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It's not an uncommon fantasy you find out you have a distant relative who has died and left you an unexpected inheritance. It's also not uncommon for a con artist to exploit that fantasy, contacting you about a huge fortune because well, it could be yours. Spoiler alert on that one, though it's not yours. In this episode, we're talking about what are known as inheritance cons and we have a two for one special Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarky.
And I'm a Holly Fry. A little background first, According to the Federal Trade Commission, often these kinds of scams begin when you receive a letter from an estate locator, banker, lawyer, or tax agent claiming you may be eligible for a considerable inheritance. Today. This might also come in the form of an email or a social media message. Sometimes the con artist will tell you are legally entitled to claim
the inheritance. Other times they might tell you an unrelated wealthy person has died without an heir and that you could inherit the fortune through some legal chicanery because you happen to share the same last name. However, it's sold
your inheritance. The letter will likely claim is difficult to access due to some legitimate sounding reasons like government regulations or taxes or bank restrictions, and with that being the case, you'll be asked to pay some money and provide personal details to make your claim and help facilitate the legal and financial aspects of the transaction. And that is where
the con artist fleeces you out of your money. When we're talking about a real inheritance, legitimate law for or executors of will don't require you to pay a fee to find out about your share of an estate. Let's talk about how inheritance cons played out when it came to swindling the Baker and Drake families, two big names in this scam's history.
Imagine how the Bakers of the world felt when a Colonel Jacob Baker died, leaving Inn, a state that included most of the land that the city of Philadelphia is built on. It was worth billions numbers not adjusted for today's dollars. There was no known rightful heir, and the estate remained unprobated. If you're waiting for the gotcha moment here it is. There was a problem with the Baker estate, and it wasn't the lack of an heir. The problem
was the story was a total fabrication. Colonel Jacob Baker was a fictional character. There was no estate, no inheritance, and a man named William Cameron morro Smith and his associates collected millions of dollars from home hopeful heirs before the so called Baker Airs swindle was shut down in nineteen thirty six.
Cameron Smith began his baker Air swindle by publishing ads in newspapers announcing the death of a wealthy colonel with Jacob Baker from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and he gave his character quite a life story. In his life, Smith stated Baker had been a German born surveyor who settled in Pennsylvania
in seventeen sixty five. He had volunteered and served as a surgeon in the Continental Army during the American Revolution, and as a reward for his service, he was given some pretty extensive, expansive and expensive land grants, much containing valuable coal, lead, and zinc deposits. The worth of this estate over the years had grown upwards of three billion dollars, according to Smith's ads, and equaled nearly the entire city of Philadelphia in size inc ll It did significant city properties.
We're talking about Independence Hall, Franklin Square, and the US Mint. But the ad stated Baker had no air. Smith marketed himself as the guy who could happily help you claim your right to that Baker fortune for a fee. Of course. That fee seems to have been somewhere between a dollar and twenty dollars, and occasionally higher. It seemed to many like a reasonable price to pay to help get that huge inheritance, and just like that, Smith's con was up and running.
Smith told those who paid into his scam that their fee, paid up front, of course, would be pooled and used to find the legal and rightful heir or heirs to the Baker fortune. There would be lawyers to pay, there would be genealogists to pay. Anyone with the surname Baker, living domestically or abroad was welcome to make a claim. Just make that checkout to the firm of William Cameron
Morrow Smith. The the first group of potential Baker airs, once legally organized with Smith's help became known as the Baker Airs Association, and though the original group began in Pennsylvania, local associations quickly popped up around the country as well as across Canada. These established groups would typically collect dues from members and also organize events to attract new do
paying members. Press coverage of the Airs Association meetings paint a picture of how members and attendance were united in a quote sense of outrage at being denied their birthright, a shared resentment that transcended class and gender.
Just as those associations were literally all over the map, they were also all over the place when it came to their rules. Some required proof of lineage to the Baker family, others allowed anyone, meaning non Bakers to buy in regardless of ancestry. Hundreds of people with and without the life lass named Baker paid to be part of this scam, hoping to be the colonel's heir, and the
con even went beyond North America. Families in England and in other European countries were filing claims with Baker Associations in the United States and Canada. Because Jacob Baker wasn't real all the fee payments and dues sent across the Atlantic went to lining the pockets of Smith and his accomplices.
