Geoffrey Kelly

“It is always wise to suspect everybody until you can prove logically,
and to your own satisfaction, that they are innocent. —AGATHA CHRISTIE, The Mysterious Affair at Styles”
― Geoffrey Kelly, Thirteen Perfect Fugitives: The True Story of the Mob, Murder, and the World's Largest Art Heist

“After two years working in Providence, I was transferred to Boston’s HQC and assigned to Squad C-5, an economic crimes squad, where I specialized in telemarketing fraud cases. This was in the days before emails and texting, when con men actually called their prospective victims on the telephone like real fraudsters, not like those lovelorn Nigerian princes who fire off emails from inside their lavish palaces. And in a forgotten era when spam was still known only as a canned luncheon meat and perhaps a tagline in World War II documentaries, the victims answered the phone. My subjects would purchase lists of potential victims, often culled from those cardboard boxes positioned next to cash registers at pizzerias or delis, the ones that read Enter your name for a chance to win a 1996 Ford Mustang. And back then, a lot of gullible people did just that. There was no Mustang, of course, and everyone who dropped their name and number in that box would soon receive a glut of phone calls from telemarketers—perhaps even one of my subjects—informing them that they were big winners. They won, all right, and not just the Mustang; these victims won prizes from contests and lotteries they didn’t even recall entering. They just had to pay some minimal taxes before the winnings could be released. Outrageous claims made; checks mailed.”
― Geoffrey Kelly, Thirteen Perfect Fugitives: The True Story of the Mob, Murder, and the World's Largest Art Heist