Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Zaren Elizabeth Saren. Do you know I am going to start being early everywhere? Yeah. I got here twenty minutes early.
Life changing idly. So you actually showed up somewhere early.
Yeah, for the rest of my life early everywhere.
Oh nice. You know I was raised by Navy people and they beat that into me. So yeah, like you do.
The goal is you don't try to show up at the time. You try to show up like five minutes, ten minutes before. Can you make that the goal to aim at? Because if you try to show up at the time, like you s have to be somewhere too. You try to show up at two? No, you miss your I.
Went to Catholic school, man, I usually show up everywhere.
I know you're usually very tame minutes early. Yeah, you're just very very busy these days.
Things, you know, you start to think like what does anything matter?
Well, also you have your your succulent fan club meetings. There's that You're British tea cozy mystery meetings.
Oh man, yeah, those two.
Your social life is getting busy.
I have a busy on the go lifestyle.
I know it.
And you know it's ridiculous.
I do.
I saw this story and I thought of you minor league baseball. Yeah, because your your team is now playing in a minor league ballpark.
I don't have a team.
Your former team, the A's, are playing in Sacramento's minor league ballparks. So I was thinking about minor league baseball and you and you see these two guys here.
That's two different guys.
Their names are Brad Figel. They're both named Brad Figel.
Brad Figel f E I g L Okay.
Maybe I'm pressing that wrong.
Whatever.
So, yeah, one is a minor league ball player for the Long Island Ducks. Another one is a ballplayer for the Las Vegas Aviators. Oh okay, yeah right. So they're both, as they said, ball players in minor league. But they're both pitchers. They play the same position, and they.
Were and they're both named Brad Figels.
And they look they look exactly the same, identical. So they have the same doctor.
They both got Tommy John surgery, and their doctor confused them and thought like, oh, because they had the same name's.
Like, what are you talking about? Man? They did this? How did you undo the surgery? And then that's when they realized, wait, there's another Brad Figel.
How does that work?
Yeah.
So then when they find out about each other, they went and actually took DNA test to see if they were related, like maybe dad was.
A traveling man.
Yeah yeah, right, so yeah, it was like a kind of a hard to explain, uh mystery. But it turns out that they were not and uh they're not related. They were not separated at birth. The DNA showed no biological connection. They just happened to have a really strong gene expression for the Figyl genes, the.
Name exactly, and they have the same First I want to I want to retest.
That is very so ridiculous.
That's weird, ridiculous. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous? Oh my god, I'd love to bunco. Oh yeah, this is Ridiculous Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It is always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Oh you damn right.
Now. I am in my family, I'm known as the fixer.
Oh yeah, the wolf.
That too, Like someone has an issue, like I'm called into repair things, solve everything and it's a lot of pressure. But like hot diggity dog, I'm good at it.
Yeah, you know, you really are.
It can be something like mundane like travel stuff, or maybe like someone's having a meltdown and they're stuck in an unfamiliar city, or yeah, negotiations need to happen and I can get everyone to agree.
That is true. Yeah, you always ask the central question, what do you want?
Yeah? What what remedy.
Do you see? Say it?
But from what you've told me, you play that role in your family too.
Yeah. I was a much more of a blunt approach, much more of like, look, this is what's happening. I'll pay for you to shut up, you know, like that kind of stuff that's fixing it.
I got a fixer for you today. This one takes place in the wild West.
Sort of like a lot of the Old West.
Yeah, kind of like we like wild West.
I love him.
I have one for you today is full of characters, and I'm going to dive right into it. Bro getting right in. I'm talking today about lou.
Blander lou Blannger, lou Blanger rhymes lou Blanger.
Did get lost.
It sounds it sounds like a name. I'd make it.
To my friend Lou Blancher.
It's a real name. He was born in Vermont in eighteen forty nine. He was the eighth of thirteen children.
Oh, the blonders. They liked.
His dad French Canadian Stonemason.
Oh, I called the French Canadian named.
Simon peter be.
Yeah.
His mom was from Ireland. When Lou was five, the family moved from Vermont to Wisconsin. They went to a place called Sholsburg.
Like to keep it wooded.
Well, no, they're out in them parts. They mind lead. Oh and they made cheese.
Oh the Rocky mountain area.
Yeah, so the rocky Mountains of wiscons.
Well, not the actual rock the rocky in the mountainous area.
The village that they moved to, this Sholsburg, that had only been around for like thirty years when they moved there. You know, opportunity, I suppose.
So Lou's mom, Well, aren't all the towns new back? And then really at.
Some point every town is new.
But I mean really, then it's like all the times, like way were celebrating our twenty the anniversary.
Enjoy the lead.
Lou's mom passed when he was ten, Okay, and don't forget he had five younger siblings. Oh man, Yeah, it's tough times, right, what a life she had popped out thirteen kids, Lou he moved in with his older sister and her family, and then he changed his name, and his brothers had already done this. They anglicized and like simplified their last names from Belange Tolinger.
Try again, guys.
Well, I'm guessing that they just made the spelling match the way that people were already saying.
Blinger okay, yeah, because they look at it and they're like, oh, yeah, correct.
Pronunciation was probably more common when they were in Vermont, Oh yeah, not so in Wisconsin. So since things seemed to happen every five years for Lou at this point, when he was a hair short of fifteen, he and his brothers joined up with the Union Army to fight in the Civil War, and so he put in for a one hundred day enlistment, which was I don't know, common for younger boys.
Then I don't know, yeah, and then extended.
Yeah. So they assigned him to play the fife keep everyone in time while they battled the traders. Eight days in he fell down and hurt his leg. Eight days, eight days, and he spent the rest of the tour in an army hospital.
Seriously pothole.
