Most recent edit on 2008-02-12 13:59:12 by MarD

Additions:
From the World Encyclopedia of Con Artists and Confidence Games

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Oldest known version of this page was edited on 2008-02-12 13:52:37 by MarD []
Waddell, Reed, 1859-95, U.S., fraud. Operating in the U.S. and Europe, Reed Waddell was a successful swindler at two schemes which netted him more than a quarter of a million dollars between 1880 and 1890. As a young man, he rejected the Springfield, Ill., family business, preferring the company of gamblers and con men, concentrating on the green goods and gold brick swindles.

Waddell first used the gold brick swindle in New York in 1880, a con game he was credited with creating though Wyatt Earp and Mysterious Dave Mather pulled a similar swindle by selling gold bricks to cowboys in 1878 in Mobeetie, Texas. Waddell's gold bricks consisted of a lead bar covered with three plates of gold and a gold slug in the middle. Posing as a penniless miner, he would find a potential customer and tell him he hated to part with the gold was forced to sell it in order to return to his Colorado mine. He asked for cash. Waddell then directed the buyer to an "assayer" who declared it pure gold. His first gold brick swindle in New York netted $4,000. At times, Waddell got twice that price, and the least he ever netted was $3,500. Waddell preferred this swindle as there was a long time lag before the victim realized the swindle.

The other fraud Waddell pulled was the green goods swindle in which he would show a victim a substantial amount of real cash, tell the person it was counterfeit, and offer to sell a quantity of it at a discount price. When the victim agreed to make a large buy, Waddell again showed them real cash, but just as the transaction was completed, he would substitute blank strips of green paper for the cash. He took his games to Europe and was successful until March 1895, when he was shot and killed in Paris by another confidence man, Tom O'Brien, over disputed spoils.

Wagenfeld, Frederick, prom. 1840, Ger., hoax. Dr. Heinrich Friedrich Gesenius was Germany's foremost biblical scholar during the 1830s. His research into the ancient Hebrew languages earned him the acclaim of his contemporaries, yet Gesenius was easily duped by one of his students, Frederick Wagenfeld, who produced what he claimed to be a fragment of the writings of the first century Greek scholar Philo Byblius. The ancient text was a translated history of Phoenicia, originally written by Sanchuniathon in the thirteenth century B.C. The fragment was a poor forgery, yet Gesenius and another noted scholar, Georg Grotefend, authenticated the discovery. Grotefend went so far as to write an introduction to the German translation.

Wallace, Rose, See: Gagne, George

Walpole, Horace (Earl of Orford), 1717-97, Brit., hoax-forg. The noted author, parliamentarian, and eighteenth-century cynic perpetrated several well-publicized deceptions during his career. He forged a letter written from the King of Prussia to the philosopher Rousseau as an authentic document, and in his best known hoax, he published a Gothic romance titled The Castle of Otranto in 1764. The title-page attributed authorship to Onuphrio Muralto, with an English translation supplied by William Marshal. The first edition sold well,
forcing Walpole to drop all pretenses and admit that it was his own work in the second edition.

Warbeck, Perkin, 1474-99, Brit., fraud. The servant of a silk dealer in Ireland, Perkin Warbeck had a penchant for impersonation. In 1492, he claimed to be Richard, the Duke of York, the son of Edward IV. His pretense was accepted by Edward's sister Margaret, the dowager Duchess of Burgundy, and the earls of Desmond and Kildare also believed his charade. He also duped Charles VIII of France into thinking he was Richard IV, and he was given funds by Emperor Maximilian I for attacks that failed. Arriving in Cornwall in 1499, the
charlatan announced that he was king. He was taken into custody and admitted his fraud. Held prisoner in the Tower of London, he was hanged after an escape attempt.

Ward, Joshua, 1685-1761, Brit., fraud. Britain's most famous quack doctor of the later eighteenth century began his career in politics. Joshua Ward was elected to Parliament in 1716, but his name was erased by the House of Commons when it was learned that he had not received a single vote. Ward fled to France where he promoted a quack medicine known as "White Drop of Ward and the Pill," which, if used in excess, caused permanent liver damage. Ward advertised this noxious medicine as a cure for all diseases. He was spared imprisonment in the Bastille by his friend John Page, and traveled back to England to market the drop and the pill to the public.

King George II became his most devoted patron after he succeeded in "curing" His Majesty's dislocated thumb. George granted him his own apartment in the almonry office. Ward purchased three lavish country houses, and converted them to hospitals for his poor patients, an act of charity inconsistent with the dubious nature of his business. On Nov. 28, 1734, an item appeared in the Daily Courant which charged Ward with plotting to introduce "popery" into Protestant England through the dissemination of his drop and pill. There were other attacks against the harmful side effects of the nostrums, but Ward continued marketing his products until the day he died.

