Ridiculous crime is a production of My Heart Radio's Elizabeth Doutton. Nothing much. Oh, you know, it's ridiculous. I've been waiting to see you because, Okay, I saw this and I just wanted to read it to you. The hashtag Rivvyan stories hashtag Rivyan This was a tweet and I quote. I performed what is likely the world's first rivan power to vasectomy today. The power and clinic went out. Patient didn't want to reschedule because he already had time off.
Electrocuterie was normal, procedure went great. So somebody out there was like they signed them for their vasectomy. Docs like, I'm sorry, man, I got problem. No power in the shop. Patients like I saw, you got a nice new rivan out front. You can you run a little drop cord to that. Maybe we can cop this thing on now. Apparently I didn't know this. You only need to power
a couple of things to do of a sector. So you need to run the extension cord from the truck's outlet of the bed to the air and n high frequency desiccator that prevents blood loss during the operation. That it and then also he needed a fan in the patient room. Because it was hot because there was no power, so the fan and the desiccation machine. The rest of was just scalpel and knife and like clamp, you know that kind of stuff. So the total success, the doctor said,
the procedure itself went great. It just went as normal as one could go the modern world. Keep making that face, I'm like the I'm like the spinning wheel on the back or like he just kept making the same face already talking. You're like, there's just so that's that's ridiculous. That's done world. I love it. It's like, okay, you know what if, like if there's a hurricane and we're without powerful, don't worry. I can still Yeah, we can
get this done. We got a rivian a guy who got a vasectomy and it came back to work and he tried to like work, and then it just says his stuff swelled up so bad that he passed out. We had no extended back to the I'm sorry, but I Am not going to feel bad for him because the stuff that women work through didn't compare. Yeah. Yeah, I mean a lot of times women will will have procedures and the doctor, oh, you know, you can go back to work after an hour, and I'm always thinking like,
men couldn't. Yeah, they wouldn't even tell men they could do that. You're gonna probably need to stay here tonight. I love that he rubbed in his you got a rivan outside. Things were like, ridiculous, that's super coolgrivan. Okay, that is cool and ridiculous, And I'm still processing it. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous? Ridiculous being an incredible con man with no regrets, who gets away with millions over his career and runs with free thinkers of his time and even uses Hitler as a
pawn in one of his scams. God, we're just short, circunach. I'm over here. I'm making the phase now. M This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists and cons. It's always murder free and one ridiculous. I have a MegaCon for you today. He's got like a little bit of Edgar La Plant, some Arno Funka, some Margaret Lydia Burton, some Bruno Schulz by' ball Baron, maybe a little Billy Minor. The people. He is a
milange of ridiculous criminality. His name is Joseph Vile, Joseph wild w e e Lay, but he was known to all is yellow Kid, while he's a real con man's con man, dude. That's like the straight up club games he had. He wrote his autobiography Yellow Kid while but they later repackaged it and called it con Man a Master Swindlers Story. Okay, right, thanks barn. Do you know the movie The Sting? Yeah, yeah, I love it supposedly based on him? Sure, um, wrong movie now, okay, so
that was a brain fart. Yeah, we're it's we have we have a lot to process right now. Yeah. Okay. So one of his unverified cons was swindling two million dollars out of Mussolini. Um, Marissa the researcher and I we looked all over creation for more information on that, but we came up drying. Okay, that's a thank you. So he pulled off this incredible number of cons in his life, absolutely mind boggling. It's the spinning wheel on the mac like I just can't get my head. Um,
I'm going to give you like my top ones. Yeah, highlight reel the legend of his crime, exactly, the essence, the haiku of it. Um, little backstory. First born in Chicago in eighteen seventy seven. When he was seventeen, he left school to work as a quote collector for the Shark, like a beach comber, Yeah, like a like No, for just a legitimate business. Yeah. The salary, though, was small.