Yeah no, or maybe he did, and he just milked it like it was like this fify. Yeah right, so you know, okay, all well, war ends. He meets up with his twenty five year old brother Sam. Sam hadn't served in the war. He was out west. He was just out there being rugged. So he did like minor forty nine er stuff in Colorado. He drove wagons through the Sierra Nevada.
Reco the mid eighteen sixties.
Now yeah, okay, yeah, just after the so he was there for the war totally. Sam had come back to Wisconsin to visit the family. Lou was living with a pal of his. Sam sweeps into town, he wooed and then married Lou's pal's sister. Okay, and then he also sent Lou off to go to college in Chicago at a business college, and then off he goes. So he just likes wow, cezes through. Five years later, Sam and Lou and then lose pal and his family. They all
headed west. The railroad's hum and now so that sort of like travel was easier.
Yeah, you don't have to take your life in your hands. Yeah, exactly.
So they made their way to Utah and they hit up a bunch of mining towns. In each of them they would either like set up or buy a saloon.
And they're from a mining town, so they know mining town call, they.
Know mining people.
Yeah we should sell drinks.
Yeah, we need to have a saloon. We're going to have to establish some sort of vice trade here.
Ah, I hate a cover.
They do a little mining themselves.
A little prospect might get lucky.
They might get deputized.
Oh, you know the usual.
They did this all over the West.
Really, we run the vice out here.
Uh huh, Utah to Nevada, to California and back. In eighteen seventy nine, Lou moved to Colorado. And when you think about that time in the US and the Western States, everything seems so transient, so like so many people made their way out there, and they were often running from something or running too and imagined no one was really tethered, and like everything must have seemed really temporary.
Uh.
It's so common to read about people who bounced around, chasing opportunities or like looking for good fits until finally finding a place. But then you look at places like the South, and that's just not the case.
Oh yeah, completely, even a lot of the Midwest that's considered the South, but West the same thing exactly.
And so I feel like the subsequent crimes of those times reflected, oh good points, Like there's a much much more of like an embedded nefarious storytelling in southern cons of the era. It's more subtle and paste and not like as brazen and audacious fraudsters and scammers and con artists in the West. They were dealing with people who almost had this sense of mania, right, and like they could be looser and grander with their claims and their stories.
You're a lot more suckers if you're just running out to get gold on the West. You know, you're somebody who's already shown people that you will be happy to cross and do arduous task, simple.
Gain and magical thinking.
I'm going to go out there.
And just pull, you know, gold from the roofs. I may be off of, but you know, if I am keeping to yourself, Yeah, anyway, thank you. Eighteen seventy nine, Lou found himself in Georgetown, Colorado, that's just west of Denver, and when he was there, he ran a theater that put on vaudeville shows, and pretty soon the other Blonder brothers started descending on the town. Simon, the oldest of
the kids. He got a gig, is superintendent at the Robert E. Lee Mine, which is curious naming Marvin the youngest. He worked there too, So this is a big spread. No sooner had this gang of blonders reunited than Lou and Sam hit the road like we're out of here. They're scratching that itch. Maybe they're running from something.
Who's run tight.
Yeah, those two are best buds. There's ten years between them that they're very close, so.
They would have been similar or at least, you know, very.
Very similar in personalities. They went off to New Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Albuquerque. It was a little railroad junction that would eventually merge with regular It's called out so it would it becomes today, like what's downtown Albuquerque different than old town. Back then it was like the up and comer. It's the railroad spot, all these new businesses.
We should have settled here.
Yes, So Lou and Sam they get there and they like really quickly ensconced themselves. In eighteen eighty two, Sam was appointed Marshal of New Albuquerque. He turned around and then immediately deputized Lou.
Good call.
Yeah, so the two of them, they fought crime. They took down bad guys. That's well. They also dipped into the vices, well, apparently opening a brothel, you know, cop stuff. In April of eighteen eighty two, Sam had to head out of town to Denver for a bit. He's like doing some sort of mining deal. So yeah, so he left Low in charge. Zarin, close your eyes. Oh wow, I want you to picture it. Hell yeah, It's April fifteenth, eighteen eighty two. You are on a train from Tucson
headed to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Things got hot for you in Tucson a few days back. You and your associates got into a little trouble, caused a little trouble. You were seeking revenge, but that doesn't matter. Crime is a crime. A murder's a murder. It's morning and you can see the New Albuquerque station in the distance. You sit across from your closest friend, your brother at your side, four others in the seats behind you. You're hoping to outrun
a state police posse that's after you. If you can get somewhere quiet with some cover, there may be time for the governor to negotiate a pardon for you and your boys, or, more likely, you can regroup and try and make it to Colorado. Your friend slowly, repeatedly flips a silver dollar coin into the air with his thumb as he stares out the window. The sound dances back and forth with the chug of the car on the
rails and the occasional baleful whistle of the train. Oh I should mention you're wyat er you and you're a vendetta posse as you've been dubbed. Are on the run after avenging your brother Morgan's murder and the naming of your brother Virgil too. Oh yeah, you're on what they're calling the IRP vendetta ride. You're trying to get to Albuquerque because you understand that if you give interviews to the paper there, they'll keep it quiet that you're in
town and they won't publish until after you're gone. It's a deal, you'll take. The train has reached the depot. The brakes let out a mighty squeal. The sound of steam hisses alongside the cars and onto the platform at the station. What's the Walt Whitman column, You think, the one where he's totally describing a train as a man's dingus is shaf as Pecker. That's right to a locomotive in winter, type of the modern emblem of motion and power pulse of the continent. He wrote that that's the train,
all right. When the engine has finally halted, you and your posse stand and make your way to the doors. The station's empty, not many people on this early train. You walk through the platform and into the station building. There, just inside it stands a man. He's got a full nose, powerful like a potato, and a big bushy mustache turned up at the edges like your pile. Doc. He stands beside you, still flipping that silver piece. The man in front of you is also wearing a uniform and the
gold star of a Marshal's deputy, lou Blander. He says, Acting Marshal of New Albuquerque, Your men slowly lift their right hands from their sides to the holsters concealed under their coats on their belts. You lift a hands, stop them. You recognize this man. You played poker with him some ten years ago in Dodge City. So you remember me, he says to you. You nod? You boys, Come with me, he says, as he turns and heads for the exit. I've got a place for you to bunk down, he
says over his shoulder. You'll be taken care of the editor of the paper, he said, he'd like to see you this afternoon. My brother Sam, he's the marshall and he'll be back next week. We know what it is to take care of family. You shoot a look at your brother. Warren gives you a slight nod. Lou turns and faces you out on the street in the glowing light of the morning. Don't you boys worry, he says, tipping his head towards your group. Like I said, we'll
take care of you here. People keep their traps shut here in New Albuquerque if and we tells them to. You follow him down the raised wooden sidewalk. You look over at Doc and he raises an eyebrow to you. This, Lou is all.
