The Portrait Scheme Scam
A group of Seattle women are out money after an elusive photography company vanishes from the Epler Block.
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 number of women in this city who paid various sums on orders for portraits to the Star Portrait Company were very uneasy yesterday over the disappearance of the people constituting that company from their room in the Epler block without having delivered the goods or refunded the money. One woman reported that an agent solicited an order for life-sized pictures of her children for $3, paid in advance. When she and other neighbors returned to the Epler block to collect their pictures, the elevator boy informed them the office was vacant. It appears that no less than twenty other women were searching for them. Some received their original photos back in the mail from Tacoma with no explanation, but nothing else.
“One of the women said that some time ago a woman called at her house and represented that she was soliciting orders for the Star Portrait Company.”
Door-to-door scams promising high-quality portraits for low prices were common during the city's boom years. Today, while the delivery mechanism has changed, the exploitation of consumer trust for 'special deals' remains a recurring urban grievance.
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