Weil, Joseph (AKA: Yellow Kid, King Con), 1875-1976, U.S., fraud. No other confidence man in the U.S. ever approached the audacity and ingenuity of Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil. Weil lived for 101 years and was known in his chosen field of crime as "King Con," the most successful confidence man of the twentieth century U.S. He claimed to have swindled more than $12 million from greedy, wealthy suckers, but his take was more likely $8 to $10 million. He live like a rajah, headquartering in Chicago, owning hotels and racetracks, and having myriad mistresses. Yet, he died in a nursing home and was buried in a pauper's grave.

He was born on June 30, 1875, in Chicago. His parents were immigrants, his mother French, his father German. Joseph Weil operated a saloon in the vice-ridden First Ward, known as the Levee and later managed "The French Village," an exhibit at the 1893 world's fair in Chicago. During the 1890s, Joseph Weil sold patent medicines and shilled for racetrack touts. He later graduated to the sale of fake stocks, rigged horse races, and the "salting" of worthless mines. Always inventive, Weil developed many unique confidence games of his own.

He traveled through rural areas of the Midwest, selling a patent medicine of his own creation, Meriwether's Elixir, one he claimed would kill tapeworms. He also worked the spectacles-and-magazine short con. He had several pages of a magazine reset in large type and inserted them in the publication. When stopping at a farm where the proprietor had poor eyesight, Weil sold him the Elixir and then asked if the farmer had lost an expensive pair of spectacles. As he talked, Weil turned the pages of the magazine and encouraged the farmer to try on the glasses. Just as the farmer put on the spectacles, Weil turned to the pages of enlarged type and the farmer thought his vision suddenly had been been vastly improved by the glasses. The glasses, which had gold rims, appeared expensive, but the rims were actually painted. The farmer gladly paid $3 or $4 for the spectacles, promising to return them to the owner if he encountered him. The glasses cost Weil no more than fifteen cents each and he bought them by the gross.

"I never cheated an honest man, only rascals," Weil was fond of saying. Of his victims he stated: "They may have been respectable, but they were never any good. They wanted something for nothing. I gave them nothing for something." Weil not only fleeced his customers, he convinced them that they were cheating him. Weil appeared to be a wealthy dandy. His attire was sartorial, complete with spats, white winged collars, silk cravats, diamond stickpin, and tailored, three-piece suits. By the 1890s, he had acquired his fanciful sobriquet.
While lounging in the Chicago saloon owned by Alderman John "Bathhouse John" Coughlin, he discovered a cartoon strip drawn by Ocault, one that featured a character named "The Yellow Kid," an adventurous ne'er-do-well.

Coughlin noticed Weil chuckling over the antics of this character and boomed: "You know, Joe, you're just like that character in that cartoon strip you're always reading, just like that guy, always pulling capers on people. That's you all over, just like the Yellow Kid. That's what I'm calling you from now on, the Yellow Kid." The name stuck and became part of Weil's image as a conniving, cunning con man who never really met his match, although there were some artful swindlers who occasionally worked as his partners, such as Fred "The Deacon" Buckminster.

The meeting of these men was classic. At the turn of the century, Buckminster was a member of the Chicago Police Department, a detective working in the bunco squad. He trailed Weil about for a few days and saw him work some short cons. He arrested Weil on State Street, telling him he was going to run him in for practicing confidence games. The two men strolled toward a precinct station. At the corner, Weil reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of money, all in large bills. Without a word he placed the money into Buckminster's hand.

"What's this?" Buckminster asked, staring incredulously at about $8,000.

"That?" asked Weil. "That's just walkabout money. I made that in two hours
this morning."

"In two hours?"

"Yes, and so can you. I can use a guy like you, one who knows the ropes. Put that in your pocket." Weil stood staring straight ahead as he talked to Buckminster. "Go ahead, it's chicken feed to me. You can see that kind of dough every day if you throw in with me."

Buckminster clutched the money, then took his badge from his vest and looked at both the money and the badge. He pocketed both and shook Weil's hand. He quit the police force then and there and joined Weil.

Weil and Buckminster worked the pedigree dog swindle with alacrity and for tens of thousands of dollars each year. Selecting a wealthy bar owner, Weil would saunter into a saloon, dressed elegantly and walking a finely groomed, richly-scented dog that pranced at the end of an expensive-looking leash. Weil would tie the dog to the bar rail and then order a drink.

In the course of his conversation with the bar owner, Weil proudly showed pedigree papers for the hound, along with several blue ribbon prizes the dog had won. He would then take out his solid gold watch and then exclaim: "Great Scott! I'm late for an urgent business meeting!" He would then tell the bar owner: "I can't take Rex into the bank where I have my meeting. Will you be kind enough to watch my dog until my meeting is over?" Weil would slip a $10 bill on the bar, an unheard of tip, cautioning the bar owner: "This dog is priceless so please watch him closely." He would then dash from the bar to keep his appointment.

A few minutes after Weil's departure, Fred Buckminster appeared in the bar. He stood next to the dog, ordered a drink, and then looked at the animal. He spit out some beer in excitement and sputtered: "Oh, my Lord! I've been looking for this breed of dog for five years!" He quickly rummaged through his wallet and took out $50, shoving the money toward the bar owner, begging him to sell the dog to him.

