During Colorado’s first 100 years, the state was a paradise for swindlers, counterfeiters, and confidence men. The tricks and scams these grifters pulled were as diverse as the unsuspecting folks they swindled.
Turning up the charm
Dashing swindlers found their good looks and charming dispositions often gave them an edge. Such was the case with the “Beautiful Kleptomaniac,” a flirtatious blonde with sparkling blue eyes who swindled shopkeepers across Colorado in 1896.
Brandishing her dazzling smile, the Beautiful Kleptomaniac bewitched Colorado shopkeepers into selling her expensive merchandise for which she was unable to pay. Silks, furs, and silver trinkets were her favorite goods. She convinced the shopkeepers to deliver the goods to a specific address at a specific time, where she would be waiting with payment.
When the delivery wagon arrived at the address, the alluring swindler claimed she still needed to fetch money from the bank. She talked the driver into leaving her the goods and promised to return to the store that afternoon to make payment. Instead she skipped town with the valuable loot. But unlike other swindlers, the Beautiful Kleptomaniac eventually felt guilty for conning the merchants and mailed their stolen goods back.
The “Social Lion Swindler” stole jewelry from Grand Junction girls in 1914 and left behind a trail of broken hearts. His ruse was simple. He identified girls of marriageable age and charmed them with tales of being a wealthy Dartmouth graduate in search of a soulmate. The girls were quick to fall in love and agreed to entrust their jewelry to his care.
After obtaining the girls’ jewelry and exchanging it for cash at local pawn shops, the Social Lion Swindler skipped town. Meanwhile, the hoodwinked girls remained madly infatuated and held out hope the handsome swindler would return to fulfill his promise of marriage.
Playing the sympathy card
In an era when everyone seemed too trusting, swindlers found success playing the sympathy card. The “Derby Hat Swindler” of 1898 understood the power of pity.
The dark-haired Derby Hat Swindler of 1898 pulled off his grift in Denver neighborhoods by visiting a house next to a store and finding out the name of the person who lived there. Then he went to the neighboring store, said the homeowner had been in an accident, and asked for money to pay for their emergency care.
Eager to assist a neighbor in need, the unsuspecting storekeepers gave the swindler cash. He pocketed the money and moved on to the next neighborhood. His ruse was successful until the day he blundered into the very homeowner for whom he was seeking money at a local bookstore. The Derby Hat Swindler beat a hasty retreat and was never seen in Denver again.
Six months later, the “Funeral Money Swindler “came through Denver. He conned a local pharmacist by pleading for cash to pay the funeral expenses for the burial of his child. Taking pity on the man, the pharmacist gave him money. Later that day, the swindler came back, claiming the funeral would cost more than anticipated. Again the sympathetic pharmacist helped out. The following evening, the greedy swindler visited the pharmacist once more. By then, the pharmacist had wised up. He detained the scammer and summoned the police.
The Funeral Money Swindler wasn’t going to give up that easily. He persuaded the pharmacist to let him go in exchange for returning the ill-gotten money in the morning. He offered to leave his coat and vest as a deposit. Finding the proposal acceptable, the pharmacist let the swindler walk. He should’ve known better. The money was never returned.
Donning costumes
Swindlers knew even the most rudimentary of costumes were the key to pulling off a successful con. As the “Alfalfa Hair Bandit” and “Oat Farm Swindler” discovered, no one suspected a humble farmer.
On a Saturday afternoon in November of 1917, a con man dressed like a farmer with alfalfa seed in his hair arrived in Pueblo on a wagon and purchased goods from local shops. For payment he presented storeowners with forged checks from the Colorado Alfalfa Milling Company. The swindler claimed he received the checks for selling alfalfa to the mill.
Unaware the checks were forged, the storekeepers accepted them as payment. It wasn’t until they tried to deposit the checks that they learned of the ruse. Each storekeeper had been duped out of $18, equal to roughly $440 today.
Predating the Alfalfa Hair Bandit by nearly three decades was the cunning Oat Farm Swindler. He worked his con at grocery stores in Colorado during the winter of 1888. Dressed like a farmer, the swindler convinced grocery men to loan him $5, around $165 today. He promised to repay the loans with a delivery of oats in the morning.
When morning arrived, the Oat Farm Swindler returned to the grocery stores empty-handed. He claimed his wagon had broken down in a remote part of town and asked for a loan to repair it. His plausible story and rustic appearance inspired confidence in the grocers and they typically obliged. The mythical load of oats they were promised never arrived.