Though Smith had published ads and newspapers to garner attention to his inheritance scam, he and his accomplices used the Postal Service to solicit money through the mail. So we're talking about those fees people paid to join the club because anyone who thought they might be a Baker descendant paid an enrollment fee and then monthly dues. Inheritance scams like this one can also be a type of advanced fee scam, give me money before I give you nothing
in return. The reality is but as we say to see, with Smith and his use of the Postal Service to collect fees, his scam could also be considered mail fraud. Mail fraud can include a few types of schemes, including things like financial fraud, scams to get you to pay for free services, or sweepstakes fraud. It also includes cons like phony inheritance scams, and that's because they often come with this caveat you need to first send a payment
before any money can be released to you. The United States Postal Service has a law enforcement arm called the United States Postal Inspection Service or the postal inspectors. Using the postal service in part of any scheme to try to procure funds through dishonest means is a federal offense. So whether Smith's con had been successful or not, just
making that mail fraud gesture was an offense. And the reason we bring all this up is it was a team of postal inspectors who brought down the Baker Airs swindle.
We're going to take a break for a word from our sponsors, and when we're back, we'll talk about how postal inspectors were the key to ruining William Cameron Morrow Smith's.
Common Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's meet Postmaster Inspector Alfred T. Hawksworth and how he and his team took on fraud.
In nineteen oh two, postal inspectors started investigating inheritance schemes, but for many years they had little success in stopping them. Of the Baker Air swindle investigation Postmaster Inspector Alfred T. Hawksworth of Philadelphia stated quote. For about seventy years, rumors have been repeated about a mythical Jacob Baker estate in Philadelphia, which for various reasons, has been unprobated. Numerous heirs. Associations have been formed with the idea of forcing distribution of
this non existent estate. The promoters in the three associations indicted today claimed it to be worth anywhere from one point eight billion to three billion dollars. It is the biggest mail fraud case I believe the Department has ever encountered,
involving both in of persons and money. The sheer number of people involved in this scam was more than the Postal Inspectors had ever seen in this sort of case, and after spending more than eighteen months on the investigation with a great deal of travel around the country following Leeds, Hawksworth was the first person who named William Cameron Morrow Smith as the head of the racket.
Smith and his associates had forged a few important documents for their swindle, probably in case any one of the Bakers asked for coro reading documentation, and that included creating an alleged will of Jacob Baker as well as a few other estate related letters. Things really started moving against Smith when Postal Inspectors were able to get their hands on that alleged will and with it soon discovered well.
They discovered some interesting things through forensic analysis which did exist at the time but wasn't nearly as helpful as it can be today. They concluded that the paper the will was written on was manufactured in eighteen ninety. Jacob Baker, however, Smith had claimed, had died in eighteen thirty nine, so
the paper, they concluded, had been artificially aged. Then there were the signatures of the witnesses to the will, which through handwriting analysis, inspectors also concluded had been forged.
With a now questionable will in hand. Inspectors then searched the land's title records of every county in Pennsylvania looking for the colonel's estate. They reviewed roughly seventy five years worth of information, According to Postal Inspector Hawksworth, His department investigated the estates of more than two hundred deceased Jacob Bakers in Pennsylvania and found them all closed and legally so. They concluded no such a state belonging to a Jacob
Baker ever existed in the state. And then they proved something huge. There was no one named Jacob Baker from the state of Pennsylvania who had served as a commissioned officer in the Continental Army or Navy during the American
Revolutionary War. And on top of that, even if there had been a Colonel Jacob Baker, which there had not been, there was also no record of the United States Government or Continental Congress giving any land grants regarding wartime service to anyone with the surname Baker who resided in Pennsylvania. Nothing matched up.
