Boing Boing / Google Gemini

The January 1936 issue of Real America magazine ran a long exposé by De Lysle Ferree Cass, general manager of the Illinois Intelligence Bureau, on a Depression-era racket — organized gangs of "charity chiselers" running phone-bank fundraisers out of Chicago and New York.

About 75% of all charity appeals to American businessmen, Cass writes, were run by professional confidence men. Chicago alone had thirty firms and a floating pool of 200 phone salesmen — the "dynamiters" — who worked rented "Boiler-Rooms" stacked with cheap chairs and telephones, reading from sucker lists. Promoters skimmed 50 to 90 percent of every donation.

Cass also describes the "leaper" — a young woman hired to rush to the mark's office and pick up the check before he could change his mind.…