"I can't do that, sir," came the usual response. "This dog belongs to a fellow who only left him until his meeting is over. He'll be back in an hour."

"Okay, okay," Buckminster would say, "so you want more. Just say so. The animal is worth more. I'll make it $100!" He then placed $100 on the bar, offering the money to the owner.

"I told you, sir, the animal is not mine to sell."

"All right, no more bickering. I'll make it three hundred!" He then pulled out more money, but the startled bartender would refuse, again telling Buckminster that the animal was not his to sell. Buckminster would not bedenied. He put $50 on the bar and told the owner the name of the hotel where he was staying, adding: "Call me as soon as you can persuade the owner to sell. I'll have the other two hundred and fifty waiting for you." Buckminster then gave a maudlin display of affection for the animal and departed.

A half hour elapsed before Weil reappeared. His demeanor was completely changed. He was no longer the confident, ebullient boulevardier. He was crestfallen as he slowly walked to the bar, almost oblivious to the dog.

"What's the matter, sir?" the solicitous bar owner asked, "you look like you've lost your best friend."

Weil shook his head sadly and then explained that his business deal had collapsed and that he was facing financial ruin. "I've been wiped out, emptied, nearly destroyed."

The bar owner seized the opportunity, offering to buy the dog for $200. Weil pretended shock: "Sell Rex, the grand champion for only $200!"

After doing some quick mathematics, the bar owner invariably raised the offer by $25 or $50. He thought that since he already had Weil's $10 tip and Buckminster's $50 down payment, he would clear between $110 and $135 once the dog was delivered and Buckminster paid him the balance of $250. Weil reluctantly took the purchase price from the bar owner and weeping, took his leave of the dog.

When the bar owner appeared at the hotel where Buckminster was to be contacted, dog in hand, he quickly learned that no such person was registered. Buckminster and Weil then pocketed between $165 and $190 for an investment of $60. They then returned to their own kennel, where dogs from the street or from pounds were being groomed for the next sucker. On a good day, Weil and Buckminster sold ten dogs, making as much as $5,000 a week.

Many of Weil's other schemes, such as his use of an empty bank building in Muncie, Ind., were much more elaborate. After reading that the Merchants National Bank of Muncie was moving to a new location, Weil went to Muncie and rented the old bank building. With Buckminster handling the details, the old bank building underwent quick renovations. In the lease Weil stipulated that all the tellers' cages and other banking accouterments remain intact. Weil then secretly established his own bank. He printed deposit and withdrawal slips and put them into desk slots in the foyer. Streetcar conductors were hired as bank guards and tellers and other bank officials were culled from the ranks of some of Chicago's most notorious cofidence men and women.

All of the preparations were done for a single day's business: the bank operation was only a ruse to inveigle a multimillionaire sucker into another scheme. When all was ready, a Chicago investor worth millions was escorted by train to Muncie where he was met by a chauffeur-driven car and taken to Weil's "bank". Buckminister acted as the shill. He had groomed the sucker for months by telling him that the president of the bogus bank, Weil, was one of the shrewdest money men in the Midwest and that when most other banks were having difficulties in this Depression period, his bank was thriving. Buckminister had told the sucker that the bank president had gained control of rich government lands that could be purchased for a quarter of their value and that buyers were waiting to pay twice that much to obtain the federal lands.

The president of the bank, Buckminister stated, would only deal in cash, however. The sucker arrived in Muncie with a large briefcase filled with money, an estimated $500,000. When he entered the bank he was amazed to see the furious business the bank was doing. The place was packed with customers lined up at tellers' cages, thrusting wads of greenbacks at tellers as deposits. Bank officials were dragging sacks of money into a huge vault that appeared to be brimming with money. The customers were all prostitutes,racetrack touts, and gamblers whom Buckminster and Weil had hired for the day. The sucker was overwhelmed by the booming success of the Muncie bank.

He was kept waiting for almost an hour so he could witness the bustling business. He heard clerks complaining to superiors that they could not handle the traffic and that more guards had to be added to protect the burgeoning millions the bank was storing. Then the sucker was finally shown into Weil's offices and was met by Weil, who acted the part of a disinterested tycoon. Yes, he admitted, he had federal land leases in Indiana and out West where oil was in great abundance. He showed bogus leases and oil surveys that supported his claims. The sucker opened his briefcase, prepared to buy all the land he could obtain. The nerveless, cool-headed Weil then offered the sucker the convincer, telling him he could not have all of the lands promised to him by Buckminster.

"I've got a lot of friends here in Indiana to take care of," Weil explained. "You're an outsider and if it weren't for my good friend Harry here," Weil said, motioning to Buckminster, "I wouldn't be talking to you at all." At this point, the sucker's greed, which Weil was an expert at manipulating, got the better of him. He began to argue with Weil for all that Buckminster had promised him. But Weil was adamant, even while calmly glancing at the stacks of money in the open briefcase, telling the sucker that he could not have all he expected. Weil reportedly took only $400,000 from the sucker in the land deal and watched with steel nerves as the briefcase closed on the remaining $100,000. "Never be greedier than the mark," was Weil's lifelong credo and in this instance, he proved his words. By allowing the mark to retain a portion of his money, Weil knew, the sucker would be absolutely convinced that he had participated in a crooked deal and that he had gotten the best deal possible for himself.