Right, yeah, oh man, I know you enjoy that does better in tombstone indible.
So the IRB posse. They left about a week later, and it wasn't long before Sam lost his job as Marshall well off on another land deal. But it didn't matter because Lou and Sam they went their separate ways and kept driving in that way that people did in the old way, you know, like lose. Lou's drifting wouldn't last long. He would meet up with Sam again. Of course, they would start a whole new venture. Let's take a break.
How hard it is to run into your brother.
Back in like the middle of nowhere.
There's not that many towns you're going around. You're like, oh, I'll just go over this town, over the hill.
How do you reach each other if you don't know where you've got. It's not like oh, I can send a telegram and like, yeah, let's take a break and think about that. When we get back, we're going to hit the next stop on the Blonder Tour and get into some actual crime aside from harboring a fugitive.
Zaren Elizabeth.
How about them ads?
Oh my goodness, so good. I gotta put my wallet away.
I don't know about you, but I'm really glad that I listened to him. I feel like I'm a better person for it.
Probably doesn't take munch, but yeah, it's now inflamed Lou Blanger, he was drifting around the Southwest.
He even headed out to San Bernardino Old Burdou eighteen eighty eight. He arrived in Denver and so did his brother Sam. Reunited and it felt so good. They got to work setting up enterprises on both sides of the law. So they opened saloons and they opened gambling parlors. Do you remember who else had gambling halls and saloons in Denver at this smith? Soapy Smith.
That's right.
They were swindling the good folks of Denver at the same time. Yes, so Soapy he ran the Tivoli saloon and gambling hall.
And he was from the South, so that maybe that Robert E. Lee Mine suggests there's a lot more people from the South who thought, oh, we can all make a ride in Colorado.
Right, yeah, and they should have left that behind, so you don't name things, okay. Anyway, Lou and Sam they owned the Elite Saloon on Stout Street, and the place was over the top, like super rich, dark wood frescoes on the Elite so luxurious, and.
We're talking like Art Nouveau style picture, yes, very yeah, and also ornate and so.
This saloon they had all manner of like poker and farrow tables, and they also really fell I don't know, let's open a parlor. Why not. They also ran something that we've talked about a number of times on this show. Numbers games illegal lotteries.
Yeah.
So in some of our tales that racket was just for neighborhood folks or for like Rube prospectors in Denver in the late eighteen hundreds, it was aimed at tourists. So like, just like Soapy and his scambars are Soap filled with supposed cash. So the Blonders their policy racket, the numbers game played into people's gambling addictions. They made it way too irresistible. But make no mistake, well they
would just juice numbers and like tease people in. When Lou and Sam got to town, Soapi was the one running the joint. He ran the town. Denver had become known as a place conducive to running scams with like little or no interference from the funds, and Soapy made sure of that. So on top of the gambling and the vice, Soapy and the city fathers they had this whole protection racket going keeping the other crimers in line, So the Planders and Soapi they had somewhat of like an agreement.
Of course they have to.
They tussle over territory or like the share of the roobs on the street, but generally they kept a good time.
Like when deliveries came into town, they'd be like, I'm gonna get my portion that kind of stuff.
Right, You're like, you know, you're pulling too many of these people off the street, you know, two blocks over, Oh, into your parlor. Your cut them off before they get here, right. So I didn't really get into it in the Soapie Smith episode, but about a year after that failed takeover of city Hall that he had, Soapy absolutely wrecked shop on all the other saloons in the entertainment district. It
was like eighteen ninety five. He's drunk as a skunk and he's like just tearing through he realizes like physical, physically damaging these He's in the middle of smashing up the elite saloon Lew and Sam's play. It's when the cops finally caught up to him and hauled him away, and like, Soapy is lucky that the cops showed up because Lou was behind the bar with a shotgun trained
on Soapi and like about to unload. So it was actually this drunken rampage that was the wake up call for Soapy and imagine for Denver, well not really so like Soapi's his rebellion had been squashed. He was like, no longer really running the Denver streets the way you can, and so he that's when he pulled up stakes and went to Alaska.
Yeah.
Yeah, He's like, I want to be epic there instead. So Lou was like, I see a void, I shall fill it. Lou Blonder now running Denver, he took over. So with Denver on lock, Lou and Sam they decided to diversify their interests and go back into mining. Okay, so it's the ultimate Yeah, it's like the ultimate draw for a gambler, I'd imagine, because there's the possibility of striking at mega rich. Yeah, and you can look like a hero, a wise man.