He wanted something better. But in his collection job, he saw that everyone around him, the other collectors, the cashiers, the bookkeepers, they kind of skimmed a little off the top, all right, everybody. So he used that to his advantage, though he basically blackmailed his coworkers, who paid for his silence. Yeah, I see you. I'm going to pamp your crime. He later said, quote. I was of a very fragile constitution, unfit for the heavier sort of manual labor. I knew
I could not toil like other men. How was I to live? My power lay in words? In words, I became a commander. Moreover, I could not lead a tame life of monotony. I needed excitement, variety, danger, intellectual stimulus. I was a psychologist. My domain was the human mind, all right, Henry James. Right, So he gives his He gets a job with a guy named Doc Merriweather, who went around selling a tape worm cure that he called
Merryweather's a lickxer like this guy already. Yeah, And it was just like the you know, herbal tincture or whatever little booze in it. At the time, everyone thought they had a tapeworm. I know they a lot of them did tape worms to be like, I'm sad. They're like, you have a tape uh. And they had all these other weird things that they do where a currently they treat the people, and it was unclear if they'd have them like do their business in a bucket or something,
but then they had. They would peel a potato, one long potato peel and drop it in and be like, look, your tapeworm went for that, the potato. The potato peel tape about the old fashioned medicine. You got ghost your blood. You might do cocaine about it pretty much pretty much, you got a potato peel in you so spring while it's like I'm out of hair, yellow kid can't do it anymore. He becomes a traveling magazine salesman. Sure he gets married. He marries a woman named Jesse. She when
should they marry? She doesn't know. He's a con man and later when she finds out, she's always begging him to get out of the biz um. They had a daughter together, Josephine. So three, he is hanging out in this saloon that's owned by a Chicago alderman and boss named John Coughlin. I don't know, no. Uh. He said that that guy gave him the name the Yellow Kid because he used to read a popular comic strip at the time called Hogan's Alley and the Yellow Kid. So
that's what he says. He was named after a lot of times in the news they'll they'll say that it was because he always wore yellow gloves. But like then they would also point out in all these news stories through like time, they're like, you know, they searched his house and they didn't turn up any yellow gloves, and it's like, well, because he doesn't wear and detail totally. So he worked as a door to door salesman, conned
people in that career. He had a ton of these horse racing scams, like he actually went and bought horses. Oh that kind like the horse trading scam. Well, he said he was going to like throw a race and that then he wouldn't And then that you can't come after him because it's you know, you're already in an illegal agreement already. So he would tell these dudes that, you know, I'm fixing it. No, I'm not fixing it. Whatever um dares him to go to the cops. He
gets away with that quite a bit. In he bought a bank with his friends. You know, that's the move, um, real crime stuff. He drew up fake lines of credits, like his friend is the president, he's the vice president. And then they had all the regular employees who are already there with a bank. If you can get a loan, you can make nine fake dollars off of one real dollar. Well that's what they did. They dropped fake lines of credit.
He and the VP and like another guy, and they go to Europe and they buy a bunch of stuff, all these really these luxury goods, and then they also got cash advances and stuff. I think they returned some of the luxury anyway, they come home, they have like hundreds of thousands of dollars off of this. So then the European banks they you know, they're like waiting. They
try to collect on it. And the you know, yellow kid and his friends like Oh, you know what, Like, we had this cashier here and he drew up all these fake lines and he just ran off to Mexico. There's nothing we can do. And the guy that they had signed them was a cashier and they sent him to live in Mexico and they paid him. So it's like, we're not lying. He's in Mexico. Yeah, so he's also yellow.
Kids like this super sharp dresser, and the press loved talking about his court appearances, in one article that said Mr. While wore blue over a white shirt studded with gold, a diamond blazer in his cravat, an overcoat of Killarney green, a green velour hat of gay and rakish tilt, and a spank and pair of tan shoes with spats. I hope. Yeah, he was just outfit. He's deck, dude. The drip is clean. Let me tell you about my first favorite, your favorite
Sarah closed your eyes as a closed girl. I want you to picture it. Alright. You're in Chicago in n You're a successful businessman. You're sitting in the lobby of the Metropol Hotel. You're reading the paper while you wait for a colleague to join you. But you're actually eavesdropping on all the people around you. Super fun. There's a natly dressed gentleman sitting a few over stuffed chairs over and then a man in a blue suit approaches him. Hello, Joe,
what are you doing now? The snappy dresser sitting near you replies, at the moment, I'm free. Do you have something in mind? Yes? How'd you like to make a trip to Baltimore? You know me, Sam, I always like to travel. What's the deal? Now? This sounds interesting? Zaron, You're hooked. You lean forward. You can make your own deal. I'll give you the layout and you can work it
any way that you like. So come over to the office with me and I'll tell you all about it too, mad And they walk off out through the grand entrance of the hotel. You just witnessed the birth of an incredibly ridiculous con Oh. I love being there at the start. So Joe, the sharp dressed man, that's the yellow kid, Sam. The guy in the blue suit. His name is Sam Banks. He is a really successful businessman based in Chicago. He
had just opened up a Boston office. What does Sam do? No, he's a fortune teller, so he caters to stockbrokers, but also the uber wealthy. Yeah, and he he just like studied stocks in depth. He knew the market better than anybody. Um, but they knew him as like a magical fortune teller, not like some staid advisor guy. He wore a turban in his in his well. The client would write a
question on a piece of paper. Sam would lie back on a couch and he'd put the paper on his forehead and he would tell the client, Okay, guys going into a trance, be ready, and like so he'd have the paper. He wouldn't look at the paper. He put the paper on his forehead, go into a trance. Um. Ed mcman would laugh, right and Ed mcmann's hiding there.