Directly to Hawksworth's investigation. The decades long Colonel Baker's estate
con topple. On December fifteenth, nineteen thirty six, and this is many years after Smith had taken out his initial newspaper advertisement, a federal grand jury returned three blanket indictments accusing twenty eight persons in three cities of promoting a male fraud scheme, a scheme in which, according to Thomas W. Lanagan, who was the special assistant US Attorney, more than three million dollars had been collected through fraudulent means from more
than three thousand people. That's roughly sixty five million dollars in today's money. The Baker Airs swindle had grown large over the years, and there were numerous regional associations in addition to outposts set up by Smith's scronies in numerous states. The indictments focused on three specific associations headquartered in the Pennsylvania cities of Johnstown, Altoona, and Pittsburgh.
Smith was residing at the Posh Powaton Hotel in Washington, D C. When he was named by authorities as the leader of the first group of Baker swindlers to be indicted. He was listed with the association out of Johnstown, and emeryle Liken Biddy, age sixty eight, of Altoona was listed as the leader of the second association, and two women, a Missus Margaret Lighthill and A Bertha Ross Dodson, both homemakers living in Pittsburgh, were listed as the leaders of
the third association. Other defendants named included mister and Missus William S. Miller of Indiana, Pennsylvania. David J. Anderson, Fred F. Sprangle, W. H. C. Sprangle, fred Dore Henry Wolford, all of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. N. H. Blow of Davidsville, Pennsylvania, George Felix Kinkel, Mister and Missus Milton E. Best and Lewis C. Walkinshaw all of Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
Roy L. Biddle of Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, John A. Biddle and Woren H. Biddle of Altoona, Pennsylvania, Jacob Latshaw of Loisburg, Pennsylvania. And A. C. A. McCallum of Mendon, Missouri. Unlike all of the others, McCallum was actually named in two of the indictments.
More than five hundred people agreed to testify in front of a federal grand jury against Smith, the Baker Airs Association, and its defendants. According to court records, some of the purported heirs had paid fees totaling as much as nine thousand dollars. One man had mortgaged his home to contribute seventeen hundred dollars. Another hopeful heir had sent in six thousand dollars to Smith. As we mentioned, depending on the association you were with, fees varied, and apparently by a lot.
Many convictions were handed out. In nineteen thirty six. Smith was charged with conspiring to take possession of an estate on December twenty second, nineteen thirty three, January twenty fifth, nine, eighteen thirty four, April sixth, nineteen thirty four. The list of dates is extensive, and we won't bore you with all of them. But the thing to note here was Smith was not convicted, not at that time, but that didn't mean that the case against him was completely dropped.
In the next move against him, any and all documents relating to the Baker estate remaining in the hands of any of the defendants were impounded by the court. That was followed by court order for all files and papers deposited by Smith at the Fidelity Philadelphia Trust Company to be turned over to postal inspectors. Also by court order.
All evidence related to the case was then sent to a man we mentioned earlier, Thomas W. Lanagan, special assistant US Attorney, who was located in Washington, d C. In nineteen thirty seven, in the case of the United States versus William Cameron Morrow Smith, Smith was convicted of defrauding at various places on humorous dates. Authorities noted that any officials or leaders of any other Baker associations in other parts of the country might be indicted later as well,
and they were across all of North America. That list includes a man named W. H. Baker. We finally found one who supplied the long con with a fake Baker family genealogy. The fakest family tree you ever did see.
We're going to take a break for a word from our sponsor, and when we're back, we're going to talk about another inheritance scam, one based on a real and famous person rather than a fictional one.
Welcome back to Criminalium. As we said at the top of the show, this is a two for one inheritance scam bonanza. Cameron's Smith was not the only swindler running a long con inheritance scam in the early nineteen hundreds. Let's talk about a man named Oscar Hartzel and how he defrauded hopeful heirs to a three hundred plus year old famous and this time real fortune.
Around the same time as William Cameron Morrow Smith's KHN the early nineteen hundreds, a scam was pulled on persons with the last name Drake, heirs of the Elizabethan explorer, Sir Francis Drake. Drake. If you weren't familiar with him, really had a big life. Will hit a few highlights. He was an English admiral in Queen Elizabeth's Royal Navy and was knighted in fifteen eighty one. He was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the Globe and considered an English
hero for defeating the Spanish Armada. He was also reviled as a pirate or technically privateer, as he got paid for his piracy by the Queen. He died in fifteen ninety.