You know when you find it, and is luck somewhat, But it's also a little bit of work, A.
Little bit of work. Yeah maybe track.
Yeah, you're also God's favorite. It's all like, hey too, there's that too.
Eighteen ninety two, Sam and Lou. They found the Forest Queen.
It's not some queen, not some.
Byroness, mythical creek.
I just ask that sounds It was a.
Gold mine, a right by Cripple Creek, not Robbie Robertson's fictional Cripple Creek chronicled in the eponymous song by the band Oh Okay. Now this was a real place, and maybe the one from the song too, but in the song it's near the Gulf of Mexico.
So yeah, that's what I was wondering.
Anyway, Cripple Creek, Colorado. The brothers found this gold mine. They named it the Forest Queen. They put it to work, and the one of the work though, is like reeling an investors, That's what I imagine.
Yeah.
So they got like judges, das certificates. Yeah. J W. McCullough he owned Green River Whiskey. He put up twenty barrels of the good stuff in exchange for a stake in the mind. So now that you've got the saloon.
Stock, it's like booze equity.
Yeah. So the mine it really did produce, though, It turned out serious loads and they were like serious profits. So you take the money they're making and their influential and straight arrow business partners and the blonders, they're getting like serious power in the area.
They're basically early bootleggers.
Yes, but yeah, so they're doing this is completely on the up and up, and they're making all these influential people a lot of money.
Empire is a great way to get rich. Yeah.
Yeah, Lou moved his center of operations from the Elite saloon to the American National Bank building, so he's like, in an actual offer, he wanted to look less like a gambling hall proprietor more like someone interested in the mineral rights in places. This is a new era, though, it's the era of the Bunco ring. For let's talk Bunco for a second. You mentioned it recently when you were talking about Bob Nygard and the National Association.
Of Bunco Investigations.
So Bunko is technically a dice game, but when we talk about it here, we're talking about a type of criminal swindle or confidence game. A Bunco schemes like a street game basically. Yeah, and the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Bunco squad. Why do we call it bunco? It comes from the Spanish word banco oh, meaning bank. Basically schemes where con artists exploit a person's trust, their
greed fake. We talk a lot of bunco around these parties. Nineteen o four, we're sick in the Buncos, the bunk bunks. Lou and his gang they joined forces with this other con artist ring leader named Adolph Duff of Duff Beer.
I was just about saying, the founder of not Beer in the Simpsons.
Yes, so Lou picks up Adolph Duff. Lou had Adolph run the street level bunko stuff. Okay, so like staffing the cons, setting up the fake gambling dens and such, and like maybe buying and approving all the costumes and wigs.
Got a big.
One the Bunco though, the Bunco strang.
So we're thinking like like the staying where they're doing like the big store type of scam.
Yes, and that's what that's This one is like their greatest hits. One is called the Rag and it's a fake stock exchange. So Lilda's crew they pulled this in Denver in the summertime, but then in the winter they moved it to like Florida, California, Cuba.
What's where the money would be in the winter wintering in the.
So you start with the store and that's the fake stock exchange or in some cases a betting parlor. It's kitted out like some sort of movie sets. So there are connected rooms, props like a desk, phone like boards with stock prices on tick or tape, guys yelling by so sell buy. It's basically the same as you said as the Sting, the movie Sting, except instead of off track betting, it's a stock exchange. And the Sting was actually based on another set of real life brothers Fred and Charlie Gondorf.
Look into that we do. So they were doing a fake stock with I imagine telegraph reporting.
Yes, okay, yes. So you have the store and then you have the look out upstairs. That's like the business office. The manager works up there coordinating the guys on the street, and then the guys on the street who pulled people in are called the ropers, and they would bring in the marks, the suckers, and those were tourists because like you don't want to hit locals.
It's too risky. They know where you can live, but they can find out where you are.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, and they spread the word. The roper befriends the mark, steers them toward the operation, and the mark is told, okay, I've got this like can't miss investment opportunity, and someone gave me in side info on stocks is about the skyrocket, right.
So the also all the mining stocks would suddenly break.
People would see like, oh this load hit or you know whatever, the comstock load.
All people who held stock in that were suddenly.
Millionaires and you're in the epicenter.
So it was very much like their dot com boom or their whatever in terms of an equivalent overnight billionaires, millionaireffs and such.
So the roper is like, look, come check it out with me, like I'm your new pal. Let's let let's get in MS. Let's see if it's legit totally and so sometimes the roper would pretend to be totally skeptical at first and then be convinced by the legitimacy of the operations. So first things.
First, the market, and also he can kind of erode the the skepticism of the mark by being basically in front of them by being like, oh yeah, asking tougher questions, and then when they eventually you're convinced, it's like, well, why am I.
Still being resistant? I was less resistant than him before.
Right, right. So they get the mark to invest in a hot stock and they show them the trades that are happening in real time, and when they buy, they're shown immediate returns, like the prices rise, the ticker suddenly shows a profit. The clerks are confirming it maximum stokage in the air. People love making money, and then when they're greed pops in, it overrides any doubts they may have had, you know, suddenly, oh this is totally yeah, this is worth it. So they're encouraged by their early
gains they want to invest more. Sometimes they get fake dividends or like partial payouts to further hook them in and like, but you know what, you know what that smell is a turn? A turn is coming. So once the Mark's in deep serious investments, the stock suddenly quote crashes or the office is just empty, like they have r u n n o ft they're gone and places Places was so lou so, like he went all out on the scam. He had actors posing his brokers, Bunko
ring members posing his fellow investors. Yes, super realistic fake stock tickers, telegraphs supposedly sending real time data. Remember Soapy's fake telegraph offices. Scot a town with no telegraph was one of those units. My first telegraph from play school. So if they're going to pull this off, they had to go all in, like the best SNL hosts, all in, no holding back. So the environment was like super realistic, super convincing. Absolutely, everyone from the receptionist to the stockbrokers
is in on the scam. Sweaty stress, and it's like a little cottage industry of its own.