Paper that he puts on his forehead isn't the one the client gave him though, because like the client hands him the paper and he would do all these mystical hand gestures of the yeah, and then he like uses sleight of hand to slip the actual question behind some drapes to an assistant who's waiting there, and then he'd say some stuff in Jewish, you know, uh yeah, bring king kom um. The turban that he was wearing had
a telephone headset like it was hiding it. So he had had telephone headset over his ears, the turban covering that. A wire from the headset went down his back to a metal connection in his shoes, and then he had the metal connection in the couch. So when he lies back and he puts his feet to the end of it makes a circuit. Yeah. So um. He then that at the couch had a line that went behind this curtain to these assistant. That's really smart, so he's not connected.
He can get up and move around. Yeah, so yeah, there's he's basically wireless at them. So he lays down. The assistant would read the question over the telephone line. Sam would then sit up, take the paper off of his forehead and without looking at it, lighted on fire off like on a candle that was on a table, and then answer the question. So you're the client, you can write this down totally and then you know the client. The mark would be just so this is amazing, pay
up and walk out. A lot of rich ladies would come in and they'd have questions about romance and that sort of stuff. He just gave them like common sense answers and they're like, oh my god, you're right, and so they were. So a week before in the interaction that you saw a yellow kid running into Sam at the Metropole. Yeah, Sam had done a session in Boston with this rich woman named Dora Albright. They met up in Boston. Dora, Yeah, and so he wants to tell
yellow kid all about what happened. Dora is a spinster and she was visiting Boston from Baltimore to see about some investments. Based on other elements of casual conversations, Sam he basically did a cold reading and was able to say a lot of stuff about Dora that she hadn't shared yet. Like he sees that you know, she's she's talking about how she's coming into town. She's kind of like running the show. He's like, ooh, you're the you're the oldest of your siblings. Oh yeah, like you know
that kind of stuff. Dora is sold. So she writes her question on the piece of paper and it says, my sisters and I have two hundred thousand dollars in cash. Should we put it into a savings bank or should we seek an investment? Like if this were a movie and their money soon parted, I would think that she was the one running the com because who asked that I got two grand? What do I do? Got this pocket and it's got a lighting, Lenny asked the fortune teller.
So Sam as the routine the trance, puts the paper blah blah blah, and then he responds, he said, I see a man coming into your life. He has a beard, and I can't tell you how he's going to come into your life or when it's going to happen. And then quote he'd him, the bearded one holds the key to your fortune. That is all. So the next man with the beard comes up, well, he has someone in his head. Dora gets super emotional over this. She thanks him,
pays her hefty feet goes on her way. Sam then, of course, sees the yellow Kid, tells the story and says, look, I don't want to know the details of whatever you come up with. I've given you all the material you need. Just give me a cut or whatever you get. Oh, he trusts the yellow kid. He's like, here, I'm just gonna give you the give you the give you the facts. You run with him. I don't, okay, do you think Sam is in on it? Where he's like he knows this lady's in Mark and it's a hot markets. I
just want my cut. Or is he thinking like we're doing actual business for this lady. Oh no, no, no, he knows she's a Mark. He's like, I don't want to know what you're going to do with this or just give exactly. So Yellow Kids like, yeah, let's do this. I gotta go to Texas. And Sam's like, wait, we'll wait.
Now she lives in Baltimore. But you know, he says, quote, yes, I know, but Texas fascinates me right now, there's something there I want to which Sam replies, well, do it your own way, Joe, so, which of course he did. When we come back, I'm going to tell you about Texas, the Bearded One and Old Dora. All right, Zaron, Oh hey, what's up? Elizabeth? Hey? How you doing? I'm doing proved Robert too? Not bad, not bad. When we left off, we were just talking about do you remember we were
talking about some stuff. Yeah, it's nineteen sixteen. Yellow Kid. He has a lead from his friend Sam that the Sam the fortune Teller, that there's a spinster in Baltimore who's got an extra two hundred thousand dollars cash Sam, you know, lays it all out for him. Yellow Kids like, guess what, perfect I'm going to Texas, by the way, two thousand dollars and is like five and a half million today. I'm wondering. Yeah. Yeah, So Yellow Kid goes to Texas. He uses the name Ari Ruel. That's one
of his favorite aliases, Henry Royal. Yeah, I guess, well not royal, but like U R E U E L L I suppose um. He he goes there and he buys fifteen hundred acres of land at a dollar and acre between Standard Oil and the Texas Company which is now Texaco. So he buys this big plot. He then drives to Baltimore. He wrote, quote, my car was a Fiat imported and custom built. It was expensive, powerful, and luxurious. So he's just hammers down from Texas to Baltimore. It
