Counterfeit Gold Strikes Aberdeen
A clever swindler floods local businesses with fake five-dollar gold pieces before disappearing on a train toward Tacoma.
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.
Some slick specimen succeeded last Saturday in getting eight or ten counterfeit five-dollar gold pieces in circulation, and he is supposed to have cleared out the next day. The bogus coins are all of the date of 1887, are somewhat smaller than the genuine, and very light weight. Word was immediately sent out to the other towns, but as yet no clue has been found of the criminal. The man is described as being of light complexion, with heavy red mustache, about 5 feet 10 inches in height, and weighing 170 pounds. It is claimed that he worked here in a logging camp several years ago. A man answering to the above description came in on the train Friday, and Conductor Doyle says that the same man was a passenger on his train Sunday, with a ticket for Tacoma.
“Some slick specimen succeeded last Saturday in getting eight or ten counterfeit five-dollar gold pieces in circulation.”
Small-town commerce has always been vulnerable to fraud, though the 'queer'—nineteenth-century slang for counterfeit money—is a reminder of how tangible and precarious money was before the age of digital transactions.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.