It's like total economy.
It's a theme park basically that they create. Every single outcome has to be controlled, so they have to have total handle on prices, and of course because it's all theater, that's easy. But the most important thing is timing. Timing is everything, So like you need to make sure that you're that when these reports are coming in, or you you've fully isolated this mark that you're getting them at the right time.
Yeah, and the tickers going off and the people know you'd be excited or to do the buy or the sell or whatever.
You can't let anyone else get in their ear. Yeah, so they have to be totally like pulled aside, isolated. Uh that you have to be the only source of information or opinions. Yes, so like no contact with legit brokers or voices of reason.
And back then it was a much easier because they're out there in the middle of the West. Essentially the telegram is the only connection to.
Back east, well and the SEC.
And then you got the.
Bank people in town telling them like, oh, yes, we're doing this blah blah blah.
But there wasn't the regulation, like you didn't get the SEC to like the thirties.
Yeah, no, totally.
And some guy with basically a suit in some sideburns is going to be believable, especially he's got like, you know, a three pieces.
Well yeah, and the scene and yeah, yeah so there are and people weren't investors, weren't educated like you know. So this said is the core techniques, this illusion of legitimacy, the fake platform, social engineering. Those still exist in online investment scams, pump and dumps, fraudulent crypto schemes.
Crypto is a huge area for this.
So Bey and Lou would have loved crypto.
Oh my god, they'd lose their minds over crypto.
I still don't totally understand.
Unregulated like money, you got all these suckers trying.
To buy on the idea worth more tomorrow.
I don't quite get it. And so but if someone were to try and explain it to me, I would be like, yeah, sure, it's like like the scam Milonia trump coin, yes and all those like what are a conse con exactly? I don't I don't get it.
But whatever, can I tell you? Give me your money. It's gonna be worth more tomorrow, no matter what that is. Okay, Yeah, so that's a scam.
Over over a decade, Lou and the Bunko ring, they swindled millions from wealthy businessman, tourist, speculators like anyone coming through town. Only twice in nearly two decades did Blonder almost get arrested?
Really almost? Do you not pay off the right people?
I know? Nineteen ten they tried to get him in connection with the scammering in.
Iowa nineteen ten.
Things start changing because you have like enough you go through the eighteen nineties and people just kept getting ripped off, and then you get into the you basically flip over to the next century. Before right before World War One, you have this push for like we need to do banking regulations, we cannot have this and that, and also does all the patent medicine. The two were kind of running neck and neck. People were dying and losing all their money.
He was able to though, because it was in Iowa, he was able to be like, that has nothing to do. Nineteen fifteen, he had workers in his office doing a remodel and they figured out what was going on in there, and they tried to rat them out, but he got out unscathed because he owns everybody.
So wait, he hired a bunch of like basically like house counters to get carpenters to come in and like build him a Bunco lab.
No, like, we're like redo his but then they like stuff and they saw things, and they're like, we're going to the cops, and the cops are like, no, you're not. So he's a friend of the family exactly so Sam. He passed away in nineteen fourteen, but the Bunko Ring only continued to grow, lose power and fortune just swelled he started wintering in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He hung out there with an old pal of his, none other than Alan Pinkerton, what president of the Pinkerton Detective.
The founder of the Pinkerton.
And they were like BFFs that Hot Spring.
Not a nice person, No, not at all.
So things are going.
Swimming like ankles deep in water with Alan Pinkerton talking about like all the people you've.
Con bus Yeah, things things were going swimmingly at the Hot Springs, but then they weren't. Let's take a break, well we return more bunco zaren great ads ten out of ten, no notes unless there were some problematic ones in there, And then.
I say, boom, I just had post it notes of like more ads.
More more Bye bye Blue rhymes with conjure. I have to keep telling myself that longer blonder. There are a lot there's as an aside, there's this whole website about the Blonder Brothers.
Really yeah, and it's called dot com.
Lauder Brothers dot com. And they have a like thing about the pronunciation that's not really helpful. Well, they're like you could say like this, you could say, But then I found a lot of places where they said blonder like conjure. So I'm going with that multiple places blonder. Okay, So these dudes, they were fleecing so many people. Dude, are good going away with it.
Yeah, they don't see to piss people off. I haven't heard like it. And then so and so tried to kill them.
Right.
No, No, Lou's running things. He's turning into quite the power player.
I bet so.
It made sense that in nineteen twenty, during the primary election for the Denver District Attorney, Lou reached out to Phillip van Seiss, the Republican candidate. He was like, look, I want to kick some money to your campaign, maybe send some votes your way. Wink wink, nudge nudge. Van Seiss said absolutely not. Yeah, I want nothing from you. No one ever said this to Lou, and he's lose.
Shocked is the reform candidate.
Oh yeah, but like whatever he moves on.
It was like, because I guess I can't buy him.
Van Seiss did not move on. Oh he won the election, and then he put Lou on notice He's going to go after the Bunko ring like number one, Yes, within the first one hundred days and all that. Oh yeah, so this isn't going to be easy, though, because by this point Lou pretty much owns everybody.
That's what I'm thinking, all the judges, all the people.
Yes, and everyone had a good thing going.
Yeah, everyone's making everyone's wet their beak.
The whole clash feels very nucky. Thompson versus Agent van Alden on.
A Boardwine Empire.
Oh yeah, TV is my only point of reference. I never learned to read. Keep that in mind.
Getting an English degree really hard.
It was really really hard.
