The Real Estate Swindler Who Fooled Seattle
A smooth-talking con artist masquerading as an 'Eastern capitalist' swindled multiple Seattle banks by weaving himself into the city's booming real estate market.
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.
The arrest of members of a clever gang of forgers has revealed that a year ago, three Seattle banks were swindled out of $4,000 by the gang's leader. The man, who operated under the alias 'Albert Hunter' (real name A. J. Conover), conducted his operations under the pretense of buying local real estate. He would visit real estate offices, study maps, and feign interest in property investments to earn the trust of firms. He would eventually ask a real estate agent to exchange a draft for cash, claiming he disliked carrying large sums. By involving the agent in the transaction and using them as a reference at the bank, he successfully cashed forged drafts. Conover simultaneously carried out deals with three different firms across the city, bringing them all to a close on March 6, 1891, before fleeing to Tacoma and beyond. The forgeries were highly sophisticated, featuring handsome lithography and deliberate alterations to names to create legal loopholes. Detective Albert Lucas was hired by the victimized banks, leading to a continent-wide pursuit that eventually resulted in the capture of the gang members.
“The real estate man, eager to oblige a prospective purchaser, would readily do this, and thus Conover learned a point essential to his game—the name of the bank where the real estate man did business.”
The 'Albert Hunter' scam mirrors the persistent vulnerability of real estate and financial institutions to social engineering. While modern cybersecurity has replaced paper draft forgeries, the exploitation of local business trust and the lure of 'wealthy investors' remains a classic, recurring feature of Seattle's property-obsessed economy.
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