The New Prospectors of Virginia City
There are few things in this republic more dependable than the confidence of a swindler. He awakens every morning persuaded that somewhere, hidden among the honest population, lives a citizen who has accumulated a respectable sum of money but misplaced every ounce of suspicion.
It is a touching faith, really. Missionaries have crossed oceans with less conviction than the modern con man carries across state lines.
So it happened that a delegation of enterprising young folk journeyed all the way from the luxuriant swamps of Florida to the noble hills of Virginia City, Nevada. They did not come in search of silver, as fortune hunters once had, nor to admire the picturesque streets where history still clings to every weathered board.
No, these ambitious travelers had discovered a richer vein than the Comstock Lode. They intended to mine trust itself.
The scheme was as polished as an old politician's campaign speech. They introduced themselves as federal agents and investigators of banking crimes, titles so magnificent that respectable folks nearly feel obliged to surrender their savings before hearing the rest of the sentence.
Government has grown so complicated that if a stranger appears carrying enough official-sounding words, most people assume he must belong to a bureau established sometime between breakfast and supper. The elderly citizens of the Virginia City Highlands, having spent lifetimes believing that honesty was still fashionable, found themselves confronted by gentlemen whose chief talent was manufacturing urgency.
The visitors explained that enormous danger lurked within ordinary bank accounts, and the only cure was to hand over generous piles of cash for immediate "protection." It is remarkable how frequently thieves recommend placing money somewhere safer, namely, into their own pockets.
Unfortunately for this traveling circus of confidence, the Storey County detectives possessed an old-fashioned weakness for facts. They pursued the matter with enough patience to make a fisherman jealous, tracing the trail back to Broward County, Florida, where the supposed federal heroes proved rather easier to identify than they had imagined.
One by one, the celebrated guardians of imaginary banking security discovered that extradition is the least enjoyable vacation package ever devised. Now, the courts prepare to sort out the consequences while investigators continue uncovering victims scattered far beyond Nevada's dusty mountains.
That is the melancholy part of the tale. Still, there is one encouraging lesson.
A lie may purchase a ticket, board an airplane, and travel two thousand miles with remarkable speed. But the truth, though slower and carrying less luggage, has an irritating habit of arriving eventually with a sheriff, a warrant, and accommodations no traveler ever brags about.