Is there a TV show of this book?
Because otherwise we are so.
Did the Brits make one? They make a lot of It makes.
So many good ones. Thank you so much, Britz. So Van size he knew from criminals because he was born in eighteen eighty four in Deadwood Territory. Oh, he was just speaking crime non of Deadwood. He came out of the earth.
I was born in the mud.
It's badass to be like, Oh, I'm gonna start telling people I was born you should in eighteen eighty four.
Yeah, totally. People will love that.
Don't believe me, so Van sise right, he's a lawyer obviously, is running for DA served as a World War One military intelligence officer. Oh man, big, big crusading reformer. Yes, everyone knows. And he's principled, he's incorrect, he's fiercely independent. When he got back from World War One with all like the counterintelligence, oh yeah, he put it to work, right. He's determined to take down the Blonder Gang.
Oh man, he goes to war against.
Yeah, and he knew. He knew the police were compromised, he knew that the courts could be bought. He knew he couldn't trust City Hall, so he had no choice but to go rogue.
Oh yeah.
Van Size knew that if he's going to go after lou he needs to have resources, so he created a private intelligence unit that was financed by wealthy, reform minded businessmen.
Okay, the other good.
Yeah. So these men they're all part of Verus economic elite, okay, right, bankers, industrialist lawyers, property developers, tco. Yeah, and they're all just like they can't take the corruption anymore. Everything's you know, we're a national joke.
It's a new century. We're a national joke.
Yeah, And there's just too much criminality. They're not like completely altruistic though, like some of them are just like look this crime is bad for investment, Like we're losing tourists.
I'm trying to make other suckers.
I get embarrassed I go places. I'm like, I'm from Denver. So here's some of the men who got in on this. JJ Jake Benedict. He was like this big banker investor. He thought the crime ring was a blight on the city image in the economy. And he's the one who helped organize the financial trust that supported Van Seiss and was likely he played the part of the financial go between and the fixer for the group. So Lou was seen at the time everyone called him the ultimate fixer.
See him coming back around to be look at that. So now we got JJ Jake Benedict. He's the fixer for the good guys.
So it's fixer versus fixerspy versus spot yes.
And there and their little outfits in their pointy faith wigs of course Jiggs costumes wigs. Another dude in the rich guy anti Bunco club was Gerald Hughes. So he's another lawyer, he's a mining investor. He's super well connected. How is he well connected?
You ask?
No? His brother was Charles Evans Hughes former Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Oh, snap, he ain't connected.
He's a true believer, right. He wanted clean government, he wanted civic reform, and to get that, he funneled money to support the operations, logistics safe houses and surveillance safe houses, extra judicial stuff like you'd find in clean government.
Wow.
Yeah, so running a coupe and money funds and like dead drops everything.
So then there's Frederick. I'm just imagine them doing like the dancing dead drop.
Where they they did that too, the other dead drop.
Yeah, that's just in my head, like the guy with the big bushy mountain and high heels. There's a scene I gagged serving Frederick Bamfield's fee. He was the co owner of the Denver Post. He was known for backing moral crusades, pushing for civic reform and nineteen twenty you're brimming with moral cruise.
I say that was the time. Then, Yeah, they were all about that. We got the racism. Those were the two things.
Stick with it. There's also the John Evans family, and they were the descendants of John Evans, who was Colorado's second territorial governor. Ah, they're just like super powerful Presbyterian Reformers, philanthropist.
Son of the founding founder, all.
About cleaning up the city morally, socially. William Evans people very much, so so much Starch Williams, son of John. He was the president of Denver Tramway Company Railroad Railroad. So he's like deeply involved in civic development. He's got he's like, he has to have the city become respectable for investors and visitors.
On the trams.
Yeah, all the trams everywhere, traming it up. The rest of the group of rich guys, they stayed anonymous. They're like, leave my name out of it. Here's some cash, I get it. Yeah, that extra digital go together though. They created a secret fund that was like had like twenty five grand in it. That's more than three hundred thousand dollars.
That's plenty of money.
Now. So with that cash, they rented a private headquarters away from the DA's office. Okay, so they had their own store and look out. They paid undercover agents and informants, you know, the ropers. They purchased equipment like cameras, typewriters, why tap devices, costumes and wigs like now we're cooking.
We got costumes and wigs. So the funds they paid they paid for out of town's surveillance because remember the ring was operating all the way to Cuba, so like, I guess one of us has to go to Cuba. Sorry Van Seiss He's like, we have to be have total secrecy for this.
And they're not working with the FEDS on this. This is the local money.
Local, yes, just plus but the chapstick and the dance boat. So that they're thinking, okay, since the Denver police are corrupt, you know, most of them are on lose payroll, leaks could lead to murder, witness intimidation, sabotage, so everything has to be super secret. Plus like the businessmen, they feared for their lives, as they should, and the financial retaliation, you know, not just that. So to hide their involvement,
they used sheldone. They met in private homes in public Van Seiss just referred to them as my backers, and all records were kept off the books and stored personally.
They had a couple of weekly Bible reading meetings. Yeah, you're gonna be at the Bible reading, Like.
Let's go read the Bible again. So the strike team was staffed with undercover operatives. Most of them were like World War one vets.
Yeah, and this dude's friends with Pinkerton.
Lewis what I'm saying.
Again, the best like private detective on the continent and everybody they know, they know all of the black market.
People, and so he has hard to find people they don't know, right, who were good at this kind of business.
That's van siss world War One. He's got to go to the intelligence guy.
And go to like the ones he knew.
Yeah, he's got to go personally people. I mean he's got a vet. Basically, he can't trust any that's not put that together.
That's so good.
Well, no, the Pinkertons was like, he should hire Painker.
Oh he can't.
