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and 30-year terms respectively in the Federal prison at Atlanta, Ga. Mr. Mr. Flynn put them there, and that is one of the reasons why he is the Chief of the Secret Service now.

To understand the situation it should be borne in mind that the Italian crime problem in New York and the rest of the United States came into existence with the great wave of Italian immigration, beginning approximately with the first year of the century, that has since brought into the country thousands of ex-convicts of the Mafia and the Camorra among more than 2,000,000 of their honest and industrious compatriots. Morello and Lupo were established here before this influx began, and were proficient in what are now known as Black Hand crimes before that term began to be applied to these offenses. Morello, indeed, had been known to the New York police for several years before he went into partnership with Lupo. The maimed Sicilian had been arrested for murder, kidnapping, extortion, and blackmail at least half a score of times before his transactions in counterfeit money brought him within the view of the Federal Secret Service, but, though morally certain of his guilt in every instance, the police had never been able to fasten a crime upon him.

Morello was a fugitive from justice from Italy under a ten-year sentence for forgery. He was about forty years of age when he came to this country, rough in appearance and uncouth in manner, but an intelligent and forceful rogue. The police have never found out how his right arm had been crippled. Incapacitated for manual participation in crime, his brain conceived the schemes that his lieutenants brought to fruition. Lupo, about ten years younger, complemented Morello. He was urbane and affable, a polished villain who wore rings on both hands, used pomade on his hair, and gave off the odors of an East Side perfumery shop. He was clever enough to establish a wholesale grocery in New York and fail fraudulently for $100,000 incidentally to his transactions with Morello.

In 1899, Morello's existence was officially brought to the attention of the Secret

Service of which Mr. Flynn was then a subordinate member. During the latter part of the year a flood of counterfeit money was put into circulation among the humble shop-keepers of the poorer parts of the city, many of them recently arrived Italians who were unfamiliar with our currency. The men who passed these counterfeits were all Italians, who generally plied their trade about dusk, making small purchases in shops that were unlighted for economical reasons, tendering spurious two-dollar treasury notes in payment, and receiving change in good money.

Mr. Flynn, with some of his co-workers in the Secret Service, was put on the case. The trail led to what is known to the police as "Little Sicily," and into the home of Morello, and he and several of the men who had been passing the spurious bills were taken into custody. As on all the other occasions that Morello had been arrested with members of his gang, they suffered and he escaped. No pressure that the prosecuting officers could put upon the underlings would induce them to incriminate him, even though immunity from punishment was offered those of them who would turn State's evidence. There was nothing left to do, therefore, but to set Morello at liberty again.

Three years later, when Mr. Flynn had been made chief of the Eastern division of the Service, a deluge of counterfeit five-dollar bills swamped the Italian settlements of New York City. They were known as the "Morristown fives," because they were imitations of an issue of the National Iron Bank of Morristown, N. J. Mr. Flynn, who took charge of an investigation, traced them back, the trail leading into Little Sicily again. Pursuing his researches under cover, in an effort to find the counterfeiting plant, he discovered that Giuseppe De Primo, a grocer in Little Sicily and a friend of Morello and Lupo. - who had just begun criminal operations together — was importing a larger amount of olive oil than his business seemed to call for. The clue now led to the Custom House. Under the tariff law olive oil may come into the United States by barrel at a lesser rate than in cans; it is

therefore imported in bulk, the cans being brought in from Italy empty to be filled for sale in this country.

Investigation of the cans consigned to De Primo revealed rolls of the "Morristown fives." The counterfeiting plant was in Naples, and Morello and Lupo were circulating the product that was sent to America through De Primo. Morello, Lupo, and De Primo, with a dozen other Italians who had actually passed the counterfeit money, were arrested and again there was no evidence to be found against Morello- or Lupo, either. De Primo was found guilty of taking part in the conspiracy to defraud, but he refused to implicate Morello or Lupo, even to save himself. The others were equally loyal. Morello and his partner in crime went free and the others went to prison.

The escape of Morello and Lupo from punishment in the "Morristown fives" case was the occasion for the sarcasm of the two criminals that was leveled at Mr. Flynn at the courtroom door, and for the fixing of the detective's determination never to relax his energies in their pursuit until he had landed them behind prison bars. From that time until their final arrest in January, 1910, they were continually under the surveillance of Secret Service agents, except for brief periods during which their whereabouts were generally known.

