The Savannah morning news., 1902-04-16
The Willy WAYS OF LovETT.
sHREwD swINDLER WHO swIND-
LED IN MANY STATES.

The Plan of SvindIinR which He
Adopted and Successfully Carried
on In Georgia--Was Run Down by
Postoffice Inspector Peer-sOme OF
the Schemes He Worked-His In
genuitS in Getting Barrel o.
whisky From a Railroad without
Paying Freight His Greed"
Warren P. Lovett, who the Morning
sentenced by Judge Speer, in the
United States District Court at Au-
ygusta, to serve eighteen months in the
Atlanta penitentiary, is one of the most
accomplished criminals, in his partic-
ular line. who has ever done the state
erations within its borders.
The crime for which he was tried
at Augusta was the use of the United
States mails in pursuance of scheme
to defraud. He had successfully OPP
Grated this scheme for a number of
years and merchants in every part of
the country, including several in Sa-
vannah, had been defrauded.
In the hight of his fame and success
Lovett was smooth and willy individ-
ual. He had formerly been a CONNER
cial traveller, representing at various
times, it is said, some of the most i'm
portant firms in the country. He made
his headquarters in Sandersville. but
did not at all limit his operations by
the narrow confines of that place. He
wrote his letters and ordered his goods
from wherever his fancy dictated.
+ In itself the scheme was simple
enough, and nothing but the mans
close familiarity with business meth
DDS, his more than ordinarily good edu-
cation, and his absolutely unadulter-
ated nerve served to crown it with the
almost invariable success that it
achieved.
His Principal Scheme.
His plan was this. He would order
from some printing establishment a
quantity of its finest stationery, litho-
graphed. usually, and adorned with all
the refnements of the printers art. 1t
mattered little to Lovett what name
was inscribed upon the stationery or
in what business the firm whose name
it bore was supposed to be engaged.
He operated variously as Warren P.
Lovett, Robert L. Jaxon, Jim Crow,
William Parker, Warren Parker Seco
Company, John Gatlin and under doz-
ems of other names. BY the use of
these names the stationery and his al
ways present nerve he had been en-
gagged in the successful conduct of his
swindling operations for ten or fifteen
years.
He was run to earth last year by
Postoifice Inspector Fred d. Peer and
many of the criminal opera lions he had
carried out at last laid bare. If he
had been punished even for those
crimes he is known to have COM
mitted he would have sentences
enough to his credit to have
lasted out his life and two or three
others. sYE
In Sandersvil.a he had posed for
years as a man of wealth and station
and had so succeeded in imposing upon
his neighbors that at the time of his
arrest almost all of them were willing
to make affidavit to his irreproachable
character. He lived in one of the
handsomest houses in that section of
the state, which was furnished with
luxurious magnificence. AS he never
paid anything for his furniture he
could afford in this respect to be gem
erous He was arrayed always in the
very hight of the prevailing mode and
lived on the fat of the land.
AH
An instance of Lovett's ingenuity is
afforded by the manner in which he
got a barrel of whiskey out of the de-
pot at Sun Hill, near Sandersville,
without the payment of freight. He
objected to being put to even this small
expense; of course, he never intended
TO pay and did not pay for the whis-
key itself.
BY the use of some shrewd promises
Lovett managed to get the barrel of
whisky out of the hands of the agent
when he promptly emptied it's con-
tents and filled it with water. The
agent demanded the freight charges or
the whisky and Lovett, with much
apparent resignation, turned him over
the barrel of water. 1t was shipped
back to the firm from which it had
originally come and the fraud was then
discovered; Lovett, however, denied all
knowledge of the metamorphosis, and
the matter was dropped.
''Lovett's Creed"
He had a philosophic contempt for
the anger of his victims. After his
frauds had been detected he had print
ed a composition which he referred to
as my Creed" and copies of this he
mailed to those who annoyed him with
their complaints. 1t is as follows:
10 not keep the alabaSter boxes or
your love and tenderness sealed up un-
til your friends are dead. Fill their
lives with sweetness. Speak approving
cheering words while they can hear
them, and while their hearts can be
thrilled and made happier by them;
the kind things you mean to say to
them when they are gone, say before
they go. The flowers you mean to send
for their collins, send to brighten and
sweeten their homes before they leave
them. If my friends have alabaster
boxes laid away. full of fragrant per-
fumes of sympathy and affection,
.,.1.taL 49,. ,o+a,.a e. troo,- 49,. -,