Yeah.
So they monitored the known bunkomen for months and like along the way, they're just gathering all this airtight evidence. They filmed and documented like real scams as they happened. They didn't want lou to be able to weasel out of any and like you know, he'd have due process as afforded to anyone on your soil. So they needed
to come correct though, with like actual solid evidence. So they tracked how the victims were roped in, lured to fake exchanges, conned and then dumped operatives posed as would be victims. And yeah, at one point Van Seiss's backers helped him tail and surveil the mayor, Dewey Bailey, because
everyone was like, he's got to be protected. Bailey didn't ever get charged, but the surveillance helped prove like how far the rot had spread, totally reinforced that need for secrecy to so over the course of a year, they collected all this evidence against the blogger gang. They tailed, wire tapped, Van Seiss went through lose garbage on a regular personally. Yeah, they had a dictaphone installed in Lo's office secretly, which didn't require search warrant at the time.
Wow, yeah, crazy, I would voice active talking he clicks over.
I guess yeah, just two early early days.
So Van size was premoranda, right, that kind of stuff.
But it's like it's new technology.
Yeah, but if I'm saying that, they don't even have the thought to make it like, oh, yeah, you're gonna.
Need you're gonna need this some legal protections.
So Van Seiss found that there was a police detective in the DA's office who was on lose payroll, and he's like, you know what, don't worry about it. Van Siss just let him continue on his merry way. But fed him all this bad intel to mess with the Bunco ring.
Oh smart.
Yeah, so Van Sis he's ready to launch a raid on the gang. He prepares everything in advance, like down to the most minute detail.
I don't normally root for the cops, but I'm lovings. Yeah, his operations great.
He the whole thing was carried out using private cars. Trusted volunteers carried out the arrest, so not police. He pre rented jail space in the city jail.
This apparent.
I guess he's like, I just want to book it out.
I'm having a party the Sea Block for the weekend, having a batch. I got some musicians coming into town. They need housing.
It's like his backers paid for all the deputizing of like all the military vets, and you know those are the ones, like you said, he personally vented all of them. The takedown was almost surgical. So Van Seiss, he had a list of sixty seven names, and these were like every single key player.
In the buckle.
Yeah for Blue himself, down to like the Ropers Hills and.
Like the lowest debts. You know, some guy had.
A crooked wig being like how can I help you sitting at a desk. So, like any good cinematic takedown, they had to bust them all at the same time so they wouldn't tip each other off.
He got sixty seconds to coordinate that.
Yeah, so can I call a time out really quickly here and point out that it didn't look to me like there have been any movies about Lou Blanger. Yeah, so you need to call DIBs on the screenplay.
I want that on site. Man, this guy is like an Elliott n.
Yes, yes, okay. So the sting they needed to get them all at once. They put in so much work they could not risk this falling apart. And like the worst would be if Lou gets away, because like he has connections everywhere, he can just disappear.
You really want to get him.
Yeah, he's the he's the key. August twenty fourth, nineteen twenty two. So it's early in the morning. Van Seiss's team fans out across Denver in private vehicles.
Sixty seven people they got to pick up.
Arrest teams there were like two to three agents per target.
That's at eighty people.
Sure if you say so. Came to math. I don't even know how to read.
Uh.
These teams they hit homes, hotels, saloons, the fake investment offices. People are like, well, I open up my fake stock exchange this morning. Remember, no police are used, so only the trust exactly exactly. Some agents pretended to be clients and then arrested the con then dam like they would one last undercover.
They know where they're going to be like nine am. Others I want.
To They pulled them from like street corners. All the arrestees were transported immediately to the county jail, where they had like the pre reserved VIP cells. All of the arrests happened within a window of one to two hours, and so by mid morning, you know, everyone's in custody, including Lou. They picked him up as he was like walking down the street puffing on a cigar. He owned a cigar shop. He just gone in and picked one up, smoking a stogy. He and Duff were the first to
be arrested. So thirty three of the rest of the ring were caught and they got held on fraud and conspiracy charges. The rest of the guys they escaped because they were like further down the ladder, further out on the arrest schedule in the morning. Van Seiss had everything on these guys. So they had the conscripts, the props, the fake telegrams, the stock ticker paper, testimony from out
of state victims who'd been defrauded in Denver. Despite all of the pressure and all the threats, Van Seiss prosecuted.
The case himself as the prosecuting.
As the prosecution, he Van sised for the people. He did not trust anyone else to do it. Yeah, los lawyers filed motions, they bribed, they bullied, but like Van Size is like what you're gonna do?
Like, my.
Stuff is airtight. So the bust was huge, news splashed in paper coast to coast. Oh wow, it's amazing entertainment.
Oh yeah, but it's like a boss tweed kind of.
But the Denver Post wouldn't print Lose name. What one of the co owners, Harry Tammin, He was a good buddy of Lose. But then remember the other guy, Fred Bomfield's the other co owner. He was helping fund the takedown. Yeah, so it was a house divided so uh, Fred though he made the papers editors and that embargo print lose names and then support the prosecution of what they were calling the quote million dollar Bunko ring.
Once the music stops playing and the lights go on, well the dances got to do.
It then that the million dollar bunko ring. That's like the press nickname right and coverages like reaching a fever pitch. Heading into trial, the guys they were pulling in way more than a million dollars a year, though it missed mind boggling amounts of money. So during the trial, everyone's pretty sure the jury had been tampered with. I'm guessing yeah, lose guys had approached four of the jurors and then they get to the fifth one that they're going to
try and influence herman Oculi. Okay, he's crafty, right, he's he's acting like he's all in on fixing the trial. He took the money they offered and then he went right to his boss, who went right to Van Seiss. So the jury like they're deliberating, right, and it looks like they're going to almost be deadlocked, because like after four days, three jurors still wanted to acquit even though they have all this evidence, zero reasonable doubt. So then then herman he steps up right in front of all
the other jurors. He told the three who wanted to acquit, quote, the difference between me and you is that I got my five hundred dollars, but I turned it over to the judge and you've still got yours. Oh and that freaked them out, like they didn't want to go down too, so they all flipped over to guilty immediately, immediately.
