The Republican. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1903-1909, 1908-03-12
How to Stiff "Sure Things
Crafty investment Swinders Who Prey Upon the Credut
of the Laborer to Defraud Him of His
Hard Earned Savings
BY ROBERT 3. ARMSTRONG,
Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.


package said to contain valuable pa
pers," a telegram had been sent by
the fiscal agent" to mail out trustee
circulars" The man in this scheme
of course believed that, as the circu-
lars were being mailed out into ter
ritory about thousand miles from
the city in which the banking and
trust company was located the trust
officer who had been imposed upon
would never hear of the misuse of his
receipt for dummy" package which
actually contained certificates of the
mining company's stock.
Why did the men who worked this
scheme to steal the moral support OF
the big trust company go to SO great
pains to get 1t; to make the transfer
of sealed package containing it's
bonds? Because fake investment OPP.
orators have found it profitable to
take every precaution to give the color
of legality to their acts; they have
found 1t profitable to hire shrewd legal
pilots to tell them just how far they
may go in a given direction without
running upon the reefs of the United
States post Offices fraud order" or
upon the rocks of conspiracy"
prosecution. These pilots for the
fleets of the investment pirates make
professional study of the art of
steering their craft just outside the
line of successful criminal prosecu-
ton. Take 1t in the incident which l
have related: had these men been
prosecuted for falsely using the name
of the trust company or for obtaining
moneys by misrepresentation (the
claim that the trust company was act
Ing as trustee on the Brite & Fair Sc
curities), an able lawyer could have
made out of the trust" to transfer a
package of unknown contents, very
plausible defense. Again, the mining
company was able to make valuable
use of the trust company's receipt for
the package by having facsimiles of
the receipt printed and distributed
among solicitors for the stock who
were canvassing persons not at all
familiar with legal documents-and
who, under the statements and argu-
ments of the agent, would see in the
receipt an Acknowledgement that this
great trust company and its millions
were behind the securities of the Brite
& Fair Bonanza company.
So far as the writer knows, there
has never been fake investment con-
Germ exploited which has not tried to
steal moral support under the name
of some guaranty" trust" or "secur-
tiles" company. In most cases, per-
haps, these companies are as thorough
fakes as the company which they are
supposed to guarantee, and are the
creatures and creations of the same
men. But so many instances of this
shallow deception have been shown
up in criminal prosecutions that
little variation has been found desira.
BILE. Instead of owning fake guar
anty' concern, the exploiters of the
fake companies have recently come to
regard 1t as better practice to claim
connection with some genuine COM
pany doing general trust business.
This brings us straight to the prac-
teal point in the matter: Never go
into an investment until you first find
out for yourself, by direct and first
hand investigation, what the "refer-
ences" named in the literature or ad-
yertising matter Of the company have
to say about it, and also how much
the references themselves amount to.
Promoters of wildcat investment en-
terprises have used hundreds of names
as references which they had not the
shadow of right to use-calculating
that persons credulous enough to be
interested in the proposition would
also be credulous enough to say these
references will speak we'll enough for
the enterprise, else their names would
not be given out for this purpose"