Evening Star Newspaper, November 29, 1936, Page 22

Matrimonial Swindles Plague Postal Agents Inspectors Uncover Purging Mails Clever “Racket” in Detroitin Efforts to Curb Wide- spread Frauds. BY the Associated Press. Postal inspectors called on & man in | Detroit last week. They showed him a batch of checks he had cashed under a woman'’s name, charged him with obtaining the checks | from men who wanted to marry by re- | plying to matrimonial advertisements | and signing a woman's name to the letters, The checks, they said, had been sent to him to enable the woman the men thought he was to travel to them for the visit to a justice of peace. The man de- nied the charges. He said his wife conducted the racket, collected checks. His wife said he did. That was just one of the little 4 i | publicized cases dealt with by the men who guard the United States mails from criminals. Matrimonial Racket Is “Meanest.” Clarence L. Williams, assistant sup- | erintendent of postal inspectors, said today the racket conducted through | matrimonial agencies was one of the “meanest” they had to deal with. | “The agencies themselves usually | stay within the law,” he said, “be-; cause if they carry out promises to| supply names and addresses of persons corresponding with them, we can't touch them. But we do arrest between 20 or 25 persons a year for victimizing people they reached through such agencies. ! Racketeers of both sexes, he con-| tinued, will ask “‘advances” from pros- pective mates for clothes and traveling expenses with no intention of going| further. Sometimes it is the prospective brides who are betrayed and the Post | Office Department's files have at least | one case in which a woman was lured to her death by a twentieth century ' bluebeard. i “Glimmer Game” Is Common. | C. L. Williams. The “glimmer game” is one of the most prevalent of contemporary rack- ets though many of its operators, who have been reaping millions of dollars annually, have taken cover during the | past four months in the face of a de- termined drive by inspectors. ‘The “glimmer” scheme is worked by men traveling in pairs through rural areas. One of the pair poses as “an eminent physician just passing | through” and the other as his lawyer | “friend.” The “travelers” stop to call | on wealthy people, predetermined to ! | sale. such as automobile tires batteries, nave some kind of eye ailment, on some pretext such as asking water for their car or to express admiration for the victim’s farm. Before leaving, the swindlers perform a mock “operation” at an exorbitant-fee or lend some sort of “curative” apparatus on receipt of an equally exorbitant ‘“‘deposit.” The racket gets its name from underworld slang for spectacles, “glimmers” or “glims.” Work-at-home rackets flourished a few years ago, but have declined in popularity since subjected to Govern- ment scrutiny. These schemes in- volved the sale of machines and tools, with false promises of a ready market for the finished product. Often both machines and materials were of in- ferior quality. “Buried Gold” Still a Lure. Advice for locating buried gold is still a lucrative source of income—for the salesman. It usually involves a “detector,” which may be a simple divining rod or an elaborate affair heavy with batteries and electricad | gadgets. They find a ready market. | Some coin dealers sell catalogues listing “valuable” coins, but sidestep adroitly when pressed to purchase | listed coins. | More widely known, perhaps, be- cause of the recent, widely publicized | trial of Oscar M. Hartzell and his | sociates, is the ‘“inherited estate’ racket. Hartzell received vast sums from persons who were led to believe | they were entitled, as descendants, to | share property in England purported to be that of Sir Francis Drake, Hart- | zell is in Leavenworth. Insurance Swindles Widespread. Insurance swindles are also wide- spread and reputable insurance com- panies keep constant vigil against fraudulent claims. Sometimes it is the company and not the policy holder who falls under suspicion, for some unscrupulous firms have been detected issuing policies so worded as to make it almost impossible for a policy holder or his beneficiaries to collect. Other firms “guarantee” mortgages. One such firm, exposed in Philadelphia re- cently. took in more than $1,000,000,- 000 before discovered. More than a score of other rackets are under current investigation. These include the “dog racket,” the sale of mongrels as pedigreed animals. Pere sons will advertise common articles for model airplanes or radios, and then, after receiving orders, will pocket the money without making delivery. This racketeer is easy to apprehend, ‘Williams asserted, though many times | investigation has disclosed that no swindle was intended. A clerk's error in a reputable mail order business | house, for example, may bring a flood of complaints to the department. Social Security (Continued From Page B-1) in another machine along with the ledger made from the master