The Alfalfa Hair Bandit and Oat Farm Swindler were small potatoes compared to the massive haul taken by a scammer masquerading as an armored car guard in March of 1948. He duped a Denver store out of $30,000, the equivalent of around $390,000 today.
Feeling no need to push his luck, the Armored Car Guard Swindler shed his costume along a stretch of highway east of Denver. The fragments collected by detectives corresponded with the eye-witness descriptions of the uniform worn by the bandit, who had calmly walked out of the store with the day’s receipts.
Tricking housewives
Swindlers happy to pull cheap tricks often targeted housewives. One such swindler called the “Ladies’ Home Journal Swindler” convinced Colorado housewives to buy phony magazine subscriptions in 1905.
Scores of Colorado housewives were duped when a swindler posing as a traveling magazine salesman knocked on their doors and offered a “premium” subscription to Ladies’ Home Journal. The price was too good to be true, but the homemakers couldn’t resist the set of fine dishes that would arrive with their first issue. With much excitement, they gave their money to the swindler, only to face disappointment when neither the dishes nor the magazines showed up.
The magazine subscription con was so fruitful, grifters across the nation got in on it. In the winter of 1905, Ladies’ Home Journal published warnings about the ruse in local newspapers. A $25 reward was offered for the arrest and conviction of anyone peddling bogus subscriptions.
The “Private Mailbox Swindler” of 1898 found similar success conning housewives. Going from door to door in Denver neighborhoods, he convinced unsuspecting homemakers to place orders for specialty letterboxes he had no intention of delivering. He skipped town before news of his con made the papers.
Taking advantage of the poor
Always on the lookout for the next great con, some swindlers stooped to scamming the poor. One of the least scrupulous was the “Mean Swindler” of 1912, who duped penniless young men.
Operating in Colorado mining towns in 1912, the Mean Swindler identified boys working for meager wages. He convinced them he could get them government jobs making $50 a week, the equivalent of $1,600 today. It was too good to be true. The boys were unqualified for the work, but they were ambitious to do better in life.
There was a catch. In order for the boys to secure the high-paying jobs, they needed to buy a special suit of clothes. Fortunately, the swindler could sell them the suit for $15. Lacking the means to pay for the suits, the boys were encouraged to obtain the funds from their mothers. Eager to see their boys succeed, the mothers scraped together the money for suits that would never arrive.
The Mean Swindler would soon get what was coming to him. He spotted the wrong prey in a Leadville shoeshine boy, who sniffed out the ruse and reported him to the undersheriff. A sting was set up in the Leadville post office. When the swindler accepted the boy’s $15 payment, the undersheriff swooped in and took him into custody. As the swindler would discover, using the government’s name with intent to defraud was a punishable charge.
Impersonating medical professionals
Swindlers often found success posing as medical professionals. One such con man, who impersonated an optometrist and carried a pig eyeball floating in alcohol, swindled rural Colorado farmers in 1921.
Moving from one rural farm to the next, the fake optometrist approached farmers at their homes under the guise of seeking a glass of water. He told them he was an optometrist and showed them the pig eyeball, which he claimed he’d surgically removed from a man who was going blind. If the farmers were interested, he could check their vision too.
After looking in the farmers’ eyes, the swindler warned them they were going blind. But this was their lucky day. He could furnish them with special eyeglasses that prevented blindness. Eager to preserve their eyesight, the farmers were duped into buying his cheap, useless eyeglasses.
Another con man, who pretended to be a veterinarian for the state, swindled Colorado cattle ranchers in 1913. Traveling under various aliases, the grifter stopped in at ranches to inquire about the health of their herds. He convinced the ranchers to pay him to treat their sick cows, promising the state would refund their money if the animals didn’t improve in a few days.
Dismayed to find their cows still sick days later, the ranchers submitted reimbursement claims to the “state barn,” unaware they’d been had. When State Veterinarian Dr. W. Yard discovered claims linked to a nonexistent veterinarian were piling up, he notified police of the ruse. But just like the fake optometrist, the phony veterinarian was never caught.
Conning train travelers
Swindlers who targeted travelers were particularly fond of train depots. The “Chloroform Confidence Man” and a grifter named Frank Pine were among the many con artists who found their marks departing trains at Union Station in Denver.
In August of 1909, a wealthy merchant from Nebraska made the mistake of trusting a con man working the Denver train depot. Carrying a large sum of money on his person, the merchant locked eyes with the swindler as he departed his train. The smooth-talking stranger convinced the merchant to go with him to the Wentworth hotel. They got a room there.
