The Counterfeit Gang of Port Townsend
A local variety theater manager and his associates operated a secret 'mint' to flood the Puget Sound region with fake gold, but their scheme was dismantled after laundering operations stretched to Seattle, Tacoma, and Utah.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
P. D. Sprague, well known in Port Townsend as a variety theater manager, is in jail in Salt Lake City, held on a charge of counterfeiting. Sprague left Port Townsend last summer after serving a term for obtaining money under false pretenses. It appears that Sprague was the head of a gang that succeeded in circulating nearly $5,000 of their spurious gold coin before detection. So clever was the counterfeit that $5, $10, and $20 pieces were passed on the tellers of no less than three banks. The plant was a crude affair, consisting of plaster of paris moulds, impressions of different coin denominations, and an electric battery. Officers who worked up the case say the evidence is overwhelming. Sprague's wife is believed to be implicated, and the couple was said to have had several thousand dollars in cash on their person when they left. John Gagnon, a well-known bartender who accompanied them, is also in jail in Salt Lake City. It is believed here that the gang shipped money to agents in Seattle and Tacoma for circulation, as much bogus coin of these denominations has recently been discovered all over the Puget Sound region.
“So clever was the counterfeit that $5, $10 and $20 pieces were passed on the tellers of no less than three banks.”
Counterfeiting rings in the 1890s relied on local trust and porous regional trade, much like modern digital fraud rings that exploit online marketplace vulnerabilities. The story highlights how quickly bad actors used the burgeoning transportation links of the Sound to launder illicit goods across cities—a pattern of regional crime that Seattle still grapples with today.
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