A compendium of scams from Montreal in the dirty 30s

   When times are tough people become resourceful in a bad way. That's the lesson learned from Montreal in the 1930s, a time when making a buck was next to impossible for many, who turned instead into grifters, often of some brilliance. Here's a short list of the scams they pulled.
The old aspirin trick. A guy will fake a seizure in a bar. He gets attended to be a ringer who finds a wealthy-looking third party to ask to get some medication at a pharmacy nearby and gives him ten bucks to fetch it. But the ringer asks him to leave his wallet to protect against the guy taking off with the ten bucks. Sometimes people were gullible enough to do it. Of course the afflicted man and the ringer then just walk off with the wallet as the man is buying pills at a pharmacy.
The fake permit racket.
The job racket. You pay some guy money to get you a job, he simply flees with it.
The bail bond racket: A vagrant or hooker gets tossed into jail. A judge offers bail and a crook dedicated to this scheme shows up with a special insurance policy to spring 'em. The insurance policy is a fake and the city clerk is in on the scheme. The person in jail pays only 10 percent of the bail fee. More references to a high profile Montreal case 1,2,3, 4.
The fake accident extortion racket: Cops give warning to driver for having run into a pedestrian, ask for money.
Fake charity event racket: You sell tickets to a charity event that never takes place.
The letterman racket. A kid rented a room, saying that he was a McGill student, which seemed pretty obvious because he was wearing a school sweater but he was just a bum. They took his cheque, it bounced and he got free rent.
Apple racket: Woman buys a barrel of apples, discovers that under neath the top level of apples is just old clothing and cabbages
Parking racket: Gate locked when you try to collect your car from a parking lot, forces you to pay more.
Bicycle repair racket: Kids steal bikes and remodel them, when caught kids claimed not to know where the bikes came from.
Rabbit racket: Ste Hyacinthe farmer sold thoroughbred rabbits for $50 – 100 each, says he’ll buy their offspring $10 a head. They were fakes.
Dole rent racket: The unemployed would present out-of-date rent cards to landlords who had no way of checking if the gov’t would still cover , so tenants got off free.
Prosperity Club chain letter scam: Chain letter racket.
Street car money tray theft racket: Little boys aged 8 and 10 ran onto a streetcar on The Main and Mount Royal and grabbed the change from the tray, fleeing with 37 cents.
Racetrack Spanish Prisoner scam: a retired California cop was lured into lending his life savings to a gambler on a fake lucky streak.
Fake detective racket: Sorta self-explanatory (not really - Chimples)