The Teenager Who Swindled Seattle’s Banks
A seventeen-year-old impersonator uses forged signatures and a smooth story to walk away with five hundred dollars from city financiers.
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.
A 17-year-old lad, sailing under the name of William Benson, swindled the Guarantee Loan and Trust Company and the Filkins Banking Company out of $250 each. Posing as a city-bred youth from Denver, he wrote letters to local businessmen—including Charles T. Conover of the Rainier Club—ostensibly for business purposes. Once he obtained their signatures in their replies, he forged them onto checks. He arrived at the Filkins Banking Company with a check for $250, told a convincing story about his uncle, and successfully withdrew the cash. He repeated the scam at the Guarantee Loan and Trust Company in the Bailey Building. Benson then departed the Arlington hotel and is believed to have escaped the city, likely by steamer to British Columbia.
“The check was indorsed with the signature of Charles T. Conover. The young fellow was so frank and apparently so honest... that Mr. Filkins promptly paid over the $250.”
This 1892 confidence game highlights the early vulnerability of banking institutions to social engineering. While bank security has become significantly more robust, the 'trust-based' nature of the scam—relying on the victim's social standing and the teller's desire to appear helpful—remains a core feature of modern digital phishing attacks.
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