Nevertheless, for month after month and year after year, Black Hand crimes - as they were beginning to be called small and great, were traced almost to Morello and Lupo. Their operations extended as far west as Chicago and as far south as New Orleans; but, although scores of their associates and dupes were convicted and sentenced to long terms in prison and even to the electric chair, the "men higher up" could not be reached. Neither Morello nor Lupo knew that Mr. Flynn was keeping track of their movements during the long period that they let counterfeit money alone, and for years they directed criminal operations under the eyes of the local and Federal police agents. To be sure, they were arrested frequently; but, believing themselves to be secure from conviction, they took such

trifling disturbances philosophically. as part of the day's work.

"What is a journey more or less to the courts?" Morello once said to a member of the Italian squad of the detective bureau who had him in custody. "It is a relief from monotony. It might even be amusing if the American pigs of lawyers and judges had a little wit to put me on my mettle. But, no! I sleep while they dispose of my case."

For more than five years, in addition to other important work of the Secret Service, watch was kept on Morello and Lupo before Mr. Flynn found it practicable to begin the construction of the trap into which they finally fell. Mr. Flynn was confident that it was merely a question of time before the bandits and their followers would again turn their attention to counterfeiting.

Meanwhile Mr. Flynn's reputation as a detective was constantly increasing. In January of the year before the issue of the "Morristown fives," he had been called to a bank in Grand Street in New York, the cashier of which had telephoned him that he was holding a suspicious looking man who had offered eighty five-pound Bank of England notes for exchange. Mr. Flynn had approached the bank slowly and cautiously, with the idea that if the man with the English money was a professional criminal he would doubtless have a confederate waiting outside to ascertain whether fortune or misfortune befell him. The detective's forethought had been rewarded by the sight of a little man with a red beard on the opposite side of the street gazing fixedly at the door of the bank. The sentinel had disappeared on seeing Mr. Flynn looking in his direction, and the detective had arrested the man in the bank who had asked for exchange for the eighty notes, and who had declared that he had found them in a wallet in the street. Mr. Flynn had been unable to find the redbearded little man, but he had made a mental photograph of him. The fivepound notes were as perfect counterfeits as the officers of the Bank of England had ever seen, the celebrated watermark having been copied almost exactly.

In the fall of the same year, when John

Dayis was tried in London for forging Bank of England notes, Mr. Flynn went to England and was able to identify him as the red-bearded man whom he had seen watching the bank in Grand Street in New York the day the five-pound counterfeits had been offered for exchange. Davis had collapsed entirely on hearing Mr. Flynn's testimony, had confessed his guilt, and had been allowed to turn State's evidence, while the other members of the most troublesome gang of counterfeiters that had ever menaced the Bank of England had been sentenced to long terms in prison.

Mr. Flynn had kept Davis in mind. He had ascertained who were his associates in this country, and he kept an eye on them, anticipating that Davis would be unable permanently to wean

from the profitable occupation of counterfeiting. As Davis was well known to the English police, Mr. Flynn guessed that he would be as likely as not to set up his next plant in the United States. In the fall of 1903, counterfeit ten-dollar bills were discovered to be in circulation in Massachusetts, and simultaneously Mr. Flynn's agents reported that Davis was in the country. Through his former associates Davis was traced to Revere, a suburb of Boston. A comfortable cottage sheltered a small but well-equipped counterfeiting plant. Evidence was gathered against every suspicious acquaintance of Davis, and in December the place was raided. As the back door was broken down a little man with a red beard rushed into the kitchen and right up against the muzzle of Mr. Flynn's revolver.

