Piker's Nephew

Leo Besson had one foot over the window sill of his Paris flat when police broke in and collared him. The raiders also found stacks of counterfeit food and clothing coupons; a rackful of fake government rubber stamps; a veritable alchemy plant and enough pieces of gold to light the eyes of Captain Kidd.

Thus unmasked as the leader of a counterfeit gold coin ring, the 24-year-old, French Canadian Besson admitted that high finance was in his blood--he was a nephew of the late, crack-pate deputy Philibert Hippolyte Marcelin Besson, called "the Incredible," famed for his Ed Wynn hairdo and his Europa Dollar. The Incredible, who flourished in the '303, had a theory: Europe could cure its ills in a jiffy by adopting his "international currency based on hours of labor." He burned up the Continent's roads on a motorcycle with wide-open cutout trying to peddle his Europas; sometimes he passed them to pay hotel bills.

Unlike Nephew Leo, Uncle Philibert laughed at police traps, led the cops Mack Sennett chases. Sometimes he found temporary refuge in a tree, sometimes in Belgium, sometimes in the constitutional immunity of the Chamber of Deputies. But he died (1941) in Riom prison.

Nephew Leo's financial theories were simpler: create U.S. gold dollars (out of circulation since 1933), British sovereigns and French napoleons and sell them to greedy, panicky black-market speculators. He explained: "The real brain of our association was a Greek, Georges Chou-naris [later arrested] . . . a true artist, a sort of alchemist of the Middle Ages. He combined antimony and lead, then moulded the metal and gold-plated it. Production costs were negligible. In eight months we grossed 100 million francs."

Said a detective, eyeing a "gold" pile worth 30 millions: "Zut! Next to him, Uncle Philibert was a piker!"

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