The con man tried to run but Forbes, a rugby player in his youth, “brought him down with a flying tackle!”
Victoria newspaper publisher and businessman Sam Matson wasn’t the only colourful owner of Hill Farm. He, in fact, didn’t stay much beyond the Cogger family, whose story I told last week.
After the First World War he leased or loaned the 1200 Fisher Rd. farm for use as a Soldiers’ Civil Re-establishment training centre “in all classes of agricultural pursuits”. In July 1920 it was reported that the first 40 of an anticipated 200 servicemen/students were on site.
After Matson, in 1924, came Salmon Arm dairyman Alistair Forbes who raised Guernsey cows there for about 14 years. But, by 1938, Forbes was a resident of Plymouth, England — and in the news. At a trial in New York, he testified against a “Reno, Nev. swindling ring” that, in the words of federal prosecutors, had conned American and Canadian investors of as much as $2.5 million — then an astronomical sum. Forbes was in court to depose how he’d been relieved of $30,000.
It’s a great, rather involved story, one that was well told at length in 1968 by the late Cecil Clark, retired deputy commissioner of B.C. Provincial Police. For some reason Clark chose to give Forbes a pseudonym, Alphonse Fordyce. Apparently the confidence men — there were no fewer than 22 of them in the gang — were tipped to the wealthy Cobble Hill dairy farmer and breeder by a gambling contact who worked in a Vancouver brokerage house. The gang was so organized that it had its own private bank in Reno to launder the ill-gotten gains, much of it in the form of stocks and bonds.
According to Clark, the “fuse was lit” for Forbes in July 1929 when Joseph Lamont, alias George Arnold, drove into Hill Farm’s driveway in his late model Cadillac with California licence plates. He was looking for a Major Campbell, he told Forbes, who knew of no such person. They got talking and, invited to tea, Lamont explained that he was a public relations man and personal secretary to MGM movie mogul Sam Goldwyn. It so happened the Goldwyn was looking for a quiet country property for a troublesome son; was Hill Farm for sale?
By the time Lamont left he and Forbes had a tentative deal, subject to Goldwyn’s approval; Lamont would get back to him. Clark: “Sure enough, a week later, came a wire from Hollywood. Lamont and Goldwyn were on their way to Seattle, where they would be glad to meet ‘Mr. Fordyce.’” The Americans would even put him up in a suite at a major Seattle hotel.
It was all a scam, of course. There was no Sam Goldwyn — not the real movie magnate — and the whole object of the game was to get Forbes, the financially flush but naive farmer, to bet on a race horse, “a sure thing.” They overcame his reluctance by showing him stacks of money they’d won with their insiders’ information. With their help, how could Forbes lose? After all, he was among friends, right? All he had to do was ante up some cash. With some juggling Forbes was able to produce $30,000.
Simply put, the horse lost and with his friends went his money. He soon realized that he’d been bamboozled but he was too ashamed to report his loss to the police. Instead of writing it off to experience, however, he hired a private detective. This agent not only succeeded in tracing the con men, but tricked Lamont’s Seattle accomplice into meeting with Forbes in Stanley Park. This was in July 1931, two years to the month since his fateful encounter with the charming Mr. Lamont in his driveway.
The con man tried to run but Forbes, a rugby player in his youth, “brought him down with a flying tackle!” When a Vancouver policeman who witnessed the scuffle took both men into custody, Forbes produced a warrant issued by a Cobble Hill justice of the peace for the crook’s arrest. That’s when city police turned him over to the provincial police who regretfully informed him that his warrant was faulty; as he’d been conned on the other side of the border, no B.C. law had been broken, he should get a lawyer. The con man who was arrested with him was handed over to Seattle police who had an outstanding warrant for parole violation.
Despite the fact that Forbes had been victimized outside the province, provincial police detective Carl Ledoux took a personal interest in the case and learned that the charming Mr. Lamont was behind bars in California. Over the next two years, with help from the willing Alistair Forbes, American police rounded up another 20 members of the gang.
By then Forbes had sold Hill Farm and moved to England. At Lamont’s lengthy trial, held in New York City, he listened to other victims testify to having lost as much as $180,000 on rigged horse races. It’s unlikely that Forbes saw any of his money again but he did have the consolation of knowing that most of the Reno Gang received hefty jail sentences thanks in part to his persistence.