"Profits in Peanuts - Saved That A Greek Might Send For His Sweetheart" article - Chicago Daily Tribune, January 27, 1892

Published in The Chicago Daily Tribune, January 27, 1892

PROFITS IN PEANUTS

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Saved That A Greek Might Send

For His Sweetheart.

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He Intrusts the Money for Her Passage to

a Countryman, but When His Betrothed 

Failed to Meet Him Discovers That He

Had Been Swindled

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Before Anastatius Parascevokos, a Greek peanut peddler, came to America he got a pledge from his sweetheart that as soon as he would send her the means she would join him here and become his wife.  By industry and economy he accumulated $85 and concluded to send for the girl.

Thomas Nassus, a fellow Greek, told him the safest and cheapest way to forward the money was by postoffice order.  Satisfied of this he left the rest to Nassus, who went to the First National Bank and secured a draft for $85 payable to his own order.  Then he went to the Postoffice and registered a letter mailed to his own address in this city.  Into the letter he put the draft and gave Parascevokos the receipt for it.  As the latter can neither read nor write he failed to comprehend that he was a party to a swindle on himself.  In time Nassus received the registered letter and the draft, and, going to the bank, was identified and given the money.

Weeks passed on and Parascevokos, not hearing anything from his betrothed in Greece, became anxious and suspicious.  He secured the services of another countryman, who wrote a letter for him.  An answer to it came back saying that the money had never been received by his sweetheart.  He then put the matter into the hands of Attorney N.A. Kaufman.  Nassus was arrested, and the case will be heard this afternoon before Justice Hamburgher.