was a Saturday evening when he rolls into town. He purposefully stalled his car in front of Dora's place and then goes and asks to use the phone. You know, sorry, Oh no, he always had a beard. Sorry, he always had a beard. Yeah, from like the jump. So that's why when you know she's telling this line and Sam the fortune teller's hearing it in his head. He's like, all right, I'm gonna say beard because Yellow Kid's gonna
be all over this one. So he knows there's no way he's going to get a mechanic out there until Monday morning because it's Saturday night. So he knocks door, opens the door, she sees a man with a beard. He's like, hello, I am alre re well. Dora lives with her sisters. She's like, sees this man, sees the beard. It was like, do you want to stay the weekend? She hasn't run into any other bearded men, not like
introducing themselves in this right didn't capture her. The butler carries Yellow kids bags into the house and Dora sees that his bags were covered in labels from all over Europe. And so he goes into the guest room to freshen up. He gets his beard looking all good. He greases it up nice, and then they're all hanging up the moths and bugs from the road. Well, I guess he had it like he like parted it in the middle. Yeah, you know style, you could do the scott and with
the beads that would be dope. Yeah. So they're hanging out in the parlor. Yellow kid like he sees like these sisters are a little sheltered, surprised. Um. They asked him what he did, and he's just super casual. He's like, well, I represent all these European clients and um, a lot of them have money in Texas and I want to sell it off because they're really distracted. There's war coming to Europe, so they kind of want to just liquidate and get out of here. Um. They asked him about, Oh,
so you've been in Europe. He's like, yeah, I traveled all over. He tells them tales of the continent. He's like, you know, um, wars on the horizon. They got to liquidate. I've been able to sell everything except for you know, I've just exhausted. I have fifteen hundred acres left. I got to move these fifteen hundred acres and then I'm done, you know with this whole project. Um. They're interested, right, like, oh acres, you say, Um, is there a way that
we can get in illness? Like, if you need to do you need to sell this off, maybe we could help. And he's like, well, you know, I've only been working with investment firms. I hadn't even thought about selling the private investors. Well, you know why not, that would probably work. So he goes back to the guest room and he returns with these fake maps that he'd made, like he drew up these maps that had like the where the
area was and the real maps. But then he had like the mother pool, which was just like his guests on maybe there's oil. They're like it just he just made it all up. So he, um, he agrees to sell it to them. I'm going to give you a huge bargain, a hundred and twenty dollars an acre. So he bought it at a dollar so you know, he left him a little that has that that's a hundred and eighty thousand exactly. This is that they had this
nice dinner and a lot of wine to celebrate this deal. Um, it is nice to have a good meal when you're gonna get screwed. Like he has him write up a contract. He's like, I really, I want I want you to go and take this, you know, um to get to file it with the Assessor of Power. They're going to do it, just because I want to make sure we lock this in, like as soon as possible basically, and so they spend the rest of the weekend together. They go to church on Sunday. Yeah, he's just playing it up.
Mechanic comes on Monday, pops it open. It's like, oh this ignition wires plug it back in. So fixes the car. He has the deed, He gets there a hundred and eighty thousand dollars, goes on his way. He wrote later quote, there was nothing the all Bright sisters could have done to me, even if they wanted to. For all I know, there really was oil on the land I'd sold them. At any rate, the sale was good, and the land actually existed. Whether they later tried to develop it for oil,
I don't know. I never heard anymore about them. Exists existed, not everything I've sold so hard to find out what happened to Dora Albright. I've like searched and searched what happened. Are about to look for a new place, But they own acres in Texas and enjoy it. Maybe. Um, So of course he goes and gives forty five dollars to say, um the fortune teller as thanks, And that's like almost one point to five million dollars today. As just a
finder's incredible. So yellow Man, Yellow Man, Yellow Man, the reggae artist, father of Yellow Kids, Yellow Kid, he worked with a bunch of different conmen and um, I remember when he was a dj A. It was amazing Yellow So you have no idea how hard it was for me, like getting Yellow Man songs in my head as I was researching. So. Um, he had all these conman pals.
One of them Sam the Fortune Teller. Another one was a guy named Fred buck Minster, and Fred Buckminster he was nicknamed the Deacon because his face looks so honest, like of course, Um, yellow Kid would go to great lengths to fleece a victim. Like he would do very complicated, drawn out things and then sometimes inspiration would just strike him and that's where he would come up with a scam. But he also he was the master of the twist. We'll get to that. He did the twist. He taught
it to Chubby Checker. Yes, So one time, Yellow Kid he's like reading through the paper and he sees an ad to sub let this like really nice luxury apartment for nine months in Chicago, and so he's like, let's rent it and just we'll have access to that space. We can find a use for this. Yeah, this looks like a good opportunity. So he and his pals, including the Deacon Buckminster, they set up a fake private gambling club there. So they didn't open a real private gambling club.
