Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1902 — A SWINDLING GAME. [ARTICLE]

A SWINDLING GAME.

A New York Firm Attempts to Swindle Children in Rensselaer. The attention of the postal department should be oalled to a swindle that is being worked right here in Rensselaer and probably in every county in the United States. About two years ago a large number of the ohildren of the town reoeived from a New York oompany packages of “beauty pins,” containing one dozen each of the pins, which were worth probably ten cents per dozen. With the pins came a request that the recipient sell the pins at ten cents each and for their work they would receive either sixty oents per dozen or a prize, whichever they preferred. Some of the children attempted to sell the pins around town with indifferent success. Others, however, did not oare to make peddlers out of themselves, and made no effort to dispose of the worthless stuff. As the pins were not ordered in the first place and as no postage was sent for return of the pins they were not sent back. This week the recipients of the pins were surprised to get duns from a collection agency threatening to bring suit if the pins were not settled for at the rate of $1.20 per dozen, when the original price to the victims if they had disposed of the goods would have been only 60 cents per dozen. The children were considerably frightened at the threat of proseoution and in one case at least the father seemed to be as frightened as the child and sent $3 to square accounts. This is the biggest kind of a swindle and the ones receiving the threatening duns should pay no attention to them farther than to report the matter to the postal department, where steps would probably be taken to indict the swindlers for using the mails to defraud. Since writing the above we see by dispatches from other points that the same game is being worked all over the country. Post office inspectors are instructing the postmasters where the complaints are made to notify the recipients of the letters to ignore the threat, as the scheme was inaugurated by blackmailers.