Six, so fast forward a few centuries to the nineteen hundreds, when his estate unexpectedly came back to life, kind of. In nineteen fifteen, an Iowan named Oscar Merril Hartzell was conned out of six thousand dollars with the promise of a peace of the unclaimed six million dollar fortune of
Sir Francis Drake. After realizing that he had been ripped off, Hartzell, a former deputy sheriff, decided, if you can't beat him, join them, So in nineteen nineteen he launched his own confidence scam, and he didn't really stray from the one he'd previously fallen victim to. It was an inheritance con in which he claimed the estate of Sir Francis Drake
had not been rightfully distributed. He began contacting people with the surname Drake across North America out of the blue, explaining that they could be an heir to a large fortune. Though Drake had died centuries earlier. His estate, Hertzel explained, had never been closed. With the interest that it gained
over the last three hundred years. It was now estimated, he said, to be worth one hundred billion dollars, and all you had to do to get a share of those billions was to join him in a lawsuit against the British government. And to do so you just needed to send him money, and hopeful Drake Ears did just that.
Hertzel's Drake estate swindle was nothing new, nor was he the best at it. Promoters of a Drake estate scam began appearing in the American Midwest around nineteen hundred. In early versions of the scam, con artists primarily swindled just people with the surname Drake. In later years, scammers widened their audience to basically anyone willing to pay to get in. The most successful Drake estate scammer unaffiliated with Hartzell, was a woman named Sue D. Whittaker, a raven haired widow
in her mid thirties. She ran her version of the con like this. The rightful heir to the Drake fortune had immigrated to America during the eighteenth century. The line of descent she claimed could be traced to a man named George Drake of Roachport, Missouri, who, as chance would have it, was a cousin of hers. So what luck, as you can imagine.
As there was no actual inheritance from the Drake estate, there was no lawsuit to file or fund, and Hartzel took the money that potential and hopeful heirs had sent and relocated himself to London, where he used the fees paid by his marks to live luxuriously in the city. He explained to hopeful Drake airs that his relocation from Iowa to Britain was going to help his negotiations with
the British government. He also told them that he needed them to send a little more money to help cover his expenses.
Once in London. It didn't really take very long for Hertzel's con to be discovered. By August of nineteen twenty two, the British Home Office, alerted to Hartzell and suspicious of his activities, informed the American embassy that there was no unclaimed Sir Francis Drake estate, yet there was an American man claiming otherwise. In response, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation opened an inquiry, and they concluded that Drake's wife had in fact duly inherited his estate in fifteen
ninety seven. There was nothing to see here. This was a long closed deal, but that information didn't stop people from donating to Hartzell. In total, he swindled at least two million dollars, which is not adjusted for today's money, from about eighty thousand people and possibly as many as one hundred thousand.
The con finally came to an end, just as it did with the Baker Airs swindle, when the United States Postal Services Postal Inspectors got the case for mail fraud. Hartzell, like Smith, had collected fees sent through the United States Postal Service. Postal Service inspector John Sparks, together with detectives at Scotland Yard, arrested some of Hartzell's associates on both sides of the pond. Some of them cracked under questioning.
Scotland Yard, too, had been keeping a file on Hartzell containing detective reports, witness statements, newspaper clippings, and a chronology of Hartzell's life while he lived in England.
As a result of those years, of investigation, Hartzell was extradited from England to the United States on January ninth, nineteen thirty three. He was arrested upon his arrival on a French ocean liner in New York City and held on ten thousand dollars bond. His Drake followers, ever loyal to the possibility of fortune, began to hound their local senators and congressmen, who called them drakers, to set him free. Instead,
Hartzell was put on trial in Sioux City, Iowa. In anticipation for and throughout his trial, his drakers sent him roughly seventy thousand dollars for his defense, which is a little bit more than a million and a half in today's money.
