The Painesville (Ohio) Telegraph reports on fraud committed by forging orders from the Bank of Kentucky and the procuring of plates of notes of the bank.
"Extensive Fraud," The Journal and Register, repr. The Painesville Telegraph (February 15, 1838): [3]
From the Journal & Register.
EXTENSIVE FRAUD
An extensive fraud has lately been discovered in New York city. Several persons had succeeded, by forging orders from the Bank of Kentucky upon certain agents in New York, in procuring the plates of the notes of the Bank, and in having impressions to the amount of nearly a hundred thousand dollars struck off. They were on the point of consummating the villany, when a young man who had been lured into the scheme repented and "peached." The others were arrested and committed.
The persons concerned, are Charles Sicarnes, a man heretofore of respectable standing in New York; William J. Ames, formerly a clerk, and excellent penman, who did the forging; and Abraham Pitcher, who has a family somewhere in Ohio, but has himself resided two years in New York. A man by the names of James Brown, of Akron, Ohio, was implicated with the above parties in other villainous transactions. We have the following account of him, in the N. Y. Express:
"IT may be well, for the protection of the Western States, to add that the Jas. Brown, mentioned in New Orleans with about $30,000 in counterfeit bills on the United States Bank; subsequently at Cleveland, for counterfeiting. HE is a large tall man, and resides at Akron, Ohio.—About eight days since he left here for the West, with the plates engraved by his order of Messrs. Gurley & Burton, for the "Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank" at Providence, Wisconsin Territory, from which he had printed about $20,000 in 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 dollar bills. There is no such bank in the territory; and it is not probable he has put any of them in circulation, as Ames, for forger, was to have gone on and filled them up for him. The fact became known to the police by letters from him found among Stearnes' papers. HE paid Messrs. G. & B. near $600 for the engraving, printing, &c."
Many of our readers to this city will probably recognize in the above described person, an old offender. HE is no doubt the same Brown who had a Col. Taylor, of Cleveland, arrested a year or two ago, on a charge of counterfeiting. A number of the prisoners in the Ohio Penitentiary owe their present location to information received from this same Brown.