The Cheese Factory Swindle
A Wisconsin cheesemaker looking for opportunity in White Bluffs becomes the target of a classic Seattle bunco scheme.
A few weeks ago, Ernest Pfaeffle, a Swiss cheese maker from Wisconsin, was in White Bluffs looking over this valley with the idea of establishing a cheese factory here. After spending a few days here he left for Seattle, and it is presumed that the Ernest Pfaeffle referred to in the following clipping taken from the Seattle Star is the same man: 'Monday afternoon Ernest Pfaeffle, lately of Wisconsin, invested $6,000 in a cheese factory. A few hours later he walked into the police station and told Detective W. B. Kent he had been buncoed. His $6,000 had disappeared; so had two men to whom he entrusted the money. Pfaeffle, a cheese maker, recently sold out in Wisconsin and came to Seattle. He was evidently discovered by the bunco men and marked down as their prey. They managed to meet him and put before him the cheese factory scheme. He acquiesced. While the Wisconsinite deposited his $6,000 in bills in a cash box, one of the bunco men did the same. At Eighth and Pike one of the crooks feigned illness. The other gave Pfaeffle $5 and told him to go and buy some medicine in a drug store. The cheese maker complied. That was the last he saw of the crooks or his money.'
“He was evidently discovered by the bunco men and marked down as their prey.”
Bunco artists and investment scams have targeted newcomers to the Columbia Basin for over a century, preying on the hopes of those looking to build something new. The dream of a 'cheese factory' in the agricultural heartland was a common pitch during the irrigation boom era.
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