Newspapers / Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.) / Dec. 10, 1937, edition 1 / Page 12
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/founding Tip the MASTER MINDS of the Counterfeit Stamp Racket WHILE smashing through a se cret passageway in an incon spicuous Philadelphia office building a short while ago, Treasury Secret Service men made a sensational discovery—a discovery that was to link Cleveland, Akron, Philadel phia and New York with a nation-wide stamp counterfeiting ring, and which led to its expose. Cunningly concealed underneath fake drawers and desks was complete equipment for manufacturing and counterfeiting stamps, including en graving plates, perforating machines, cameras and gumming apparatus. Everything was of ultra-modern de sign and most efficient in operation. Three enormous boxes contained thou sands of forged stamps of the current two-cent United States variety, which, if genuine, would be worth approxi mately $14,000. And as if this were not enough, two other boxes were well filled with bogus documentary stamps. By piecing together various bits of evidence, the federal agents proved conclusively that here was headquar ters for one of the largest-scale fake stamp “factories” in American history. Not only was every stamp made so close to perfection that even the best of experts might be fooled despite the aid of high-powered microscopes and other identifying apparatus, but the equipment was capable of producing enough spurious stamps in a week’s time to cheat the Treasury out of at least $lO 000. This spectacular haul strikingly illus trates the importance to the nation of a little band of super-sleuths of the Treasury Department. Were it not for their eve. -yday vigilance, intelligence, daring and clever undercover activities, the entire country would be flooded with a we.ilth of spurious stamps. - - ic av —ii.iip 3 M I M 2 MOM ljSy ..... -X w .I ntfam lirTTi lii •'•w^-gwaMgy 1 a \ in k ' w mmT .< ■k 1 ..A |~iNE of the most difficult types of case to deal with is the illicit dealer Id “washed” documentary stamps. The prevailing methods of canceling documentary stamps make it compara tively simple for the crook to “wash” them, or remove the cancellation marks. Any registered government postal clerk can cancel such stamps by writing on than in ordinary ink. Whereupon, the crooked stamp dealer simply steams oft the cancellation marks, or uses a chem ical to remove them. However, due to the very nature of these stamps—for use as a government sales tax on stock transactions—the market is limited. • Therefore, a fre quent practice is to form a ring com posed of the expert who washes the stamp -, and crooked stock brokers or bank officials. Sucli a ring was broken np months ago in Boston. It seems that due to the alertness of the Treasury undercover men, a cer tain dealer in collectors’ stamps was under suspicion—he seemed to be doing very little business selling "rarities” and “semi-rarities,” but gave evidence of prosperity. The G-men finally swooped down and caught him red handed with washed documentary stamps worth $5200 in $1 ~ .d $5 de nominations. Through hi.i vas re vealed the fact that he was operating with three other men, all of them shy ster stock brokers on a small scale, who were using the stamps to avoid pay ment of taxes. r - W- Wr v Besides the Philadelphia case, men tioned earlier, another one almost as spectacular was solved recently in the Quaker city by the federal sleuths. It concerned a Philadelphia forger, a law yer in Havana, Cuba, and a go-between. It developed that a certain Cuban at torney conducted a large legal business and thought he could save himself a sizable amount of money if he used fake documentary stamps. He decided it was wise to order such stamps from a counterfeiter rather than to wash Cuban stamps, which was where he made a big mistake, for he had to buck up against Uncle Sam’s sleuths. Still thinking himself clever, the lawyer engaged a go-between to do the actual job of transporting the stamps from a counterfeiter in Phila delphia to his office in Havana. At first all went well. The spurious stamp maker printed $30,000 worth of Ca.pt William H. Houghton, Secret Ser vice official, displays a stamp and dollar bill counterfeit ing plant in a suitcase. . • ■•••; :• ... lillllllilili? ‘-y':- ;X : ■•v.vjy.v.v . • > - *•> ; . 4' ! ; >:• ■ : x .. • . / * ' f. : , j j When the go-between bought a ticket in New Orleans for a steam ship bound for Havana, Secret Agent X cracked down. bogus Cuban documentaries in re quired denominations, the go-between hopped a train fgr New Orleans—but Secret Agent X was on that train too. The Federals did not want to make an arrest just yet, for they did not know for whom the stamps were intended, nor even, as a matter of fact, that they were Cuban stamps. When the go-between bought a ticket in New Orleans for a steamer bound for Havana, Secret Agent X cracked down. As a result, the lawyer was taken into custody, but—Cuban authorities being a trifle careless—he escaped to Mexico, where he is now in exile. However, X didn’t fail in his duty, for so secretly did he work that the Philadelphia qgd of the racket was effectively squelched. A somewhat similar case was suc cessfully handled by the government stamp detectives in New York City. In this instance, one crook operated prac tically alone, and combined washing documentaries with counterfeiting reg ular 2-cent stamps. More than SIO,OOO worth of the former were found in his possession, so perfectly restored to their original condition that only the can niest of experts could tell they had been used. A stamp G-man—wearing a mask so that his identity won’t be revealed by the camera—using an especially de vised magnifying apparati* to de termine whether a stamp is genuine or spurious ords describes the maneuvers of a counterfeiting ring that was exposed some months ago in Akron, Ohio. In volved were a man in the rubber goods business in Akron, a pawnbroker in Cleveland, and a forger in New York City. Upon advice from a stamp collector that bogus 2-cent stamps were being widely circulated in Akron, the local postmaster telephoned headquarters in Washington. An ace inspector at once * hopped a plane to the Ohio city to take charge of the case and attempt to run down the culpjjts. The tip-off proved correct. Hundreds of spurious stamps were being dis tributed in the region and several good ?ed business concerns were unwitting jy using them for mailing advertising booklets and other literature in large amounts. The counterfeits were perforated 12 by 12, whereas the real stamps carried only 11 perforations on two sides and 10% on the other two. Otherwise the fakes could not have been told from the genuine, even by experts, so clever was the job of engraving. Investigation revealed that the prin cipal user of the stamps (and inno cently enough, it developed) was a large automobile dealer. He had re ceived the fakes from a certain Mr. K, who was promptly arrested by the local police when he returned from a trip to Cleveland. Several of the fake stamps were found in his wallet Mr. K stated that he was in the rubber and had received the guilty stamps from a pawnbroker in Cleveland in payment for some merchandise he had sold. Cleveland authorities pounced on the pawnbroker, and found 5000 of the il legal stamps in his possession. That washed up the case completely. Recently similar fakes began showing up in other parts of the country, and a certain New York pawnbroker was dis covered selling a number of stamps identical with those the Cleveland pawnbroker had marketed. The en graving plate was found in the New Yorker s possession and he cooked up the explanation that he was making the stamps to sell to collectors, and was in no way trying to violate the law! Throughout the case, the Treasury was convinced that the New Yorker distributed his fakes through a series of inter-city pawnbrokers. He and the Cleveland pawnbroker were convicted, but no other pawnbrokers connected with the so-called ring were ca\ ,r,UI K was adjudged not guilty
Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.)
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Dec. 10, 1937, edition 1
12
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