The Swindler Who Stole More Than Just Cash
A prolific con artist wreaking havoc across the Pacific Coast has taken a final, strange step: assuming the identity of the very man he swindled.
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.
Frank B. Wiestling, a Seattle resident who fell victim to a swindler named La Fayette Cole, received a shock when he saw his own name listed in the New York World as a criminal living in Mexico City. Wiestling realized that Cole, having already fleeced him of money through forged drafts, had adopted his identity to evade capture. Cole, described as a man of good family with 'smooth talk' and 'a morbid fondness for women,' left a trail of unpaid debts from Peoria to San Francisco, eventually crossing into Mexico to escape the law. Wiestling’s attempts to have the minister in Mexico City intervene have thus far met with silence.
“Frank B. Wiestling was much exercised yesterday to receive a copy of the New York World... in which he found a special dispatch... listing his name.”
Identity theft feels like a modern digital-age nightmare, but it was just as potent in the 1890s through newspapers and bank drafts. This story captures the era's reliance on reputation as a primary currency and the devastating ease with which a con artist could ruin a victim’s name from thousands of miles away.
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