After the sucker had been given signed deeds to lands that did not exist, he was driven to the depot and escorted to Chicago by Buckminister. By the time the train left the depot, Weil had paid his army of swindlers and closed the bank. The whole operation cost him $50,000 and he and Buckminster had made $350,000 on the deal. This kind of money was average for Joe Weil, who spent lavishly and lived high. He bought a small hotel on the North Side of Chicago and then a string of race horses. He preferred to keep company with tall, voluptuous blondes selected from the chorus lines of Chicago nightclubs and he showered furs and jewels upon these women.

Weil squandered great sums on gambling, bad investments, and women. Moreover, every time he was sent to prison--he served about ten years in prison out of 101 years of life--his brother, a Chicago bailiff, seized his property. Each time Weil was released, he had to start building his fortune again. The few times he ventured away from the world of confidence games, he ran afoul of the law. In 1924, Weil agreed to fence some of the money taken in the Roundout Mail Robbery that had occurred north of Chicago. He was caught exchanging the "hot" money and sent to the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth to serve six years.During his term at Leavenworth, Weil met such arch criminals as Frank Nash, Earl Thayer, Thomas Holden, Francis Keating, and George "Machine Gun" Kelly, bankrobbers all. At one point, while walking in the exercise yard, Kelly approached Weil and said: "You know, Kid, I've been thinking about you. I just don't understand how a guy like you operates. I mean, you go right up to people, make friends with them, and take them for their money. You spend a lot of time with them and they know who you are and they can bring the law right to your doorstep."

"Really, George," Weil replied. "Well, if you knew anything about the con, you'd know that the sucker can't bring the law to my doorstep because they would also have to admit to the police that he was involved in a shady deal, too. I only do shady deals, George, so the sucker is convinced that he is going to make a ton of money, more than he would make in a legitimate operation. You, on the other hand, George, go into banks armed to the teeth, shoot up the place and maybe clip some poor people who have no business being hurt and then run like crazy with police shooting at you. What kind of a criminal are you anyway?"

"I'm not a sap who pals around with my victims like you," snorted Kelly.

"You're not a sap, huh?" Weil smirked. "How much time are you doing here, George?"

"Twenty years."

"For what?

"Bank robbery."

"And how much did you get out of the bank?"

"About three thousand."

"Three thousand and twenty years," Weil hummed. "Well, I'm finishing up a six-year stretch. I'm going out next month with time off for good behavior. Five years for a caper that netted me almost a quarter of a million. And you'll still be in this tank doing fourteen more years for three thousand. Who's the sap, George?"

When Weil got out, he embarked on a new series of confidence games he had concocted while serving his time in Leavenworth. He sold fake copper mine stock and pills that he claimed would turn water into gasoline. He even took a trip to Italy where he convinced dictator Benito Mussolini that he was a U.S. mining engineer and government official, selling Il Duce the rights to rich mining lands in Colorado. By the time Mussolini's secret police uncovered this scam, the elusive Weil had already sailed with a reported $2 million in cash from Mussolini's coffers.

Returning to his old haunts in Chicago, Weil began to suffer one setback after another. Fred Buckminister was arrested for a federal offense and sent to prison. Many of Weil's other associates were also sent to jail and he found his reputation preceded him wherever he went. On Feb. 3, 1934, Weil was arrested in a Peoria, Ill., hotel room. Police had heard that he was in town and about to put across another swindle. They found two suitcases in his room filled with newspaper cut to the size of money, banded together in piles and marked "$200,000." Since the arrest was premature, Peoria Police Chief Walter Williams could only hold Weil for a short time. "I know you're up to something, Kid," Williams told Weil.

"Give me proof that I've broken the law," Weil challenged Williams.

"I can't," said the disgusted police chief, "so I have to turn you loose. You get on a train and get out of town. If you ever come back to Peoria, we'll thrown you in jail on suspicion."

Weil left town, realizing that his infamy was his undoing. He went into semi-retirement. He lived off his swindled fortunes for some years and then wrote his memoirs in 1948. Still, Weil pulled a short con or two in his dotage merely to keep busy. The author met Weil in the early 1960s, when Weil was in his eighties and knew him until his death in 1976 at the age of 101. At one point the author spotted Weil standing at a corner on the North Side of Chicago. He was not wearing his customary elegant attire, but was startlingly dressed in threadbare clothes that verged on being rags. He was unshaven and dirty.

Weil staunchly declined an offer of money to see him through this period of financial reversal, and after continuously asking the author to "get out of here," he became angry and finally blurted: "Go away, dammit, can't you see I'm working!" He had been interrupted during one of his short cons while awaiting the arrival of the traditional sucker. Weil finally retired to a North Side nursing home where the author regularly visited him. At one point he was asked: "If you could get out of that wheel chair and get to the street, would you attempt to pull off another scam?"

Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil did not hesitate for a moment, replying: "Does a hungry dog like food?" He died a few days later and was buried in Archer Woods on the South Side of Chicago, interred in a pauper's grave.

Weyman, Stanley Clifford (AKA: Stephen Jacob Weinberg, Ethan Allen Weinberg), 1890-1960, U.S., fraud. Con man Stanley Clifford Weyman, who engaged in deceptions for most of his life, was proficient in his many impersonations. In 1921 Weyman introduced himself to Princess Fatima of Afghanistan as a naval officer representing the U.S. State Department. While escorting her around New York, he bilked the princess out of $10,000. He was imprisoned the following year for impersonating a hospital administrator who took patients' money. His sentence was lengthened by two years for defrauding Princess Fatima.

Many of Weyman's activities were for fun rather than for profit. He masqueraded as an authority on prison reform at Sing Sing. Following the death of Rudolph Valentino, he posed as a physician and arranged to attend to griefstricken actress Pola Negri. When reporters discovered he was a fraud, the actress defended him and no charges were brought. Once, posing as the consul general to Algiers, he invited a number of illustrious people to dinner at the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn. Although the party was a huge success, he was subsequently unmasked and his father had to pay the $400 bill and bail him out of jail.

While clerking at a hotel in Yonkers, N.Y., Weyman struggled with robbers to keep them from getting the hotel's cash box. He succeeded, but he was killed.

Whitney, Richard, 1889-1974, U.S., embez. Richard Whitney was no grass roots hustler. He was deeply rooted in the American past, and he looked like it, a tall, ruddy-faced (thanks to his fondness for bonded whiskey), lantern-jawed man who dressed and spoke impeccably, a man of wealth and tradition who was thought to be the very image of America's super rich and super intelligent businessman. In reality he was, after two decades of the most horrendous frauds and swindles, discovered to be as crooked as the cheapest mugger absconding with a bag lady's purse. Yet even when he went behind bars he insisted upon the courtesies extended to any high-born gentleman.

Whitney's ancestors were easily traced back to Plymouth Rock, coming from England on the Arabelle in 1630, in the wake of the Mayflower. Born in 1889, the son of a Boston banker, Whitney attended Groton, an exclusive boy's preparatory school, where he established himself as a resolute leader, becoming captain of the football and baseball teams. At Harvard, where he became an important man on campus, he was an oarsman helping to triumph over other ivy-league boat racers in 1909. He exemplified the well-dressed, well-groomed, well-educated Bostonian who could be counted on to become a captain of finance. His brother George, who attended the same schools, however, was nothing like his outgoing, limelight-loving brother Richard, a serious and stellar student who spent his time in the library and not on the gridiron or pursuing popular college activities. George Whitney would die a multi-millionaire partner in
the omnipotent firm of J.P. Morgan, while his dashing and suave brother would end up struggling to pay his laundry bills.

At twenty-seven Richard decided to marry well, wedding Mrs. Gertrude Sheldon Sands in 1916. She was a widow of one of the Vanderbilts. Also in that year, Richard placed himself on the New York Stock Exchange, buying a seat with money loaned to him by a relative. Through his father-in-law, George Sheldon, who was head of the Union League Club and treasurer of the Republican National Committee, Whitney came to meet what few members of New York's 400 he had not already met through his own family connections. These could not only be well-paying customers with staggering commissions, but, later on, individuals from whom Richard Whitney would borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars.

As a broker, Whitney soon earned a reputation as a hard-driving, keen-minded businessman of short words and an occasional acid tongue which could whiplash any subordinate into frenzied duties. He was equally short with his peers who respected but never as a whole liked the man. He was a good organizer, so good that he was soon a member of the governing committee at the exchange, becoming its chairman. He sat in judgment of members accused of misconduct, an ironic role considering Whitney's later transgressions. Whitney's rise was meteoric at the exchange. He was 39-years-old in 1928 when he was elected vice-president and forty-one in 1930 when he became the exchange's president, the youngest man to hold that post in the history of the securities exchange.

In addition to the prestige these Olympian positions brought Whitney, he became the Morgan broker. Orders placed by J.P. Morgan and Company earned Whitney more than $50,000 in commissions alone from this account each year. (The Morgan orders actually came through Whitney's brother George who was a high-ranking company official and later a Morgan partner.) Yet these handsome profits proved to be inadequate for Whitney whose tastes ran to the sublimely expensive.

Whitney and his wife maintained a 495-acre estate at Far Hills, N.J., and a Manhattan townhouse. He owned a fleet of eight expensive cars and a yacht. An army of servants slaved to meet his needs-butlers, maids, cooks, and at the country estate gardeners, herdsmen for his dogs and foxes (he rode with the hounds regularly), and jockeys for his private stable of horses, which cost him thousands each month. His wardrobe was vast with over fifty newly tailored suits hanging in his closets. His wine cellar was always stocked with magnums of champagne and vintage imported wines. He also maintained elegant, fifteen-room offices on Broad Street.

