"Sleuth, Posing as a Greek, Nabs Fake Employment Man" article - Chicago Daily Tribune, May 10, 1908

Published in the Chicago Daily Tribune, May 10, 1908

SLEUTH, POSING AS A GREEK,

NABS FAKE EMPLOYMENT MAN.

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Detective W. E. Baldwin Makes Capture 

After Getting Promise of $1.25 a

Day Job for $120

A "fake" employment bureau, which is said to have defrauded Greeks on the west side out of hundreds of dollars, was broken up by detectives from Capt. P. D. O'Brien's office yesterday, with the arrest of the manager, Peter Colunni.

The capture was made after Detective W. E. Baldwin, posing as a Greek laborer, arranged with Colunni, in a room at 157 Ewing street, for a job as a watchman for the sanitary district.  Colunni told Baldwin that for $120 he would make him a watchman (salary $1.25 a day) and get his four brothers jobs.

Colunni also exhibited a fictitious letter from the sanitary board deputizing him to find employes to which the name of W. B. Sharmanine, head of the engineering department, was affixed.  Cleon Papas of Chicago Heights just had paid $198 for a job as a foreman of a construction gang before the detectives arrived.

Detectives Farley and Roach, who had been concealed in a closet, then made the arrest.

Colunni confessed he had bunkoed many Greeks out of sums ranging from $10 to $200 on promises of employment.  A long dirk was found in his pocket.