"Why, John Davis," said Mr. Flynn, with a laugh, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself."

cleared up, after many Secret Service men had tried in vain, was that surrounding a continuous run of counterfeit pennies that had been circulating in New York City for years. The making of pennies is a profitable occupation in a small way. A 13-cent sheet of copper will produce 130 cents. Mr. Flynn began investigating this case the year he was made chief of the eastern division of the Service. He first obtained an assay of the copper in the cent, and then he searched the country from coast to coast until he found a dealer in Connecticut who sold that very quality of the metal. He examined the books of this dealer, who had 416 customers in different parts of the country. With the help of his agents, Mr. Flynn canvassed the customers, and finally found one in Centre Street, New York, who sold sheet copper to a Hebrew peddler. Mr. Flynn trailed the peddler with a load of copper on his pushcart to a room in Allen Street, and breaking in a little later he found him industriously stamping out new and shiny one-cent pieces. Further investigation, lasting more than a year, revealed another one-cent plant in the mountains of Pennsylvania, and still another in Pittsburg.

In the spring of 1906, while still awaiting the chance to catch Lupo and Morello, Mr. Flynn learned that an order had come from Portland, Ore., to a New York machine shop for what is known in the trade as a "corrugated collar," a tool that is used to mill the edges of coins, as well as for other purposes. It seemed rather a long distance to send for an article that might have been bought in Portland, and Mr. Flynn deemed it worth while to send. a man out there with it. His agent followed the person who claimed the "collar" at the express office in Portland to a railroad station, and went with him about a hundred miles by train into the interior, where a buckboard met him to take him to a ranch twenty miles from the railroad. A week later a group of Secret Service men visited the ranch and found a counterfeiting plant that was turning out five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar gold pieces, with the result that Edward R. Cool and three other professional counterOne counterfeit mystery that Mr. Flynn feiters went to prison for long terms.

The little man began to whimper, and told Mr. Flynn all his history since his trial in London the previous year. Scotland Yard had sent him to Australia, with a warning not to return to England. The lure of counterfeiting had drawn him to America, as Mr. Flynn had foreseen. His plant in Revere was ready to turn out a million dollars in counterfeit tens when it was raided.

These and other cases had given Mr. Flynn added experience and reputation, but the two Italians still remained at large. It was not until the summer of 1908 that there were indications of a revival of interest in spurious money in Little Sicily. The Secret Service "shadows" now reported to Mr. Flynn that Morello and Lupo had been called upon one evening by three Italians named named Cina, Cina, Silvestro, and Palermo, who had been concerned in the distribution of the "Morristown fives," had been convicted therefor, and had served their sentences. The next day Mr. Flynn's men told him that Silvestro and Palermo had brought a fourth ex-convict, named Callacchio, to the bandit chief. Callacchio was an engraver by trade. The gang was going to take up counterfeiting again, as the presence of an engraver would seem to indicate, and the bogus money was to be made in America, not in Italy.

And now Mr. Flynn began the construction of his biggest man-trap. A counterfeiting plant is not complete without a printing press, which requires a printer. It was only a day or two after the conference of these members of the old "Morristown fives" gang that, by a strange coincidence, Cina was appealed to in the street for assistance by a young Italian. He told Cina that he was a Calabrian in need of work; by name Antonio Comito; by trade a printer. To Cina's gratification, on questioning Comito, he found that he knew all about color printing, the texture of paper, and the working of hand presses. (Whether or not Mr. Flynn had anything to do with bringing about this strange coincidence no one but himself and Comito knows.)

In September, Cina purchased a small farm about three miles from Highland, N. Y., a village on the Hudson, opposite Poughkeepsie, the farmhouse being half a mile from the nearest neighbor. The young Calabrian, Comito, who was now boss printer, accompanied Cina and Callacchio when they purchased a printing press that was set up in the farmhouse, and with them he made many trips back and forth between Highland and New York -traveling by way of Poughkeepsie and

crossing the bridge over the Hudson - for the purchase of dies, inks, paper, and other materials that were shipped to the farm. On every one of these visits to the city a Secret Service agent at the Poughkeepsie railroad station made a note of their going and coming, and another agent followed them from the Grand Central Station in New York and jotted down memoranda of the shops and warehouses where purchases were made.

It was not until midwinter that the counterfeiting plant was set up and in running order, and then a man named Antonio Cecela brought from New York plates made by Callacchio for the printing of five-, two-, and one-dollar bills. Before the plant was abandoned Comito had run off his press $46,000 in bogus money, $3,000 of it in fives and the rest in ones and twos. Cina, Palermo, Cecela, and a man. named Giglia were constantly at the farmhouse. They took away the spurious notes for circulation, invariably visiting Morello and Lupo when they came to New York. The ruffians at the plant in Highland, all Sicilians, took an instinctive dislike to Comito, the Calabrian. He was virtually a prisoner, not being allowed to leave the house by himself, and probably he would have been killed when the counterfeiters had no further use for him if he had not escaped at the last moment. He had no opportunity of communicating with the outside world during the winter and spring, and a boy named Bernandino, a relative of Cina, was employed especially to watch him.