It was a fake. They paid actors to hang out and pretend the gamble. Yeah, they paid him twenty five dollars a pop. They had drinks, they had gaming tables. They were like fake stacks of money. It's amazing. So then he Yellow Kid, he invites an acquaintance of his named Corvill Hotchkiss to you know, so hotch Kiss he knew Yellow Kid as Joe Warrington. So his pal Joe Warrington slash Yellow Kid, he invites him. Yellow Kids says, look, I have an uncle who works at this club as
a Pharaoh Bank dealer. Do you know what Pharaoh bank game? Yeah, it's uh yeah, Pharaoh Bank is a Pharaoh French card game, kind of like poker but totally not big on the Old West. Yeah. I'm really terrible at understanding or explaining card games, but basically it goes like this. There's a banker like the dealer in essence, and then the cards are shuffled and then they play and did someone win and someone lose? Yes, those are the rules games. It's
super fun. Thank you for sharing. You're welcome. So um the uncle who in reality another con Man actor. He had allegedly been screwed over for a promotion. So he's looking to throw a game and screw over the club and he is like willing to split the profits with a willing patron. So Yellow Kid says to hot Kiss, like, can you help, can you help my uncle screw over this club? Was like, yeah, let's do it. And so this quote unquote uncle, he taught hot Kiss the game
of Farroh or Pharaoh. I say farrow because I'm looking at it like it's the Pharaoh because it looks like the alternate spellings are Pharaoh, like Egyptian pharaoh. Yeah, but it's f a R. So he's like, I'm going to teach you the game. He went a little more in depth than my explanation. I imagine there's a couple of degrees made like one or two other items. Um, and then he's like, I'll give you certain signals of what to do. So then uh, Yellow Kid brings him to
the club. Looks super official, It looks like it's popping. You know, um can do is make a look official? Right? Hot Kiss didn't have any money on him, but Yellow Kid was like, look, just write a check for fifty grand for the chips. It's cool. So things go according to plan. Right During the game, hot Kiss wins three hundred thousand dollars and the club's overseer, though played by Buckminster, the deacon. He says he just came in from New York.
He's like, I'm not gonna let you cash in those chips. I don't know you, and I don't know if this check is valid. I only take checks from known club members. So Buckminster is just not budging. Yellow Kid pretends to try and convince them all right, listen, listen, listen. If Hot Kiss, if this guy brings in the five cash that he had on this check, if he brings it tomorrow, could he get his three hundred thousand? Then if he just swaps stuck, can you hold his chips for him?
Obviously the club doesn't have three d dollars to hand out, no intention of it, but they're like, okay, fine, this is the twist. Then Hot Kiss doesn't have to tw thousand, right, Yellow Kid knows this, but he knows that Hot Kiss knows someone who does. Mr McHenry. Mr McHenry was the intended target in the first Yeah, so the whole set up with hot Kiss was really just to get access to mckenry. Is the weak link for mckenry. He's an emotional soft point. Yes, so yellow Kid says, you know
to hot Kiss, well, you know, kind of off handled. Well, why don't you invite your friend mckenry to the club tomorrow night and then we can get Henry. He can help us screw over the club. He can throw a faro game. He's a big dog. He can definitely and then you know, he could probably also front you that fifty grand so you can get your three hundred. You can be a winner. Everyone everyone wins. Guys. Hot Kiss is like, yeah, let's do this. So he he um.
He goes in, Hey, McHenry, quick question, do you want to come to a gambling club and give me fifty dollars? And mckenry is like, all right, but here's the rest of the details. Yeah, okay, the three Yeah, and we can screw over this club. Yeah. So the like supposed scorned uncle, he now has to teach McHenry about the game the same rules that I gave and then Um and the hand Chester's the cues right, and so that that evening. Though there's a big difference because first, instead
of writing a check, mckenry throws down fifty cash. He's ready, he's in now. During the Pharaoh game, the uncle slashed dealer. Um didn't actually let McHenry win, and in fact, he blamed him afterwards. He's like, I was giving you all the right signals and you screwed them up. Like what is wrong with you? Why weren't you doing I told you over and over. He's like, it's your fault. So they lose the fifty grand. Yellow Kid walks off with fifty grand, so like he has all that's like a
typical that's like a solid yellow Kid one. Some of the ones that he did were just like silly for his own giggles, his own entertainment. So in the twenties, Yellow Kid was a member of a bohemian discussion group called the Dill Pickle Club. Are you familiar the Dill Pickle Club? It was a speakeasy in the theater that was in operation in Chicago from nineteen seventeen to ninety five, and he was a member UM. It was like this haven for free thinkers. I've never heard of this. Let
me tell you who. Some of the frequent attendees were Clarence Darrow, Emma Goldman, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandberg, William Carlos Williams, Kenneth rex Row, labor leaders like Bill Haywood, and like people from all walks of life right there were social workers, artists, scientists, anarchists, prostitutes, like religious zealots, and then con men. Of the people in the club all knew who Yellow Kid was. Yeah, exactly.
