Crown v. Barber

In Chicago last week Illinois lawyers representing the British Crown produced a royal warrant for the arrest of John ("Jake the Barber") Factor, alleged swindler of some $5,000,000 from numerous Britons including Edward of Wales (TIME, May 25).

Mr. Factor was in Court to hear the royal warrant read, to sneer at 250 pages of depositions made by swindled Britons at Guildhall and forwarded from London.

"I pulled a fast one on the British public," Swindler Factor said to reporters, "Other Britishers do the same, but I was smarter than they."

"How smart is the Prince of Wales?" pecked a newshawk, well knowing that Sir Lionel Halsey, Comptroller of H. R. H.'s household has denied officially that Edward of Wales ever had any dealings with Jake the Barber.

"Eddie Windsor is a swell guy--a charming pprson," replied Mr. Factor, whose idioms are sometimes American, sometimes English. "But he has no more card sense than a child!

"I met him at Le Touquet. We sat next to each other playing baccarat. I won and won. He lost and lost. He couldn't figure it out. Finally he asked me to show him how.

"We left the game and went to the bar. There we did a little quiet drinking and I explained my playing system. But it was no use. He just couldn't catch on!"

As great mathematicians (like M. Henri Poincare) who have applied their minds to games of chance know, the typical gambler plays a "system" which is either quite nonsensical or so involved that its basic worthlessness is well concealed by complexities which have an air of being profound. There are three sure ways to win at baccarat: 1) deliberate cheating by sleight of hand in drawing a card; 2) marked cards; and 3) a prepared deck introduced by a confederate croupier into the "shoe" from which cards are drawn. Before the War an Italian gang made a big haul at Monte Carlo with a prepared deck and got away. But the confederate croupier was nabbed and served a long, long Monaco jail sentence.

In Chicago last week the Factor case was still in a stage too early to be conclusive. The only swindled English people whose names came out were a Rev. & Mrs. Arthur Travers Faber, he the rector at Hurworth-on-Tees, Durham. This rural English couple managed to lose $55,-ooo, so they claim, in stockjobbing operations conducted by Jake the Barber in London. One job was selling stock in the so-called "Glass Casket Company," a speculation peculiarly appealing to the British investor. Another time Mr. Factor was about to mail out some 300,000 glowing descriptions of a platinum mine when its dubious character was exposed. The 300,000 stamps were already stuck upon 300,000 envelopes. In vain did Swindler Factor try to get his stamp money back from the inflexible British Post Office.

The British Crown demanded last week that "Jake the Barber" be not granted bail. His U. S. lawyers (including U. S. Senator Otis Ferguson Glenn of Illinois) claimed bail as his constitutional right. Result: Mr. Factor was neither jailed nor bailed, lived last week under guard of two U. S. deputy marshals in a Chicago hotel. Gangdom buzzed with rumors that Jack ("Legs") Diamond's gang expects to put Factor on the spot because he has not paid back money which "Legs" loaned "Jake" some years ago as his swindling grubstake when he went to England. "Jake," according to gang gossip, was paying the Capone mob last week to protect his life, deeming ineffective the U. S. marshals assigned to guard him.

In Philadelphia, where the British Crown continued to insist last week that bail be denied one Harry Geen, Factor's alleged swindling lieutenant (also represented by potent counsel), Judge Dickinson made this plaintive, apologetic statement: "We are dealing with an international treaty. ... I had nothing to do with its making and when two countries get together and agree upon a code of procedure for extradition of criminals and settle upon the question that bail is not to be granted, if due diligence is taken in the proving of the right of one country to get custody of a prisoner, no bail will be granted."

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