Cina himself, as having discovered Comito, was more malevolent than the others. "Dog, you have brought the evil eye upon the house," he would shout at him when anything went wrong. “། will have your head under my feet!"

Meanwhile, Mr. Flynn was waiting for Morello and Lupo to visit the farm at Highland, that there might be no mistake about their connection with the counterfeiting plant. However, Lupo did not visit the workers at Highland until the latter part of February. To have taken him into custody then would have necessitated the arrest of the others, and Morello - whom most of all Mr. Flynn was anxious

to "put away" - had not yet sufficiently implicated himself. When Morello finally did go to Highland, early in March, Lupo was on his way to Italy with a consignment of the counterfeits that he intended to put into circulation there.

It now became necessary to wait for Lupo to return from Italy, if Mr. Flynn's purpose of "bagging" both the leaders of the counterfeiting gang was to be carried out. If he had arrested Morello and the others, Lupo would probably not have come back at all, and so Mr. Flynn decided to wait for him.

During the winter and spring certain Secret Service agents, who did not know that the plant where the counterfeits were being made was under surveillance by other Secret Service men, were arresting the passers of the spurious money in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and even Buffalo and Cincinnati, and more than twenty of them were convicted. The risk of distribution reduced the price of counterfeits below a margin of profit, and in the latter part of May it was decided to shut down the plant at Highland. Comito escaped the night before this was done, and his associates in the farmhouse did not see him again until they met in the Federal Court.

It was a long wait for Lupo, but Mr. Flynn believed that it was worth while to hold out for his return before arresting Morello and the others, who meantime were kept under the closest scrutiny. Not until January of the next year, 1910, was Lupo discovered by the Secret Service agents to be in New York. He had probably returned by way of Canada or Mexico, for all seaports of the United States had been watched for him. On January 9th, Mr. Flynn triumphantly sprung his trap, which contained Morello, Lupo, Callacchio, Silvestro, Cina, Giglio, Palermo, and Cecela, with eight subordinates who had been concerned only with the passing of the counterfeit money.

In February the eight principals were tried together before Judge Ray and a jury in the Federal District Court. Entirely unaware of the extent of the evidence in the possession of the Secret Service, none of them felt any great con

cern when the trial began, even after they learned that Comito was to appear as a witness against them. They were defended by able lawyers, to whom they had paid big fees. Morello and Lupo in particular considered themselves perfectly safe from conviction, not only because they knew that Comito's testimony that they had been connected with the plant at Highland would be controverted by all the others who had been there with him, but because each of the bandit chiefs had prepared himself with the testimony of a physician that he had been ill in bed on the day that Comito would swear that he had been at Highland. Both had found that sort of evidence effective in similar circumstances before.

But this time Mr. Flynn was ready for them with counter alibis. He had had their family doctors, both Italians living in the Italian settlements, shadowed by his agents during the entire period of his watch on the counterfeiters themselves. Consequently, the Secret Service men were able to show not only that neither of these physicians had visited Morello or Lupo on the days they professed to be ill, but also just what the movements of the men of medicine had been on those particular days. Corroboration of this evidence came from an unexpected source. Gen. Theodore A. Bingham, who was police commissioner during this period and was endeavoring to break up the gangs under Morello and Lupo, had had his own detectives trailing those undesirable aliens for several weeks covering the time they claimed to have been ill in their beds. The reports of these detectives, taken from the files at police headquarters, showed that Morello and Lupo had left New York from the Grand Central Station for Poughkeepsie on the same days that Comito had previously testified they had visited the counterfeiting plant at Highland.

Mr. Flynn was further prepared to convict the entire gang of counterfeiters on other testimony than that of his own men or of Comito. To this end not only did the Secret Service men at the Grand Central Station and at the station at Poughkeepsie corroborate Comito as to the visit of

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