to keep the couple in luxury all their lives.
 Extraordinary pains Is taken by for gers to secure the bona fide signatures of wealthy men. A successful plan in one case was to present petition relat- ing to a sewer in the big mans own ward, and a score of other names, given in good faith, were secured before the big man was approached. He was caught where there was no pen and ink handy and signed the petition with a hard, blunt pencil that was given him, unwittingly signing at the same time check, through the transfer paper un- derneath Over seven hundred dollars was secured on that trick.
 'As a rule, however, the signature is all that is wanted. If one of the good thing agents can secure real check written by one of their intended victinle it is an occasion for rejoicing. One suc- cessfuI check worker had a method that puzzled the experts for long time. The signatures on the checks he pre- scented were so apparently genuine that even the men on whom the swindles | were perpetrated could not swear they 1 were forgeries. except from the fact | that they could not remember ever haV- | ing signed such checks. It was at last discovered that the fellow first secured | a signature, had a zinc etching made | from it, took matrix of the zine en- grating, and into this matrix cast very hard rubber composition, which re- tained just enough of it's elasticity not to show any traces of embossing on the paper receiving the imprint from it. With the composition stamp be was able to produce duplicates of sigma ture that could not be told from the original
 "So many precautions have been thrown around checks by people who deal largely in them that it is now al most impossible to make, for instance, an eighty dollar check out of an eight doIIar ona Tin4sl and engraved pGpCr