Weeks later the trust officer was astonished to receive from an old
personal friend, who was knocking about in the west, a circular of
the Brite & Fair Bonanza Company, in which the big trust company was
designated as "trustee" for the "B. & F." stocks. As the friend who
forwarded the circular knew something of the wildcat nature of the
Brite & Fair enterprise, his comments on the folly of the bank's
accepting such a "trust" had an edge on them.
When the matter was investigated it was found that the whole plot had
been carefully concocted and worked up; that the circulars had been
printed and put in directed envelopes ready for mailing in advance of
the placing of the so-called "trust," and that when the trust officer
of the solid financial institution had given his receipt for the
"sealed package said to contain valuable papers," a telegram had been
sent by the "fiscal agent" to "mail out trustee circulars." The man in
this scheme, of course, believed that, as the circulars were being
mailed out into a territory about a thousand miles from the city in
which the banking and trust company was located, the trust officer who
had been imposed upon would never hear of the misuse of his receipt
for a "dummy" package which actually contained certificates of the
mining company's stock.
Why did the men who worked this scheme to steal the moral support of
the big trust company go to so great pains to get it? Because fake
investment operators have found it profitable to take every precaution
to give the color of legality to their acts, they have found it
profitable to hire shrewd legal pilots to tell them just how far
they may go in a given direction without running upon the reefs of
the United States postoffice's "fraud order" or upon the rocks of a
"conspiracy" prosecution.