On November fifteenth that year, Hartzell was found guilty on twelve federal charges of quote, using the mails to defraud, and collection of funds for his enterprise. In federal court. George C. Scott, judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, sentenced him to ten years in a federal penitentiary and fined him with two
thousand dollars. Yes, in case you are a history buff and you're wondering This is the same George C. Scott, who had also served in the United States Congress from nineteen twelve to nineteen fifteen and again from nineteen seventeen to nineteen nineteen, and of course not at all to be confused with George C. Scott, the actor who was not born until nineteen twenty seven. Hertzell was in prison
at Levenworth Penitentiary, at least initially. During his incarceration, he was determined by prison doctors to be, as was written in his file, mentally unfit, and he was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, and that was his home when he died in nineteen forty three.
What can we take away from this scam? Junk mail has been around for a long time, apparently, is what I take away from it. But Quiff's aside, the tricks confidence artists use help them exploit some common negative human characteristics, such as greed, vanity, opportunism, desperation, and often just naivete. There is no profile of an inheritance scam victim or simply a confidence trick victim other than just being human.
But while you're busy being human, it doesn't hurt to ask a lot of questions if something sounds too good to be true, because it almost always is. Except for this drink that Holly has for maybe yes, we'll see no pressure.
I'm calling this one association dues. And I wanted to come up with something that is super duper delicious and yummy, but then also starts to taste a little different as you go. We haven't done like a flavor release ice cube in a minute, we haven't. And this one's very simple. You might actually even like it better as the ice
cream health. But to start, you're going to combine half a cup of lemon juice and in this case, if you want to do fresh squeezed, great, but if you want to just do the squeezy one, that's also fine. I'm not going to judge. Because you're taking that and combining it with half a cup of water, and you want to mix it well together, put it into your ice trays and freeze it so those are getting ready. In the meantime, once you have ice, you're ready to
make a cocktail. And for this you're going to pre chill your classes and while you're doing that, into your shaker will go half an ounce of lemon juice, half an ounce of Marisquino liqueur, and an ounce and a half of gin. And then you're also gonna throw in a splash of crumb to violet oh, just like a little a bar spooner less to taste, and then about three quarters of an ounce of low sugar apple juice,
and you're gonna shake it. So if you go just to the crumb to violette, you've made a classic drink called an aviation congratulations. But we want it to be a little sweeter. That's a very It's a drinker's drink, is what I would say. Right. There's high alcohol content to it, and it tastes like a drink, so we want to add a little bit of apple juice to make it like a sweeter, slightly different thing. And then you're gonna shake that altogether. You're gonna strain it into
your pre chilled glass. Normally a drink like this you might not add ice, but in this case, we're gonna add one to two of those lemon ice cubes, depending on the size of your ice. If you have those bigger square cocktail ice cube trays like you might use for an old fashioned just the woman, obviously, but if your ice trays are making smaller ice, you can just
use a couple. And so as you drink this delightful cocktail starts to become more and more tart and make you pucker a little more because the ice starts melting and it gets more and more citrusy, and that citrus is not sweet, and you may suspect that you have been duped, which I imagine is what it's like to think that you're gonna inherit a ton of money and be all hopeful and then be like, this doesn't feel as good anymore.
This is the drink. That is how the baker's felt in the world.
That is correct. That is correct. To make the mocktail, it's pretty easy. You're gonna do that same half ounce of lemon juice. You will use a half ounce of like cherry juice. You can use the stuff from your marachino cherries if you want, but if if you do, I suggest adding something like bitters if you are willing to include those. They do have, as we always say, a tiny bit of alcohol to them, but it's so small. You're doing drops at that point, so it's minuscule. If
you don't want to do that. You could do something else, like add a little bit of pepper to it. I love doing that to things, to make them a little different. In lieu of gin, I suggest an ounce and a half of lavender tea.
Oh yeah, this is developing a good mocktail.
I know, right, this mocktail is pretty good. And then obviously just a violet syrup instead of crumb to violette. The rest stays the same, very yummy. If you want listen, just leave out that ice cube and have a delicious drink. That's fine, live in your hope. But if you want the true Baker experience, go ahead and let it race against time as you drink to see if you can handle it. But that is the association duce. Well, longer you pay them, the less delightful it feels. That's fine.
I'm dead, I'm broke, Maria.
Thank you for spending this time with us. We hope you don't feel duped and that you had a good time. We will be right back here again next week with another story of scams and another drink to enjoy. We hope we will see you right back here then. Criminalia is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.