{"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

Soapy Who?<\/h2>\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

\"Soapy
Image: Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Several\nvictims of Soapy\u2019s schemes tried to kill him and when Soapy was himself charged\nwith the attempted murder of a saloon manager, he was forced to abandon Creede\nand retreat to Skagway, Alaska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Skagway, Soapy\u2019s scams and schemes flourished until his gang conned Klondike<\/a> miner John Douglas Stewart out of a substantial amount of gold in a game of three card monte<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soapy was ordered to return the gold but when he arrived at a private meeting to challenge this decision, Jefferson Randolph \u201cSoapy\u201d Smith was shot dead by Frank Reid in a shootout<\/a> at Juneau Wharf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have many\nfriends who love the intricacies of the Soapy Smith stories, his tales of\ncrooked derring-do as he evaded capture or prosecution in Colorado before his\narrival in Skagway. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are drawn\nto the many scams he pulled on victims over the years or to theories about who\nfired the first shot (and why) in the Juneau that night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personally, I\nthink the man was a dirty, low-down criminal who deserved his fate at the hands\nof Frank Reid but the simple con game that gave Soapy his name absolutely\nintrigues me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Soap Scam<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Soapy
Image: soapysmith.net<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A variation on the Purse Swindle<\/a>, the soap scam works in the same way by convincing people that items they can buy for a small amount may contain large cash prizes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a lottery camouflaged as a sales pitch<\/a> and it works so well that it helped fund more than three criminal empires from Colorado to Alaska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whenever Soapy\nhad to skip town and start anew, his first investment was a few dozen boxes of\nsoap, each bar wrapped in opaque wax paper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With these bars of soap, Smith would make an enormous profit; enough to rebuild his gang and buy his way into much bigger games like monte, faro and poker<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how does it\nwork and why does it work so well?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I\u2019ve written elsewhere, street auctions can be based on several principles from sleight of hand (like the Purse Swindle) to powerful psychology (like the Jam Auction<\/a>) but while victims might always end up disappointed, in the very best con games, victims have no idea they just got scammed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soapy\u2019s scam\nwas as brilliant as it was simple and depended on discipline rather than raw\nskill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s how a\ntypical soap pitch might play out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soapy would\ngather a crowd and spread the word about a new formulation of soap that cleans\nbetter, lasts longer and smells just fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in an\nattempt to spread the word about this fabulous new product, he has been\nauthorised to offer cash prizes to anyone who cares to buy a bar of lucky soap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While he\ntalked and as the crowd watched, Soapy would unwrap a bar, insert a hundred-dollar\nbill between the soap and outer paper, re-wrap the bar and drop it into a box\nfilled with identical blocks of wax-paper wrapped soap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The box would\nthen be given a shake while the crowd pushed forward to buy as many bars as\nthey could afford. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally,\nsomeone in the crowd would \u201cfind\u201d the money and the process would begin again,\nthis time with two or three bars containing cash and again the crowd would buy\nthe entire box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the\ninflated price of each bar of soap and the fact that no one outside of Soapy\u2019s\ngang won a dime, the soap scam was a sure-fire way to make enormous amounts of\nmoney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Real Work<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s really\nfascinating is the simplicity of Soapy\u2019s operation: no sleight of hand and no\nfake bags or boxes, yet it built the foundation of Soapy\u2019s ongoing criminal\nenterprise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crooked soap\nsellers have created dozens of ways to switch out loaded bars from difficult\nsleights, like palming the bill as the soap is rewrapped to switching the\nentire wrapped block of soap before being dropped in the box or bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, the\ncleverest methods required no dexterity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some scammers\nbuilt carpet bags with secret compartments to hold back \u201cwinning\u201d bars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once money was\ninserted under a wrapper, the bar of soap was dropped into the bag and into a\nsecret pocket that was sealed before the bag was up-ended onto a platform and\nthe bars of soap sold at random to the crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another method\nwas to cut cardboard boxes to create a simple trap door. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This acted as\na chute into the box below and the soap inside the box was arranged so that the\nbar containing the cash could drop straight to the bottom, out the pre-formed\nchute and into the box of soap underneath! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the box\nwas picked up, the flap was pushed flush and the box shaken to \u201cshuffle\u201d the\nsoap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All Too Easy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Whatever\nmethods Soapy used in his career it seems clear that his best technique was to\nsimply make sure his shills had first choice and that the winning bar or bars\nwere always in the same position for them to select.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yup – that\u2019s probably all there was to a scam that gave one of the Wild West\u2019s most infamous outlaws his nickname and yet, armed with this simple secret (and a ton of cheap soap), he was able to build and rebuild his own network of organised crime for two decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more tales about con men, check out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
The Top 10 Conmen of All Time<\/a><\/blockquote>