All of these enormous costs caused Richard Whitney to look about frantically for capital. He began borrowing from his brother George--during the mid-1920s, as much as $575,000--to purchase fertilizer and mineral stocks which proved worthless. The man who was thought to be the most astute securities analyst in the country knew nothing about stocks and repeatedly plunged into foolhardy, even bizarre investments that spiraled his debts into the millions. Whitney used as collateral more than $100,000 in stocks which belonged to the account of his dead father-in-law to cover one loan from the Corn Exchange Bank, where he was director and later president--the first of his criminal acts of embezzlement and fraud.

He continued plunging in useless stocks for which he became the chief purchaser and using securities and stocks of others he was holding as collateral for loans that soared into the millions, loans so large that he could not even afford to pay the interest on them, a maddening, round-robin routine that would have caused any normal man to crack, but Richard Whitney was a nerveless type and raced forward in his wild schemes, confident that he would eventually make a killing that would pay off all his debts. A great deal of his courage undoubtedly stemmed from his knowledge that his brother George was always available for a vital bailout.

For a brief moment in the Great Crash of 1929, this misfit of finance became a hero in the eyes of the world. On Oct. 24, 1929, Black Thursday, when stocks were crashing downward across the board, Whitney, who was then vice-president of the exchange and the ranking officer present (with exchange president Edward H.H. Simon in Europe) went to the rescue of the market. Actually, he had been selected to represent J.P. Morgan and Company and the pool of great investors Morgan had gathered to shore up the sinking stock market.

As panic gripped the floor of the exchange and brokers burst blood vessels in desperation to sell off stock, Whitney, calm and stoic, appeared at 1:30 p.m. The hundreds of fear-frenzied men on the floor became, in the instant of his appearance, a stone-silent crowd, staring at him as he moved resolutely to Post Two. He said in a loud clear voice which he obviously intended the entire floor to hear, (directing his question to Oliver Bridgeman): "What was the last bid you received for Steel?"

"One-ninety-five," replied Bridgeman.

In an even louder voice, like that of a rescuing god, Richard Whitney boomed: "Ten thousand at two hundred and five!" This was ten points above the last bid and the price of the last sale. In that second he had tossed more than $2 million of the Morgan pool into the market to stem the downward tide. The act was electric and caused the brokers to shout out roaring cheers. Whitney, the hero of the hour, his finest moment in life, in fact, then marched like an avenging angel against fear and panic, to several more posts placing upward of $30 million in purchase orders of fifteen or twenty important stocks in blocks of 10,000 shares.

As the Morgan people estimated, the clear movement by their moneyed clan to back up the market caused a brisk rally that sent the stock market upward again, dizzily so. But the downward trend had been gnawing away at the underpinnings of the synthetic market for many months, and the move by Whitney, representing Morgan and his people, really came too late. The selling panic resumed the next day and the following week, on Black Tuesday, Oct. 29, 1929, the market all but collapsed. The pandemonium was ear-shattering as supposedly solid stocks fell $40, $50, even $60 a share, more than sixteen million shares being sold. It was, as the New York World termed it, "a financial nightmare, comparable to nothing ever before experienced in Wall Street."

Bedlam ruled the exchange floor that day. Said one stock exchange guard who witnessed the financial collapse: "They (the brokers) roared like a lot of lions and tigers. They hollered and screamed, they clawed at one another's collars. It was like a bunch of crazy men. Every once in a while, when Radio or Steel or Auburn would take another tumble, you'd see some poor devil collapse and fall to the floor."

Whitney did not appear on the floor that fatal day. He had made his bold play the week before and Morgan's people, seeing that their millions had not stemmed the tide, refused to pour more millions down the drain. Whitney and other high-ranking exchange members sat in a smoking room beneath the floor puffing on cigarettes, helpless. Whitney later remembered how the "panic was raging overhead on the floor. Every few minutes the latest prices were announced, with quotations moving swiftly and irresistibly downward. The feeling of those present was revealed by their habit of continually lighting cigarettes, taking a puff or two, putting them out and lighting new one-a practice that soon made the narrow room blue with smoke and extremely stuffy."

When many of his ruined peers later blew out their brains or stuffed their heads into gas stoves or leaped from high office windows, Whitney merely shrugged. He would survive and did, but his methods had nothing to do with the business practices his exchange committee insisted be followed. In Summer 1930, Whitney was given charge of the New York Yacht Club's securities, worth more than $100,000; he was then president of the club. Whitney, instead of locking these in his vault, used them to negotiate personal loans at thirteen separate banks. Moreover, he walked into the Corn Exchange Bank, where he was a director, and demanded and got, without any securities, another $300,000 loan. When another nervous director asked timidly what the dynamic stock exchange president (he would serve four terms in that lofty office) was putting up as collateral, Whitney replied archly with his favorite line: "I am taking the loan on my face."

By 1934, Whitney's incredible loans, which totaled in the millions, cost him $250,000 a year in interest, and to cover this, he took out more loans using as collateral more securities belonging to others and entrusted to his care. He shamelessly borrowed $2 million from his brother George, but this gave him only momentary relief from his debts. (George Whitney was never repaid for the many enormous loans made to his brother, and these amounts later became nothing more than very costly gifts.)