So one time he's there and he gives this fake demonstration for a machine that he claimed would roast a chicken in thirty seconds, so it's obviously it's a fake machine. He had a previously roasted chicken that was swapped for
a rawlin under the table. It was like supposed to be this jokey thing, and he wrote quote any but the most gullible should have realized what was going on, So he claims though Yellow Kids said that after the lecture to people, including a University of Chicago professor, came up to him and wanted to invest in the company wanted to know, like, what are your plans to patent it? Are we going to sell this? He thought it was super amusing, wouldn't take their money, so it was like
he loved just getting one over. He wasn't always because he could have just fleeced those guys too, So he tried a bunch of times to go straight, but he just couldn't do it. He tried to sell pianos for a while, and that didn't pan out because like some of his con man budd he's found out about his business. Yeah, and they were like, all right, look, we're going to get into this. They kind of tried to flip it into an illegal operation, so we gave up. He tried
selling Catholic encyclopedias for a while. Yeah. He opened a legitimate hotel called the Martinique in Chicago, super luxury place. Um. They sort of really nice booze during prohibition. After a while, though, like the patrons of the hotel just kept being like more and more swindlers and high end comment and it was like this criminal hot spot. After only a couple of months, he was in the whole first seven fifty
thousand dollars on this hotel. How well, they're just like everyone's like he's just doing one scamp like it just like it started out legitimately and then it just goes like downward spiral quickly. He wants to save the hotel, to burn it down. Well, he starts working with this gang that had him selling stolen bonds and gold coins. He got swept up in the bus for their initial robbery of all that stuff. Um, and he got sentenced
to five years in Leavenworth as a result. And on this one, it's just like he was adjacent, so adjacent to it. He had been recogress in a bunch of times, right, and that this one that was his third conviction. So
the first conviction was in nineteen eleven. And a fun fact about that, on his way to Juliet prison for that, he allegedly managed to convince the detective that was with him to buy thirty thousand dollars of fake stock from him on his way to prison, so that his second conviction was nineteen Here's a fun fact about the second conviction. His lawyer for that case was none other than his
Dill Pickle Club pal, Clarence Darrow. Yes, Leopold Love if you're going to get a closing remarks Clarence Darrow exactly. So this time, though Yellow Kid off to leaven Worth five year stretch, Let's take break, we come back. I'll tell you about an international and audacious scam that Yellow Kid ran. Please Saren, welcome back. Have you been? I love those pants? Thank you so much. I love that you're not wearing pants. No, just sucks, just sucks. Yeah,
well leg warmers. Oh that's what those are. Yeah, well that's what I was told they were. Okay, okay, well yeah, okay. So we're talking about Yellow Kid while vile Yellow kids vile, while um in his various con man exploits um. So he did time in leaven Worth, gets out in March of nineteen the full stretch. Yeah, he gets out of prison and he and Fred the Deacon Buckminster, they go
to Europe. Yeah. So on the boat right over they meet two ladies and the ladies ended up swindling them for ten thousand dollars with the same sort of tale that they would tell victims are like, there's an emergency, we need money, but the money is held up and should be coming shortly. Can we give you something as collateral? Like, here's a necklace can you hold? And it looks really expensive but it's worthless. So but they're like amused by this,
so like, yeah, we got scammed. It was a good one. Um. His One of his last big admitted scams was with a wealthy American woman who owned a mine in Arizona. So Yellow Kid, pretending to be a famous mining engineer, he said he help her with apparently, so well, yeah, I remember back, yeah, with the mines and the gems. So he gets Buckminster on board as his assistant, and the two they go to Arizona all in this lady's dime,
like an expense account. They're like yep, they go and look, the mine is legitimate, but like it's not being used. So they spend the rest of the time like on vacation, just like sitting by a pool, sip and drink rocks exactly. So then they go back to Chicago and Yellow Kids like, you know what, yeah, I will help you manage that mine. Uh no, she wants to sell it. He's like, okay, well, you know what, you can get way more for the land in Europe than you can't at home. So she agrees, right,
so they go back to Europe. Yellow Kid and the Deacon they sail to Berlin in nineteen thirty. So when they get there, they make a formal written request to meet with Hitler and it's denied. But they knew it. They knew that was going. Well, why do you think they wanted that? The letterhead exactly, that's they want at official government stationary. So then they also make an inquiry at the German government bank, the Right Bank, um, with the purpose of attaining more more letter totally, so they
got these two pieces of paper. Yellow Kid forges a conversation between Hitler and the bank, expressing interest in this Arizona property. And then but the negotiations are delayed, like that's what you know in his letter l Mr Hitler is frustrating. He wants Arizona. I just I love Arizona one, a little piece of property. Um. So then Yellow Kid and the Deacon they go back to Chicago. He shows the woman the letters. He's like, look Hitler's in and
she's like, awesome. Go back to Berlin finalize the purchase. But you know, there's this little thing called World War two bubbling up over there. He's like, I don't want to go that's I don't want this. So she goes, fine, I'm cutting off your expense account. And then he's kind of getting worried, like, wait, is she going to take these letters and go have someone else do this? She's going to get She's onto me like, I don't I I flew too close to the sun on this one
for complete. So he goes to d C and then he goes to New York. He's just kind of like moving around a lot. In New York. He goes to a party that's thrown by some con man friends of his UM. One of the guys there is a high ranking army officer. Now, two months later, the friends that he's with UM they get busted for mail fraud. And that high ranking army officer says, oh, you know who else I saw there? This guy Dr Alriuell. But I think he's really Yellow kid rats him out right. But
here's the thing. Yellow Kid wasn't involved in the mail fraud. He was just at the party. Yeah, he gets connected to the crime and arrested, and they arrested him at his daughter's apartment, hiding in the closet. So here's according to the New York Times, according to that. I love this part. Here's what it said. The New York Times quote a voice through the door said While wasn't there. The raiders obtained a pass key. A framed picture of While hung on the wall, but While was not found.
