Double Your Money – Part Thirty Six

Bertha Heyman

If you stumble upon a winning formula, why not exploit it for all it’s worth? This seems to have been the motto of Bertha Heyman, the so-called Confidence Queen of 1880s America. Born in Prussia in the early 1850s, she migrated to the States in 1878, settling in New York. There she started to put her God-given talents to use.

In appearance Bertha was a striking woman, just 5 feet 4.5 inches tall and weighing 245 pounds. Some contemporary reports claim she had a pleasing face but, according to a 1923 article in the New York Times, her picture was “one of the least attractive in the police records of that day.” Her appearance earned her the rather uncharitable sobriquet of Big Bertha. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

Bertha’s initial strategy was to carry out what we now term as advance fee fraud – we came across it before with the Letters of Jerusalem. The story was fairly simple. She had married a rich man whom she was now trying to divorce. If only she could raise enough money to initiate divorce proceedings then all would be hunky dory. The mark would give Bertha the requisite money, on the promise of a share of the riches his generosity had unlocked, but, of course, he would never see Bertha or his money again. Another variant was that she owned some land but without access to her hubby’s money, she couldn’t afford to sell it. The mark would lend her the money against a share of the sale proceeds of the land.

Bertha was very selective as to her victims. She saw a successful scam as an intellectual challenge and so saw no fun in duping fools. As she told the New York Times in 1883, “the moment I discover a man’s a fool, I let him drop, but I delight in getting into the confidence and pockets of men who think they can’t be skinned. It ministers to my intellectual pride.” Some consolation, I suppose, to her victims.

But all good things must come to an end and having defrauded dupes of several thousand dollars, Bertha was arrested and sentenced to five years in chokey on Blackwell’s Island. But being incarcerated didn’t stop her. She is reported to have relieved a prison warder of his life savings!

Realising that New York was on to her, Bertha moved to California and resumed her old ways. In February 1888 she met the Chief Rabbi in San Francisco and span the old story. She was a widow, inheriting $300,000 but the money would only be available to her if her next husband was a nice Jewish man. She even offered $1,000 to the person who would found her next hubby. She was feted and eventually introduced to Abraham Gruhn, a wealthy businessman who was besotted by her, showering her with gifts and jewellery.

There was one problem, though. Bertha’s stepson, Willie, was opposed to the liaison and so to smooth the way Gruhn “lent” him $500. This was the cue for Bertha and Willie to scarper, only pausing to pawn some of the jewellery. Gruhn went to the police and when he told his story, bells started ringing and he recognised Bertha from a photograph held in police records. A warrant was out for her arrest and the duo had their collars felt in Texas.

Bizarrely, a theatre impresario called Ned Foster paid her bail and put her on the stage where she played to large audiences reciting a poem The Confidence Queen in which she painted herself as the misunderstood victim; “”so when vain grasping men/ pant for glittering gold/ and find their bonanza in me/ is it wicked to show up how/ badly they’re sold/ and the rogues that men/ can sometimes be.”

Even Foster became a victim of sorts, falling for a story that Bertha’s trunk had a false bottom in which were secreted thousands of dollars, bonds and some expensive jewellery. On the cusp of paying her $1,600 for the trunk, he had the wit to inspect it. Naturally, there was no false bottom.

Bertha spent the rest of her life running honky-tonk saloons. Willie was less fortunate. He did time for his part in the Gruhn scam.

If you enjoyed this, try Fifty Scams and Hoaxes by Martin Fone

https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes/

Double Your Money – Part Seventeen

The Letters of Jerusalem

Occasionally, just very occasionally, I get an unsolicited e-mail pop into my in-box, usually from an African unknown to me, telling me that they have access to untold wealth. If I would only send them a small sum of money and my bank account details, then they will transfer the money to me, I can take my slice and everything in the garden will be rosy. Smelling a rat, I have never been tempted but the sheer frequency of these e-mails suggests that some must take the bait, lured by the prospect of getting rich quick.

It seems that these emails, which are known as advance fee fraud, follow a long if ignoble traditions, dating back to at least the late 18^th century and revolutionary France if an account published in his memoirs by Eugene Francois Vidocq is to believed. Vidocq was an interesting character, having been an accomplished thief who then became a policeman. When he retired from the force in 1827, he had amassed a fortune of 0.5 million francs. He was also the model for Jacques Collin in Balzac’s Pere Goriot, but that is by the by.

The scam was conducted by prisoners and guards at the Bicetre prison which was in a southern suburb of Paris. The starting point was to compile a list of the rich living in the targeted area, particularly those with anti-revolutionary sentiments. The scammers would then compose what they termed a letter of Jerusalem. Vidocq gave an extensive version of the type of letter, containing many of the characteristics of the modern scamming e-mail, which I will abridge for convenience.

It would start off, “you will doubtlessly be astonished at receiving a letter from a person unknown to you who is about to ask a favour from you; but from the sad condition in which I am placed, I am lost if some honourable person will not lend me succour”. The correspondent then went on to spin a tale in which he and his master were emigrating from revolutionary France on foot, to avoid suspicion, with a casket containing “sixteen hundred francs in gold and the diamonds of the late marchioness”. They were beset by assailants and the valet, acting on his master’s orders, threw the casket into a ditch.

Once the party had reached their foreign destination, funds began to run low and so the valet was sent back to France to recover the casket. The valet was about to recover the casket from the ditch when further troubles befell him. “I prepared to fulfil my mission, when the landlord .. a bitter Jacobin, remarking my embarrassment when he proposed to drink the health of the republic” – a phrase designed to further win the support of the recipients –“had me apprehended as a suspected person”. He was now languishing in jail and if the recipient could only find it in his heart to send some money, then the casket would be recovered and the profits split.

Vidocq claimed that 20% of the letters elicited a response, with correspondents offering to recover the casket from its hiding place. Often a batch of letters would raise the not inconsiderable sum of between 12 and 15,000 francs. Some even visited the area in the hope of finding the casket without the aid of their correspondent but needless to say, their searches turned up nothing. One cloth seller from the Rue de Prouvaires was caught undermining one of the arches of the Pont Neuf in an attempt to find the diamonds of the Duchess de Bouillon which is where his correspondent claimed to have hidden them.

It just goes to show, there is nothing new under the sun.