When Prohibition was repealed, Whitney thought that the shrewdest investment he could make would be to buy the controlling stock in Distilled Liquors Corporation which was about to turn out millions of gallons of alcoholic applejack. First he bought 15,000 shares at $15 each and was pleased to see the stock shoot to $45. He did not, however, sell out and take his handsome profits which would have helped to set his ledgers right. He stayed with the stock which began to plunge when consumers opted for beer and wine and hard liquor. Still, he continued to buy more and more of DLC stock, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the losing proposition, good money after bad, again and again. He took out more loans, borrowed more money. He never had enough.

In 1937, another windfall presented itself to the drowning broker. The stock exchange entrusted to his care its Gratuity Fund of more than $2 million in cash and bonds, sums taxed from exchange members and intended for widow and orphans of deceased members. Whitney promptly used the bonds a collateral for new loans and used the cash to pay off interest on old loans.

At a meeting of trustees for the fund it was voted that $175,000 in bonds be sold and that these bonds be turned back by Whitney. He was asked politely five times by George W. Lutes, clerk of the trustees group, to return the bonds for sale but Whitney stalled him. Finally the trustees gave Whitney a deadline to return the bonds.

The casual broker was unruffled. He went to millionaire Bernard Smith, a powerful stockbroker he barely knew and boldly asked Smith to loan him $250,000.

"On what collateral?" asked Smith.

"On my face," replied Whitney with his favorite line.

"I don't like your face," snorted Smith and closed the discussion.

Whitney went back to brother George who, along with other Morgan partners, agreed to cover the losses to save the face of J.P. Morgan and Company. But the self-destructive, money-hungry Richard went on as before and within the next twelve months took out staggering loans that exceeded $27 million. There was really no hope of ever even paying off the interest on this amount, let alone the principal. Finally, after being compelled to submit to the exchange a routine financial statement, it was obvious to executive board members that Whitney's firm existed only on paper and had been gutted by its director. He was asked to withdraw from the exchange, despite pleas he made to Averell Harriman, a partner in Brown Brothers, Harriman and Company, to bail him out.

Brother George could no longer help. Other Morgan partners felt that they could no longer spend millions to support Richard Whitney's wastrel ways. When the broker's firm was removed from the exchange it became apparent that he had at least mismanaged funds, and this brought about an investigation into his incredible affairs by New York's energetic District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey.

All of Whitney's many years of fraud were slowly revealed, and he was arrested and charged with embezzling his father-in-law's estate. His trial was brief and he was quickly convicted, sentenced to five years in Sing Sing. When Richard Whitney went to prison, his conduct was as formal as if he were entering one of his private clubs. He was more than $6 million in personal debt, not including the almost $3 million his brother had given him. His townhouse and country estates, his horses, cars, and even his wardrobe had been sold to pay creditors.

Yet the stolid, gray-faced man insisted upon personal dignity and was strangely accorded high respect by fellow convicts in Sing Sing--they tipped their hats to him--even the guards. When he first arrived in prison, a turnkey stated: "All men who came in Saturday and Mr. Whitney please step out of their cells." He was addressed as "Mr. Whitney" by convicts and guards alike through his three-year stay at Sing Sing, being paroled in 1941.

The fact that Whitney had stolen millions and had only received a minimum five-year sentence rankled many citizens, and, in particular, a St. Louis judge. The judge was to sentence a youth who had stole $2 from a gas station. One report stated: "Taking pencil and paper, he made elaborate computations and then announced his decision. Richard Whitney got five years for stealing $225,000, he said. That would be $45,000 a year, $120 a day, $5 an hour. You stole $2. That would be twenty-four minutes and that is your sentence!"

When Whitney emerged from prison, he returned to his heavily mortgaged estate and his wife Gertrude. His brother George saw to it that Richard could live out his life in the comfort to which he was accustomed, irrespective of the blatant corruption with which he had stained the Whitney name. On Dec. 5, 1974, Richard Whitney died in comfort at the age of eighty-six.

Whitney is not remembered with ill will by members of the New York Stock Exchange. He is not remembered at all. In the elegant Board of Governors room at the exchange hang huge oil paintings of past presidents of the exchange, all except one--Whitney.

Wild Animal Hoax, 1874, U.S., hoax. On Nov. 9, 1874, readers of the New York Herald awoke to the startling news of a mass escape of animals from the Central Park Zoo. Forty-nine people were said to be dead, while more than 200 were injured, many of them seriously. Twelve animals were still at large, and prominent New Yorkers were taking part in an animal hunt. It was only in the last paragraph that the story was revealed to be a hoax. It had been written to draw attention to the zoo's problems, but many people never reached the final paragraph. One staff member appeared in the office with two revolvers, ready to join the search, while the editor of the rival New York Times berated officials at police headquarters for giving the Herald an exclusive story.