Until the search reached the clothes closet in the apartment were found many medical books and a complete physicians kit. Outside was Wild's car with the physicians insignia on it. The raiders said that While had been posing as Dr R. E. Durraine. Letters were found indicating that under several medical aliases, he had required many patients. While had fifteen suits with London trademarks, twenty hats, twenty pairs of spats, and sixteen pairs of
shoes in his wardrobe. However, were none of the yellow gloves which won him his sober cap. Always always the yellow gloves. But I love that, Like, No, there's no While here. Well his pictures on the wall, you know, Well, I just know about Dr Ari to reign like he had in the insignia on his car. So good, Okay. So in the meantime, the woman back in Chicago, she finds out, wait a second, his name isn't Dr M. Well he's yellow kid. And so then she turns around
and she reports the Hitler letters to the authorities. The prosecutors now that they've got him on this mail fraud thing, they're like, will drop that indictment on the Hitler letters if you plead guilty to mail fraud and go to jail for four Yeah. So he agrees, but he argues that, like, not four years, how about one year. That's that's way fair. Offer one year, yeah, because he's like, look, I was just at the party. You have no proof of any
crime that I've committed. So the judge is like, all right, I'll give you two years, and he sends them in early. He gets sent to prison in Atlanta. He called it, quote perhaps the finest of all federal prisons, and with an easy job, lots of athletic opportunit unities he got to exercise. In nineteen forty two, he returned to Chicago for the Hitler letter case, but his it was just
a formality. Cases dropped no, so he wrote his autobiography in eight He said that since his release from the Atlanta prison, he quote resolved that I would never again be involved in anything that might send me to prison and we heard that, and after that he did the work legally getting donations for charities, and he would get like a commission for it, so he would be able to use his skills. Yeah, charity the second to last refuge for the scoundrel. Exactly nineteen fifty six, he's eighty
years old. He gets interviewed by Saul Bellow for The Reporter, and Bellow described Wild's appearance as such quote, the kid is now very frail, and it becomes him now. There is a sort of fallen natinus about him. His shoes are beautifully shined, though not in the best of condition. His suit is made of a bold material. It has gone too often to the cleaner, but it is an excellent press. His shirt must belong to the days of his prosperity, for his neck has shrunk and the collar
fits loosely. It has a green pattern of squares within squares, tie and pocket handkerchief for all of matching green. His little face is clear and animated. Long practice and insincerity gives him an advantage. It is not always easy to know when he's being straightforward. No, every time they describe him, they mentioned how he's wearing green. I think you could have called him the green kid while and did a little bit more accurate. I think so, I think so, yeah,
he's just you know, the green while the green while so. Uh. That same year that he gets interviewed, he test he yeah, hold on. So he testified at a Senate subcommittee hearing on juvenile delinquency, and he complained about contemporary kan men who used children to help con older people. And he was like, in my back, in my day, we never
did that. Nineteen fifty nine, a magazine called Man's Smashing Stories. Yeah, they ran an article that said yellow Kid died in the Bowery in nineteen thirty four, and he's like, um, no, hello, alive, present name. He sued them in nineteen sixty two for a hundred thousand dollars for libel and one. And then he also sued Playboy for using content from his book without permission, and he won that one as well. He turned ninety in nineteen sixty six, and he told reporters, quote,
each of my victims had larceny in his heart. I never fleeced anyone who could not afford to pay my price for a lesson in honesty. A truly honest man would never have had my schemes. Wow, that is always the thing, like the really good comments say, is basically they wait for someone's greed to qualify them to become the mark. And that's what he would do. The sting we talked about nineteen seventy three movie Paul Newman Robert
Red allegedly based on all of his scams. He never saw the movie, and he said he never wanted to. He wouldn't watch it. Yeah. He turned ninety nine in nineteen seventy four, and he told a reporter he had no regrets about his life, exactly saying, quote, I do it the same way again, run it right back. On his one hundredth birthday, he told reporters the same thing, but he added, I don't feel a day over seventy. I still like to look at the ladies and take
a sip of wine. I like to listen to the radio. But I'll be damned if I'll play bingo with the restaurant here. It's a rip off. It's feisty. The cops showed up on his birthday. Well, they wanted to present him with a police bulletin from June four, n eighteen, warning the department to be on the lookout for him, and then they they also got a letter from Chicago Mayor Richard Daily congratulated him, you know, real recognizers, real totally. He's like he did the whole was the what was