The next morning, the merchant awoke to a choking sensation. He opened his eyes to find the young grifter leaning over him, attempting to administer chloroform. A struggle ensued. In an effort to flee, the Chloroform Confidence Man climbed out a third-story window, leaving behind the money he’d planned to steal.
During the 1870s, a grifter named Frank Pine conned countless travelers at Union Station with his hallmark “envelope trick.” His game went like this: He approached a traveler departing a train, showed him a dollar bill, and asked if it looked real. When the traveler said it did, Pine falsely declared it was a fake that could be passed at any saloon. He invited the traveler to come see.
At the saloon, Pine used the dollar to buy them drinks. Amazed by how easily the “fake” currency was accepted, the traveler agreed to invest in $100 worth of the counterfeit bills, which Pine offered to sell for $30. When the pair met later to do the deal, Pine took the $30 payment, then gave the traveler an envelope purportedly stuffed with the counterfeit $100 bills. When the traveler opened the envelope, he found nothing but strips of newspaper inside. The slippery Pine was nowhere in sight.
Pine pulled off his envelope trick many times, until the fall of 1879, when a Swedish traveler who just about fell for it looked in the envelope before Pine could slip away. Discovering the strips of newspaper, he yelled for the police. They captured Pine and recovered the Swede’s $30 payment, roughly equal to $945 today.
Perfecting the art of counterfeiting
In a league of their own were the swindlers who specialized in counterfeiting gold. Within Colorado, these counterfeiters often found small towns ripe for the picking, where shopkeepers were easily fooled by their phony coins.
Located in southern Colorado, the town of Trinidad and its surrounding coal camps were hit by an Italian coin counterfeiter named Giacamo Pantalone in 1912. Saloon owners, shopkeepers, and even bankers were fooled by the Italian’s fake half-eagle gold coins, which were later described as splendid imitations.
Authorities trailed Pantalone for two weeks. When they finally arrested him in Sopris, a coke-oven town near Trinidad, they found several counterfeit coins in his pocket.
Pantalone had likely been working with other gold counterfeiters and may have had ties to a pair of swindlers passing phony coins in Loveland in 1909. Those two narrowly escaped arrest by dumping their coins in Boyd Lake as authorities approached. A Loveland rancher discovered the bag of coins a year later.
Operating as formidable gangs
The most famous swindler to ever operate in Colorado was a fast-talking Civil War veteran named Lou Blonger. His “Million-Dollar Bunko Ring” conned hundreds of tourists passing through Denver in the early 1900s.
Lou Blonger arrived in Denver in the 1880s and opened a saloon on Larimer Street. He was already practiced in the art of the grift, having conned hapless miners in mining camps across the West.
Practicing his cons in Denver put Blonger in direct competition with Soapy Smith, the leader of a confidence gang that operated several rackets in town. The Soapy Smith Gang had been duping Denver tourists since 1879 with their signature Prize Package Soap Sell swindle. It was a clever trick that allowed the gang to profit off large crowds.
To pull off the soap trick, Soapy would set up a display of soap bars on a busy Denver street corner. The bars cost him a nickel each. As curious crowds gathered around, Soapy would wrap some of the bars in paper currency. Then he’d wrap the entire batch in plain paper to conceal those that contained the currency. To the crowd, he’d offer the soaps for $1 to $5 each.
Members of Soapy’s gang, planted in the crowd, would be the first to bid. When they opened their soaps to discover $100 bills, the crowd went wild. Bidding for the remaining soap bars climbed as high as $5, equal to over $150 today. Through sleight-of-hand, Soapy ensured only his men won the money-wrapped bars.
Lou Blonger sought to make an ally out of Soapy Smith. He was only so successful. Their quarrelsome, short-lived arrangement fell apart the night Soapy stormed into Blonger’s saloon and attempted to murder him. Soapy left town, making Blonger the undisputed kingpin of Denver’s underworld.
Running a well-organized confidence ring, Blonger’s wealth grew rapidly. He opened a fake betting house, where his gang convinced unsuspecting customers to place large bets on horse races. They peddled fake company stocks and lottery tickets too.
Intent on protecting his enterprise, Blonger and his right-hand man, Adolph Duff, paid off law enforcement and influenced local elections. When members of the Million-Dollar Bunko Ring were arrested, it was only for show. Nothing could stop the formidable gang.
Everything changed when District Attorney Philip Van Cise was sworn in. Unlike other politicians, his loyalty couldn’t be bought. Bypassing the corrupt officials whom Blonger had in his pocket, Van Cise arrested the bunko kingpin and the 32 con men working for him. Blonger was convicted of numerous crimes and lived out his final days in prison.