Williamson Family (AKA: The Terrible Williamsons), c.1895- , U.S., fraud-rob.asslt. For almost a century, the con artists descended from Robert Logan Williamson have bilked Americans in every state. Their swindles have changed with the times, but their tightknit clan continues to expand. Recent estimates put their income at $5 million per year. Robert Williamson moved from Scotland to Brooklyn in 1895, started his family, and quickly turned them into gypsies, picking up cheap merchandise in one place, and selling the goods elsewhere for fifteen or twenty times the price. The clan centered in Cincinnati, though it cannot be considered their home. The entire family returns there at least once a year. Outside of Cincinnati, they live out of their cars, usually very comfortable and expensive ones, taking over whole motels when they reach a destination.

Every member of the family is expected to return a portion of his or her take to the head of the family. The Williamsons often concentrate on door-to-door sales. Some hunt weathered houses and offer to paint them for a small amount of money. Their paint is adulterated with cheap oil so that by the time the painters have disappeared, money in hand, the paint is already running off the house. Other Williamsons sell bogus Irish lace, Persian rugs, "Harris tweed," or lightning rods sold as metal but made of wood. The most frequent arrests of the Williamsons are for peddling without a license. Usually those arrested put up bail and then disappear. The family regards such expense as a normal cost of doing business. In 1936, George C. Williamson once killed Isaac Cotton Williamson with a knife in an argument over which one had the right to work a certain territory. After attempting suicide, George was sent to jail for two years on a manslaughter conviction. The family is probably better known, however, to the Better Business Bureaus in major cities due to complaints received.

One member of the clan, Charles Williamson, disliked what his family was doing, and in 1938 began to notify Better Business Bureau officials of when the group was about to descend on a city. In 1966, more than 600 clan members swarmed over Los Angeles selling housing repairs.

Wilson, Sarah, b.1755, U.S., fraud. Sarah Wilson thought that being a member of the royal family was better than working for the royal family. Born in 1755, in Staffordshire, England, Wilson moved to London as a 16-year-old, and was employed as a maid to Caroline Vernon, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte. Wilson was caught stealing a number of jewels, a dress, and a portrait from the queen, and sentenced to death. Vernon interceded, and Wilson was instead exiled to the American colonies, where she was employed by William Devall. Still in possession of the stolen goods, Wilson abandoned Devall and entered Virginia society, posing as the queen's sister. In 1773, after two years as the belle of the south, she was apprehended in Charleston, S.C., and returned to Devall at gunpoint. She remained in his employ until 1775, when she swapped identities with another servant and disappeared to marry British army officer William Talbot. After the Revolutionary War, the two became U.S. citizens and spent the rest of their lives in New York.

Woodfield, Lawrence, See: Banuolo, Donna

Woodward, William Carroll (AKA: Senator Lionel Musgrave, Big Bill Hawley, The
Old Boy Himself), b.c.1860, U.S., fraud. The self-professed "dean of U.S. confidence men," William Carroll Woodward amassed more than $4 million through confidence games on four continents. Arrested thirty-seven times by the age of thirty-seven, Woodward started as a police reporter. He was allegedly involved in a 1916 U.S. gang that blackmailed several prominent people by posing as U.S. marshals with arrest warrants for their participation in white slavery. Woodward opened a gaming parlor in Kensington, England, and came home with $800,000. Woodward swindled jewels valued at $250,000 from an Indian merchant in Ceylon, and collected $50,000 as "The National Old Age Pension Bureau" before it was shut down by Philadelphia police. In 1929, at the age of seventy -one, Woodward sued pulp fiction writer James R. Crowell for $15,000 for detailing his exploits in Detective Fiction.

Wurzburg Stones, 18th Cent., Ger., hoax. An over-zealous professor's students perpetrated a hoax which ruined his career. Johann Bartholomaeus Adam Beringer, a professor of natural philosophy, was a deeply religious man, who had a theory that fossils, which were the main subject of attention in the scientific world at that time, were "capricious fabrications of God." Beringer believed fossils were hidden in the earth for some unknown purpose, perhaps to test man's faith. Obsessed with gaining recognition for his theory, Beringer alienated his University of Wurzburg students by continually harping on this theme. Imitating a joke played on mathematician Athanasius Kircher in the seventeenth century, the students planted clay tablets inscribed in Arabic, Syriac, Babylonian, and Hebrew on a hillside where Beringer took his classes to search for specimens. After a few easy successes, the students inscribed God's signature on one of the ersatz fossils. Beringer was ecstatic, believing his theories justified by this proof, and began writing a book in Latin about his philosophy and the evidence. At great cost, he had engravings made of the stones and tablets.

The students confessed, but their teacher refused to believe them, accusing them of trying to rob him of the honor of his greatest discovery. Lithographiae Wirceburgensis appeared in 1728, with fourteen chapters and twenty-one plates of the figures. Beringer, who became a laughingstock, spent the rest of his fortune buying back the copies and was said to have died of a broken heart. A Hamburg bookseller named Hobard later bought all available copies and reissued them in a second edition under a new title.

Wyatt, See: Crane, William