the weather man? The one hundred year Fred Willard Scott? Yeah, I was thinking the jeopardy answer. See he did the Willard Scott and he's like, hooray, you're one hundred. February nineteen seventy six, he passed away at the age of one hundred. He spent the last three years of his life at the Lakefront Convalescent Center. And he actually died with very little to his name, despite yeah, because he had that lack of funds and all this like bureaucratic
stuff red tape. He wasn't buried in the plot next to his wife and his daughter. He was buried in a pauper's grave, which I'd like to correct. Um. He spent all his money on parties, travel, close, general ball, Vivon. Yeah, he spent the money well, regrets gener regret. Yeah, probably the best way to do it, I think so. He claimed to have about two thousand victims in his career.
MS educated popular and he calculated he made somewhere between three and eight million dollars over the course of his career. He's a really good teacher. He was arrested now depends on who you ask, but he was arrested between twenty five and forty one time, but only five convictions. That's pretty good percentage. He spent a total of twelve years of his life in prison for his crimes. That's a
really good rate. Yeah, And he wrote that he wasn't caught much because quote, I made it a rule never to let any documentary evidence get out of my hands. Though I displayed thousands of fake letters, documents, stock certificates, etcetera. To prospective victims, I was always careful to recover them. And then he used a really good forger to make his all his fake stuff. Got to have a good forger,
you knowing taught us that. Yeah. Um, he made sure that that he had like the foreign envelopes and the postal markings. Yes, that alias. He loved Dr alri Um. It was his favorite one to use. And it was also a real person that he was impersonating was an actual mining engineer and an author. So he read the guy's books and so that he could use information in
them in this conversation with potential marks um. And then he also used his forger to make copies of the book jacket with his own photo on the back to cement the story. So if someone's like, oh, you wrote a book, Yeah, here it is the details logistics, why did he do it? I mean, well, this is what he said quote. I don't believe I ever had any basic desire to be dishonest. One of the motivating factors in my actions was, of course, the desire to acquire money.
The other motive was a lust for adventure, and this was the only kind of adventure for which I was equipped. The men I swindled were also motivated by a desire to acquire money, and they didn't care at whose expense they got it. I was particular I took. I took money only from those who could afford it. And we're willing to go in with me in schemes they fancied
would fleece others. See that's the one that I'm like. Okay, So he told Saalbello that his marks quote may have been respectable, but they were never any good and that quote they wanted something for nothing. I gave them nothing for something. You are his final thoughts quote. People will tell you that crime does not pay. Perhaps that is right, but it paid me handsomely. I feel that I have
lived a thousand years in seventy. Those periods of incarceration, well, they were not always what I would have chosen, but they gave me time to relax, reflect and catch up on my reading. The bad part about serving a prison term is not while you're doing the stretch. It's the stigma that forever clings to you after you come out. In England, it is illegal to refer to a person as an ex convict, but in this country you can never escape the brand, no matter how hard you try.
I didn't know that about anyone and all that. It's a really good point. Yeah, it was a good point. So that is Yellow Kid while dude, he's one of my new favorite Yeah, he's an amazing character, and I love that he's little bits of everybody. Yeah, exactly. I gotta read about this Dill Pickle club too. You piqued my curious. That a good one. Yeah. On another project, I've done a lot of research on Emma Goldman and I learned a lot about the Dill Pickle Club. Yeah,
thank you. That's all I have for you today. You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter while it's still around and Instagram. That's the picture place. Email us if you want to ridiculou Crime at gmail dot com. Tune in next time. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zarin Burnett, produced and edited by president of the Totally Legit International mining Company, Dave Kusten. Research is by jaded Aris Marissa Brown. The theme song
is by phony Faro. Bankers Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Executive producers are Black Market Stationary salesman Ben Bollen and Noel Brown. Ride say It one more Time, We Dequeous. Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeart Radio. Four more podcasts to my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.