Satan's Invisible World Displayed; or, Despairing Democracy: A Study of Greater New YorkStead, W. T. (William Thomas)
History
Satan's Invisible World Displayed; or, Despairing Democracy: A Study of Greater New York
Stead, W. T. (William Thomas)
New York (N.Y.) -- Politics and government; Police -- New York (State) -- New York
A. They would put the money in one box for the man, in a box like
that, and that would be a deal of from about 300 dollars to 500
dollars; they would put the money in this box and it would be in front
of the victim, and in the meantime a duplicate box would be behind the
partition, and in the duplicate box there would be a brick and some
paper, and they would put the money in this box here on the desk and
lock it up before the victim; it would be on the back of the desk like
that, and then Billy Vosburgh would say, “Get that book,” and with
that they would lift up the desk and that would hide the box from the
victim, and then Walter McNally, who did the ringing, would open his
trap door and take this box in and put the other box out; it would all
be done in a second.
Q. I will now hand you this fifth box; what is that used for?
A. That was used for the bank roll.
Q. What is there--is there a false lid to that?
A. No; there is one, yes.
Q. How was the bank roll brought into play there; explain about that?
A. The bank roll would be laid right in there, 8,200 dollars; it would
be laid there. There was supposed to be 8,200 dollars done up in
packages, with three elastics around them.
Q. Now, I hand you this book, and ask you if those were the packages
there were exchanged for the genuine packages?
A. Yes, sir; these were, as we called them, the dummies.
Q. Explain how they were operated?
A. You see this is a package supposed to be of 5 dollar bills. There
would be a good one on the top, and a good one on the bottom, and here
would lay the same package of genuine money, and Walter would count
out, say, 200 dollars in 5 dollar bills, which would be so much, and
he would say, to save time, “We will measure the packages together,
and, instead of counting each and every bill, we will put the packages
together,” and the victim would think there was the same amount of
money in each one, and then, through sleight-of-hand, he would put
these in the box, and the good money on top; and if the victim wanted
to see the packages again he would show them, and the one on top would
be good money; and if the victim is a hard victim, he might want to
take the money with him, and then Walter would shift these packages,
and, therefore, he got about 60 dollars for 500 dollars or 1,000
dollars.
Q. And the victim would get those packages that we now exhibit,
instead of the packages containing the good money that he has seen?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. There were many of those in use, were there not?
A. Yes, sir, we would never take the elastics off these; we would just
take the elastics off the good money.
Q. Here is a box with a heavy weight; see what is in this box?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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