The 'Perryville' Scam: How a Fake Marriage Left Two Women Broke and Broken
In a tale of deception spanning Los Angeles, Washington, and Canada, two women fall victim to the same con artist who used false matrimonial ads to extract money before fleeing with their savings.
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.
HOTELING NOT THE FATE OF ANOTHER VICTIM OF THE 'PERRYVILLE' SCAM.
WINSTON, Can., March 28.—Anna Burns, a factory worker of Winston, left Los Angeles, Cal., nearly three years ago for London to marry a man whom she had never seen. Her name was 'Train' as Mr. B. N. Newbro, who had left Los Angeles, Cal., and was a wife in fun, she replied, and then went to her. Photographs were exchanged till after the wedding. When they returned from California, Miss Burns discovered that Null must be lost to Los Angeles for face to California.
Miss Burns received the two on a journey and immediately recalled her commission in the mill.
Living in Los Angeles, Mrs. Newbro, aged 35, answered a matrimonial advertisement. It was to effect that Irving W. Dean, a man with $4,000 salary in Washington, was an unmarried first wife. After exchanging several letters and photographs, he sent Mrs. Newbro a ticket to go over East, and if he thought she was well enough to make her his, he would take the case to court and they were married.
Dean, who was in the same factory and could then draw his check for $200, left his wife. Mrs. Dean came for a divorce, asking the custody of her own son and alimony. The body proceeded in the superior court has decided to find a trial in an early day. An analyst gave a divorce with the right to use the name Newbro, and Irving W. Dean, described as a man and has not been seen in Los Angeles.
Mrs. Newbro, unable to locate any of Dean's money or property, was forced to part for her home at cost $50 awarded her by the supreme court, and Burns and Mrs. Newbro are strangers to each other, left Winston for Los Angeles on the last train.
This 1906 story highlights a classic 'romance scam' that feels surprisingly modern. The victims, working-class women in Los Angeles and Washington state, were targeted by a man who exploited matrimonial advertisements—a precursor to online dating—to extract cash before vanishing. It underscores the vulnerability of single women in an era when legal recourse for emotional fraud was virtually non-existent.
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