card, and the account is posted. This proc- ess is repeated very three months. ‘The ledgers are to be about 612 by 11 inches, and Joseph L. Fay, chief{ of operations, figures each will be | sufficiently large to carry a worker | through for 5 or 10 years. So that will take care of | #577-01-0001" until January 1, 1942, or thereafter, when actual payments | of pensions begin to be made, and | officers haven't decided yet just what the mechanics will be for this final operation, While the Social Security Board faces an admittedly titanic task, so carefully has the records-keeping ma- chinery itself been geared that it ap- pears capable of slipping into motion without a hitch. Space Lacking in Capital. | It was recognized at the outset that space was the first requisite, and when | it was not obtainable here in Wash- ington two floors were leased in the old Candler Building down in the Baltimore shipping district. There about 120,000 square feet of open floor was taken over, and this is expected to meet the needs for some time to come. Here, about 700 employes are on duty; eventually this figure is ex- pected to reach 2,000. There are 450 of the various machines in service, with women for the most part being assigned to the punchers, at which they can sit down, and men to the others. With employe records begin- ning to drift in, the actual recording work is due to start tomorrow, and first through the mill will be a con- signment from New York. Several batches also have been cleared through by Postmaster Vincent C. Burke of ‘Washington. In about two weeks, & night force will be put on, and on the basis of the two seven-hour shifts thereby established, it is estimated that the accounts of 600,000 employes can be wet up daily. Force Entirely Civil Service. The force is entirely civil service— and will be. It was recruited from | registers established by the Civil Serv- 1ice Commission in a business machine examination & year ago, and conse- gently those composing it had only to acquaint themselves with the par- ticular needs of the new service when they went to work. The machines are leased from the maker—International Business Ma- chine Corp., of Endicott, N. Y., which also has a staff temporarily on duty In the Division of Records to iron out the early problems that inevitably arise in such a huge undertaking. Six of the seven machines that now are in use—the eighth comes later—were standard products of I. B. M., which were adapted to the social security work, with minor changes. The other —the alphabetical interpreter—was being designed at the time the need for such a device became apparent at the Social Security Board. There- upon, its manufacture was speeded up, 80 it would be available. This leasing arrangement costs the Government $438,000 this year. The machines operate at high speed, each handling cards hourly by the . thousands, under the guidance of a single operator, and quickly rejecting any where the data should match and do not. In the end their product is in a very compact form. For example, 2,000 ordinary filing cases are sxpected to be all the Division of Records will need for some time. Insect Poison From Roots. | Prancis J. Sinnott of Brooklyn said | quoted as saying she had not decided |and were to have been filed by No- | oil producers, said today the firm was 26,000 IN BROOKLYN FAIL TO FILE FORMS Employers Who Did Not Apply for Social Security Numbers to Be Listed. By the Associated Press. NEW YORK, November 28—The New York Times says Postmaster tonight he was listing 26,000 Brooklyn employers who had failed to apply for employer identification numbers under the social security act. The list, it was stated, would be sub- | mitted to Social Security Regional Director Anna M. Rosenberg, who was on a course of action. The employer number application forms were sent out November 16| vember 21. The newspaper quoted Sinnott as saying the 26,000 delin- quent business men constituted about | 23 per cent of form recipients. A spokesman for the Texas Corp., filing with its social security returns technical legal objections to protect them in case the act was declared un- constitutional. TRIO FEARED DROWNED ALBEMARLE, N. C.,, November 28 (#).-—Officers patrolled Badin Lake at Tuckertown, near here, today for some trace of the bodies of three men who were believed to have drowned when their boat capsized Thursday night. Search was started for the men when the boat they took to cross the lake on a hunting trip was found washed ashore. The men were Allan Miller, Ervin Frick and Sam Montgomery. They all lived in this section. S Submarine Is Salvaged. KIEL, Germany, November 28 ().— Salvaging of the German submarine sunk in Luebeck Bay last week with loss of eight lives was completed today and the wrecked craft was towed here. Eight coffins awaited the victims, to be buried Monday with naval honors. LOCAL or L,(‘)NG DISTANCE Estimates on Moving, Storage or Packing Gladly Furnished. 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