The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1905-11-03
CLEVER SWINDLERS
Who Have Posed as Kings and
Queens and Fooled Officers.
Tit Bits.)

Although legions of swindlers have
assumed the guise OF princes and no.
bles, sometime to their infinite profit,
few have had sufficient inSOlence and
daring 10 pose as kings and queens,
and therefore the elderly female swind-
Ter who recently extracted some 10000
for the pockets of gullable Italians in
Boston, Mass. by assuming the role OF
eX-Empress CariOtta, widow OF The Ill
fated Emperor Macmillan OF Mexico,
occupies very distinguished position
I'm the ranks of enterprising crimina Is.
Few swindles have been more bare
facedly grotesque, yet more clevefly
worked, than that Of bogus CarlOtta,
and 1t is safe to say that ii she pos
sessed the saving sense Of humor her
own ingenuity must have afforded her
as much merriment as hard cash.
She arrived among the Boston Ital-
ians accompanied by a male confeder-
ate who posed as the late Crown Prince
Rudolph of Austria, whom, it must be
explained, thousands of ignorant people
believed TO be still alive, the notion be-
ing that his suicide was merely an inn
aginary affair announced to the public
IN order TO explain his disappearance
when, after a quarrel, the emperor cast
him into a fortress prison in the deter
over the duCal kingdom.
The alleged object of their visit to the
United States was the raising of funds
for the purpose of effecting a very
drmatic coup d'etat at Vienna whereby
the Emperor Francis Joseph was TO be
depOsed and the bogus Crown Prince
Rudolph-WhO, it was explained, had
escaped from prison without his
fathers ledge-estabiishe III his
stead.
The woman. who was the moving
spirit of the whole swindie issued bonds
in return for hard cash, and these
bonds were to be redeemed, with hand
some interest added, within short
time of the coup detat; and in order
to impress her contingent victims she
held mock courts, TO which they were
Invited, surrounded herself with the
most cringing of fiunkies, and attached
number of her stupidest victims TO
her suite She always wore a crown
and an elaborate robe at her courts,
and the quick refreshments" provided
as a sort Of ground bait" were of the
very best.
Nevertheless she occasionally encoun-
tered skeptics. She had various ways
of converting them, however. and no
one really suspected her until 1t was
TOO late for suspicion TO be Of any use.
on one occasion she took d party OF
prospective victims who required con-
Viacing that she was indeed the ex-
empress in a boat to Boston harbor
when an Austrian cruiser happened to
be there, telling them that she would
be recognized and saluted as only men,
hers of her royal house were. AS the
boat approached the cruiser, verify
salute was fired, and her victims, being
satisfied, were rowed back to shore,
supremely ignorant Of the fact that the
firing was the customary salute TO the
navy yard, which is always fired at
certain hour, and that the eX-empress
had timed her visit to coincide with
the salute.
An even more barefaeed fraud was
successfully engineered in Paris some
years back. A clever and daring gang
of stamp forgers arrived in the gay
city" i'm elaborate eastern costumes,
posing as the emperor Of purely imag-
mary Asiatic empire and his suite,
travelling for the benefit of his majes-
tvs health.
They put up at an excellent hotel,
and began enjoying themselves. At
that same time some absolutely un-
known postage stamps filtered onto the
market, creating no small sensation
among pHllalGilSlS allr cndLElllS ndIius
at excellent prices. Then 1t became
known in the right circles that the ac-
tual aim of the eastern potentate was
TO blend business with pleasure: and
with the object of raising funds his
majesty had brought with hirn-or
rather his chancellor had-a consider
able quantity of the rare stamps in use
ia ms country, which. being unknown
in Europe and America. would, he had
been advised, find a good market in
Paris,
What was the total amount Of the
"spoile" with which the emperor and
his suite left Paris when they felt the
bubble was about 10 burst will probably
never be known, but il certainly ran
into many thousands of pounds. and
very depressed indeed were dealers and
collectors when they realized that they
had only obtained a tiny lesson in
geogr9phy and human nature in an in
direct manner at a dreadfully stiff
price.