Joseph “Yellow Kid” Weil was a Chicago-born confidence man who became one of the best-known American swindlers of the early 20th century. He would trick his victims with elaborate investment, mining, banking and gambling cons.
“I never cheated an honest man, only rascals,” Weil told William T. Brannon, his biographer. “They wanted something for nothing. I gave them nothing for something.”
Often, these schemes would be “cooked up” within moments of Weil seeing someone and his uncanny ability to read that person.
When Will Langtree, a Wyoming banker, boarded a train bound for the Windy City in the early 1900s, he immediately became a mark in one of Weil’s intricate schemes.
Weil claimed his victims often participated because they believed they were getting an unusually profitable opportunity themselves.
“This desire to get something for nothing has been very costly to many people who have dealt with me and with other con men,” Weil said.
This story of rascals and the cons who trick them would have been lost to time except that Wyoming State Historian Alice Wright Spring's passion was oral history.
Spring was a journalist, historian and writer who grew up at a stage stop between Laramie and the mining districts in the Medicine Bow Mountains. She later said listening to travelers' stories helped foster her interest in history.
“To me, history will always be people and their memories,” Spring said. “I kept notes on interviews, incidents, wisps of gossip or hearsay and pertinent facts about the persons with whom I crossed trails or in whose shadows I walked.”
While Spring changed the name of the banker and the bank to protect the “not-so-innocent,” the story she shared in the Fall 1969 “Old West” magazine would have been one she collected in her years listening to people across their dining room table.
'Chance' Meeting
Spring said Langtree was the president of the Sage Creek National Bank, a member of the local school board, and president of the town’s chamber of commerce.
He enjoyed annual business trips from his Wyoming home to Chicago, and on this trip he had $14,000 to invest in a venture he had been investigating for some time. That is the equivalent of half a million today.
One of the highlights of this visit was seeing his old schoolmate, Detective Tim Murray, who had left Wyoming for the big city.
Langtree, Spring explained, always prided himself on his ability to size up a man and almost became a detective himself.
It was at the connection in Omaha when Langtree noticed the couple for the first time. They were clean-cut though not lavishly dressed. They intrigued him.
Once they boarded the train to Chicago, the couple ended up in his Pullman section. The train was hardly underway when the man excused himself and departed.
Shortly after, the woman spilled a tin box of dirt and ore specimens, which Langtree retrieved for her, collecting each stray nugget. She thanked him profusely, and when her companion returned, she told him what had happened to his “pets.”
After this informal introduction, the three struck up a conversation for the rest of the trip to Chicago.
After a time, the banker mentioned to his mining friend that he was on his way to Chicago to make a semi-speculative investment.
It was after this that the conversation turned to stocks.
By the time they reached Chicago, they were fast friends and Langtree was beginning to be convinced that there might be a better investment in stocks and mining.
The couple invited him to stay at their favorite hotel and he was impressed by the over-the-top treatment they received as well as the fancy card his new friend J. Alton Brown had handed him.
Elaborate Scheme
The three spent the next few days together and Spring wrote that Langtree was increasingly impressed by the couple, especially when he picked up a copy of the American Magazine.
“Suddenly he sat upright as he found himself looking at a remarkable likeness of the man he had just left,” Spring wrote. “Momentarily he stared, then suddenly saw that the picture was captioned: “J. Alton Brown—the Mining Wizard.”
Langtree read the two pages devoted to Brown's story of success. Brown, it was stated, was the foremost geologist of Latin America and had been responsible for fortunes due to investments in mining properties.
Langtree could not believe his luck and was delighted when the couple continued to invite him on outings. The $14,000 investment he had come for was nearly forgotten as he eyed new prospects.
On the third evening, the two men were in Langtree’s room smoking when a maid brought Brown a cable from a friend in South America saying a Peruvian deal was a money-maker.
Brown had scarcely finished explaining that he had wired to New York for a block of the stock when his wife came in and informed Brown he had a long-distance call from New York.
Brown hurried to his room across the hall. In his haste he left the doors open so that Langtree plainly overheard the conversation, according to Spring.
“Well,” he heard Brown say, “I can offer you $50,000 for your holdings but that is the best I shall do just now. Yes, you can have the payment in cash if you come to Chicago.”
When Brown returned to Langtree’s room he told him the mine started as a mere prospect but the cable he had just received was good news.
The mine he was trying to buy stock in had several thousand tons of high grade silver ore already blocked out.
Soon, the mine stock could not be had at any price, so Brown was picking up all he could now.
By that night, Langtree was ready to go into business and follow whatever advice Brown offered. Any doubts Langtree might have had disappeared the next day when Brown went to a bank and withdrew the $50,000 cash without any issue from the cashier.
Lucky Escape
Langtree was ready to jump into business with Brown and buy any of the stock, if offered. It was then that he decided to finally go visit his old friend, Detective Murray.
Knowing that Langtree fancied himself an amateur sleuth who wasn’t easily fooled by people, in the course of the visit Murray shared with Langtree several cases he was working on.
That was when Langtree nearly fell over when he was given several wanted posters to look over. He recognized one of the people and realized that he might not know his new friends as well as he thought.
But that didn’t change Langtree’s mind. He still needed to invest his money and the deal he was being offered was alluring.
When Brown sent him a note asking if he could borrow $12,000 to invest in the mining stock, Langtree did not hesitate to write the check.
When Langtree walked into Murray’s office later that day, the detective grinned and told him the deal had gone off without a hitch. When Brown went to cash his check, one of his men, “Pinch” Reed, nabbed him and Brown was now in police custody.
As Langtree learned how Brown had been working him the entire trip, he realized he had only himself to blame.
They lured him in from the moment they tossed down the gold nugget to the insert they had planted in his magazine. If the Wyoming banker hadn’t chanced to see the wanted photo for Joseph “the Yellow Kid” Weil, he would have been $12,000 lighter.
As for Weil, in his long career as a confidence man he swindled more than $8 million out of his "rascals" and established the reputation for robbery and trickery.
Always beating the police at their own game, “Yellow Kid” didn't stay in jail long and used phony oil deals, women, fixed races, and an endless list of other tricks to best an increasingly gullible public.
One day, he was Dr. Henri Reuel, a noted geologist who traveled and told his hosts that he was a representative for a big oil company while draining them of the cash they gave him to “invest in fuel.”
The next day, Weil was director of the Elysium Development Company, promising land to innocent believers while robbing them in recording and abstract fees. Then he became a chemist par excellence who discovered how to copy dollar bills.
He would promise to increase your fortune, then multiply your bills. Then, Weil would take the "booty" once the police arrived.
“Each of my victims had larceny in his heart,” Weil said. “When people learn — as I doubt they will — that they can't get something for nothing, crime will diminish and we shall live in greater harmony.”
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
