The Great Petticoat Ponzi Scheme
Kennewick residents lose their dimes to a Minneapolis 'endless chain' mail fraud ring.
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.
Had the National Brokerage Exchange been all that it was claimed for it, Kennewick would have had an array of new petticoats that would have made a rainy day look like a fallen rainbow. About a month ago, a 10-cent petticoat chain letter scheme struck town, and as a result, a good many Kennewick dimes are now bumping around in the U.S. mails. Federal agents are now searching for the operators of the scheme, who vacated their Minneapolis office after collecting thousands of dimes from women across the country under the promise of receiving a 1917 model silk petticoat.
“A room in a business block, to which all the letters are addressed, was suddenly vacated.”
While the platform has changed from the U.S. Mail to social media, the allure of the 'get-rich-quick' or 'too-good-to-be-true' consumer scam remains a persistent feature of American life.
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