Secrets of the Secret Service
—THE SAN QUENTIN CASE
Message About a "Baby Boy"
Led to One of the
m
Most Amazing
Counterfeiters, m
Right in San Quentin
By JOHN JAY DALY
A LL was quiet on the Western front,
not a counterfeiter operated on the
Pacific Coast. Suddenly Seattle, San
Rafael and San Francisco began to
bristle with phony $lO Federal Reserve
notes. New Year's Eve, 1935, saw a flock
of these bills passed on taxicab drivers
in the three cities. It was a veritable
orgy of counterfeiting. The Secret Serv
ice went into action.
Since only one of these peculiar notes
appeared east of the Rocky Mountains
the chase for counterfeiters confined it
self to the Far West.
On one day—February 10, 1936—three
arrests were made in the aforemen
tioned cities. Pieced together, they un
covered one of the greatest counterfeit
conspiracies of modern times —and the
trail led directly to San Quentin, the
largest penitentiary in America, with
6000 planners.
Involved in this master plot were five
convicts behind the bars, two convicts
out on parole and two civilians. For two
years they plied their trade—one year
to get organized and equipped, another
year spent to spread results of their
counterfeit craftsmanship.
Only for an innocent-enough looking
telegram sent one day from Seattle to
an inmate in San Quentin, the con
spiracy might have gone along farther.
The telegram read:
“Baby boy arrived stop alice doing
well. “GALE.”
This message was sent to Jack T.
Lewis, an expert photographer serving
a stretch in San Quentin.
Lewis was working in the prison
photoer.;jr»ving plant. He had been as
sistant there to Daniel R. Wilson, fore
man of the photoengraving outfit, who
was out on parole.
Whether it was Wilson or Lewis who
devised this counterfeiting scheme
Secret Service operatives will never
know. Each man blames the other.
Anyway, Secret Service agents cracked
the case when they made three separate
arrests in one day. On the morning of
February 10, 1936, they picked up
Thomas Bell, 39, on the streets of San
Rafael. Bell, a native of Scotland, had
just passed a queer $lO bill on a taxi
cab driver. They got Bell before he even
so much as touched the pistol in his hip
pocket.
Shortly after that, on the same day in
Sacramento, Secret Service men landed
Clifford L. Parr, a photoengraver who
had dispensed with a number of $lO
Federal Reserve notes. Parr went along
peaceably after agents got the drop o;
him.
That night in San Francisco, Secret
Service agents arrested Daniel R. Wil
son, 31, for passing more than twenty
two counterfeit notes, all of $lO de
nomination.
Examination of these men proved
them all ex-convicts —on parole from
San Quentin, Wilson the former fore
man of the engraving plant there. Parr
also had been employed in the same
plant. Circumstances began to add up.
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Down to San Quentin went Captain
Thomas B. Faster, the head of the
United States Secret Service in San
Francisco —San Quentin, that desolate
peninsula twenty-five miles north of the
Golden Gate. With the chief were “Tex”
Strange and "Phil” Geauque, two ace
operatives who had broken tke case.
With members of the Prison Board
and prison officials headed by Warden
James B. Holohan, now retired, the
Secret Service put on their act in the
big board room at San Quentin.
For five hours the show went on, with
one central character playing a leading
role. That was the nervous convict, Jack
Lewis. He was jittery as he faced the
Secret Service men. His gray clothing
set off his chalky face. Outside, a howl
ing wind dashed breakers against the
seawall surrounding the penitentiary.
Hot coffee and cigarettes started Jack
Lewis to talk. In “con” language, he
“turned on the sewer.” Inmates of San
Quentin, employes, a detective sergeant
in Las Angeles—every one that Jack
Lewis held a grudge against became
unwittingly involved in an amazing
counterfeiting plot inside the world’s
greatest prison.
Lewis told how it all began in the
dark room of the photoengraving plant
at San Quentin
In the early morning hours Jack
Lewis worked in his improvised counter
feiter’s den. Lights were shaded so the
beams of electricity fell only on the
bills being made.
Notes were aged by folding and rub
bing them together. Placed in a pillow
slip, the bills were held above a bucket
of boiling water and steamed.
A secret panel, operated by a spring
at the entrance to the photoengraving
plant, concealed the plates. The base of
a huge camera had been rigged up as
the mysterious hiding place for counter
feiting tools.
