{"id":26713,"date":"2021-02-27T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-27T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/blog\/?p=26713"},"modified":"2021-03-11T12:40:39","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T18:40:39","slug":"soapy-smith-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/blog\/soapy-smith-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"R. Paul Wilson On: The Secret Of Soapy Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
The name Jefferson Randolph \u201cSoapy\u201d Smith is well known amongst magicians, Old West historians and cheating aficionados.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soapy evolved\nfrom being a street swindler to a full-time racketeer with dozens of bad men\nand ladies of negotiable affection on his payroll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it all\nstarted with a simple little scam that not only gave Jefferson Randolph Smith\nhis nickname, it seeded the future of a criminal enterprise that ended,\ninevitably in disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before I\ndescribe the scam, a few words on who Soapy Smith was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Between 1879\nand 1898, Soapy owned several crooked gambling joints and ran a campaign of\norganised crime in Denver and Creede, Colorado. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was a fiery\nfigure and when other villains encroached on his business, Soapy\u2019s temper often\ngot the better of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a result he\nwas implicated in countless lawsuits and attempted prosecutions but continued\nto operate until the city of Denver embarked on a campaign of reforms that\nforced Soapy and his gang to relocate to Creede, Colorado. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There, after building a sizeable bankroll with his soap scam, Soapy immediately took over the gaming halls, scamming the local silver miners with everything from marked<\/a> and stacked decks to light-fingered ladies of the night or well-informed muggers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As a result, Soapy and his gang (pictured below) made a fortune from the miners of Creede but not without making enemies on both sides of the law. <\/p>\n\n\n\n