That's amazing.
So March twenty eighth, nineteen twenty three, the jury comes back guilty against Lou all the other defendants who are still on trial. In the end, Lou gets convicted and sentenced to seven to ten years. He was seventy five years old.
Say he's got to be up there.
Health wasn't the best. The trial really took it out of him. But what tipped him over the edge was the Denver Post because they ran an article after like you know, fair game, they ran an article that revealed that Lou had been leading this double life for twenty years. He lived with his wife Nola on the weekends, but during the week he lived with his mistress Iola Redon and the wife didn't know about the arrangement. What she thought he Maly just works in the city.
Yeah, he stays so busy.
He makes me so much money as so I get. How do you think the revelation destroyed him?
Really?
Yeah? All he wanted at that point was his wife's forgiveness. That's all he cared about.
Why did he I don't know, I don't know.
They patched things up. They patch things up?
Are you kidding me?
And he transferred everything he owned, money, property, investments, everything to her before he went into the clink.
Yeah, which, like you know, he wants to keep it.
Yeah, lou he lost trust. Yeah, he lost a bunch of appeals, and in a last ditch effort, he wrote to Van Seiss and begged for leniency. This is what van Seiss wrote back, What leniency have you shown to others? What God have you worshiped except the almighty dollar? When you stole Preacher Mena's trust funds? Did you hesitate when overwhelmed with shame he committed suicide? Did you give any aid to his family when you took the life earnings of an old man Donovan of New Orleans and reduced
him from comfort to penury. What did you do to ease the last months of his life? You have been a criminal from the time of your youth. You've been the fixer of the town. You have prostituted justice. You've bribed judges and jurors, state, city and police officials. You have ruined hundreds of men with that record. Tell me why a death sentence is not your day? With his l seven to ten years might have Well.
Yeah, I think we're all kind of just saying the same thing.
And he did. He died in prison in nineteen twenty four after only being there a few months. The Blonder bust that cleaned out Denver's criminal elite, like basically overnight.
Yeah, clan it the whole town. I imagine Van siss.
He didn't run for reelection.
That's all he wanted to do.
Yeah, he returned to private law instead of like, you know, being tempted to be corrupted by politics.
Wow.
Like he didn't want anything. He did his job. He wrote a book called Fighting the Underworld in nineteen thirty six tells his side of the story, and then his his like methods became a blueprint for fighting organized crime.
Sounds like it, I mean, basically get Rico out of it.
It's like pre FBI right, That's what I'm saying.
When you build a case over and show all the connections.
Hey Edgar Hoover right from his playbook. Oh yeah, so because he used private funding, undercover infiltration, surprise prosecution like that. That you that's how you bust racket.
Totally, the surprise raid, all on the same day.
Saren, what's your ridiculous tickaway.
That I've never heard of this cat van siss.
I mean, like, you know, I listened to a lot of the old radio shows and they'll reference a lot of the stuff from the nineteenth century, a lot of the great outlaws, a lot of the great law men, and this one's never come up. And I've listened to stories about Denver. I've heard Soapie Smith mentioned in certain shows as like a outlaw figure, and they fictionalize them like, well, you know, Soapie Smith's got the so and So's saloon or whatever, and I'm like, oh, Lisciber told me about
that guy. Never have I heard about this guy. But it's just fascinating what gets lost in American history. I think about the day about Smedley Butler, the guy who like stopped. You reminded me of this with with the juror, where you act like you're in on the scam. Yeah, you get enough evidence and then you flip right. As long as you're legitimately doing that, that's a great pull. And so I was thinking about that with him or he did that where he basically showed FDR that there
was a coup against him. My point being that the ridiculousness is actually this not like it's not prosaic like sublime. Like the ridiculous is the juror doing the right thing. And I didn't anticipate that for Van Seiss not running for a reelection or trying to turn this into power and basically pulling a Cincinnatus in a George Washington and just walking away and.
Being remaining Yeah, so ridiculous, this one is that exactly. We never we don't.
We so rarely hear about good men doing things like this and ridiculous.
And that's why you have to say, like, I can't like this guy is.
Clean, totally, he's great.
I love he's doing it for just.
You want to protect people from penry. Exactly, you can't.
Be taking all that the money from the old Yeah, So, Elizabeth, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
I just the characters. I'm just enamored of every character in this that like Leu and his family are terrible but fascinating totally, and then Van Seiss coming through at the end. Oh yeah, I just I love good characters.
Thank you. Oh by the way, thank you for letting me be whiter. That was fun.
That was my gift to you. If to you, I need to talk back.
Oh oh my god, I went.
Thank you Ridiculous Crime. Before I started listening to you, I used to park illegally and sometimes even on the sidewalk. Now I have started a soup kitchen since I've started listening to you because you inspired me so much. That and I have stopped my Tamagachi and BMX Triple X obsession and change it to you.
We do the Lord's word.
Tell you. I love to have an effect in the world.
You know what.
That's that's that's I feel like.
Right now for real perform That was so good.
That's it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also a Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky Instagram. We're on YouTube. There's animation on the screen while the episodes play. It's great for keeping on in the background. It's Ridiculous Crime Pod. Over there, there's another Ridiculous Crime that's trash. You want Ridiculous Crime Pod, and we may put out little special bits on there
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