When the money was made and ready
for the market the first object of the
gang was to purchase a SIOOO Govern
ment bond —to be counterfeited, as a
start to a fortune.
Outside confederates were to be sales
men for the boys on the inside—and a
salesman who provided photographic
equipment for the engraving plant was
contact man. First thing he did was to
carry out 330 of the $lO bilLs, which he
shipped to Seattle, receipt acknowledged
by the “Baby Boy Arrived” telegram.
Excited, Jack Lewis took three hours
to tell his dramatic story. Then the
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In the early morning hours Jack Lewis worked in his improvised
counterfeiter’s den within the walls of San Qxientin Prison
Secret Service men took him in hand.
They told him things he never dreamed
they could know; how he had tried to
involve the innocent wife of a fellow
convict by sending her ten of the
counterfeit bills; how he had inveigled
an outsider into helping him and then
“put the finger” on the man; how he
had doubled-grossed any number of per
sons. Outsmarted by the Secret Service,
Jack Lewis admitted every charge
against him—without benefit of the third
degree. They had him on the spot two
hours.
When it was all over and prison of
ficials wanted to compliment the Secret
Service men, all “Tex” Strange said was;
“Let's beat it and get a cup of coffee.”
Before they “beat it,” however, they
staged their final raid on the engraving
plant in San Quentin and there, hidden
behind pictures of motion-picture
actresses, found enough counterfeit
money to pay a king’s ransom.
Above the ceiling in the dark room
were found seven copper “face” plates
and five copper “back" plates for
counterfeit $lO notes and a set of plates
for $1 silver certificates. Paper with the
imprint of the Treasury seal and serial
numbers was discovered in great quan
tity.
With all equipment and parapher
nalia furnished by the State of Cali
fornia, as part of the prison equipment,
these conspirators went out to beat
Uncle Sam in a big way. It Is estimated
they printed $12,000 in spurious notes.
Daniel Wilson’s brother-in-law, Clif
ford Parr, was the plate engraver, but
the greater part of the work was done
by Lewis, the expert photoengraver.
Through the innocent co-operation of
a salesman from a San Francisco
photographic supply house a great num
ber of packages went out of San
Quentin. All contained counterfeit
notes. They were mailed to Jack
Loretto, whose real name was John Paul
Rossi. He passed several hundred in
Seattle and vicinity.
In San Francisco, a man named Nor
man Glickman rented a postofflee box
in the name of Davis and there re
ceived some of these notes. Secret Serv
ice men, catching Glickman in the act,
found he had a brother-in-law, Bernard
Kent, in San Quentin —and the trail wa«
opened. Glickman was the man who
brought the only note east of the
Rockies. He passed it in Chicago. Yet
Glickman, when tried by a jury, was ac
quitted—even though he admitted guilt.
This aroused the Secret Service men.
They went out to get others, and they
did. Before they stopped the chief of
the prison commissary department was
involved. He was Louis J. Murray, a
civilian employe, who fell readily into
the plans of Lewis and Wilson. Agents
found that Murray had carried as many
as 100 counterfeit notes out of prison.
The trail led to Daniel Wilson’s home
—where he held forth on parole—and
here fourteen notes were discovered.
All the West Coast around San Fran
cisco and Seattle was being infested with
these counterfeit bills, even after some
of the gang had been cut off from the
source of supply.
In the dead letter office in Seattle re
posed a package addressed to Gale
Halter, a package sent by Jack Lewis.
Gale was sender of the “Baby Boy Ar
rived” telegram. Opened, the package
disgorged 213 of the San Quentin
counterfeit notes— and that was the last
of the species.
The fact that the principals involved
in this counterfeiting case were for
merly engaged or were working in th«
photoengraving plant in prison kept
them from suspicion for a time at least.
Naturally, one would expect a well-reg
ulated prison to keep tab on the goings
on within those prison walls, but after
all, there is a certain amount of re
laxation after a convict has seemingly
shown an inclination to obey the prison
rules and make no trouble.
It was on this theory that Lewis
worked. He was a good engraver in the
sense that reproduction plates are pro
duced, and in his capacity as a work
man there lie had access to all the
chemicals, zinc for plates and oilier
material necessary.
His biggest job was getting the spuri
ous money into circulation. How that
was done has already been recounted.