Читать книгу Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World - Clifton R. Wooldridge - Страница 50

The victim naturally considers a further loan on such diamonds of $200 or $250 a desirable risk. The offer of 10 per cent or more interest on the loan is another allurement which makes the transaction still more desirable. The pawn broker recognizes his ticket, and the diamonds, when redeemed, turn out to be worth considerably less than the amount which the broker was supposed to have advanced on them. The victim loses some more by redeeming the diamonds.

Complaints by such victims have been coming thick and fast into the state's attorney's office in Chicago and other large cities. The conspiracy between the swindler and his accomplice, the pawn broker, is almost self-evident. In some instances indictments have been returned against the perpetrators of the fraud, but the prosecution could not succeed. The reason is obvious. On the face of the transaction everything seemed to be regular, and the defendants could not be made criminally responsible for an erroneous conclusion arrived at by the victims as to the business sagacity of the pawn broker or the probable value of the diamonds. And yet who would doubt, in view of the many identical complaints, that the plans in connection with the fraudulent transaction had been laid carefully in pursuance of a conspiracy to defraud the public?