Word: scaffa
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Convicted. Noel Charles Scaffa, 46, best-known U. S. private detective (specialty : jewel retrieving); of perjury in testifying before a Federal Grand Jury concerning his part in returning $185,000 worth of jewels stolen in Miami Beach from Mrs. Margaret Hawkesworth Bell (TIME, June 10); in Manhattan. Maximum possible sentence: 15 years in prison, $6,000 fine...
...have rested had not the Miami Biltmore's owner, Utilitarian Henry Latham Doherty, remembered the Stolen Property Act. Department of Justice agents reopened the case, got the two thieves sentenced to 25 years in prison. More important, the Miami chief of detectives informed them that it was Noel Scaffa who had delivered the jewels, that a split of the insurance company's $15,000 reward had been planned with a Scaffa operative in for $1,000. A Federal Grand Jury in New York promptly summoned Detective Scaffa for questioning. Chief J. Edgar Hoover let it be known that...
Detective Scaffa had, however, learned his lesson. Thereafter police found him friendly, co-operative-in return grew less inquisitive about his methods. He got back $200,000 worth of stolen property for Wanamaker's department store, a $40,000 pearl for Mrs. Joshua S. Cosden, jewels worth $81,000 for Singer Grace Moore, made another retrieve from the famous Sitamore loot. Soon he had 20 operatives working for him, was earning $25,000 per year. Local police were grateful for the effort and embarrassment he saved them. And then, last year, Congress passed the National Stolen Property Act making...
...more economical for companies like Federal Insurance Co., employing Noel Scaffa, to pay a 10% reward for the return of stolen jewels than to pay the full value to their owners. It is safer and more profitable for thieves to secure that reward than to try to dispose of their loot through "fences." It is also obvious that, as connecting link between complaisant insurance company and eager thief, a detective like Scaffa is in an exceedingly tempting position. How large did Scaffa loom in the current picture...
...Manhattan last week Federal agents suddenly clapped Scaffa into jail on a charge of having violated the Stolen Property Act by transporting the Bell jewels back from New York to Florida after the robbery. Two days later their net widened to include four notorious Broadway characters charged with complicity in the crime. Scaffa's attorney, his mind whirling with headlines about interstate commerce, commenced to argue that the Supreme Court's Schechter decision had invalidated the Stolen Property Act as well as the NIRA. The judge promptly shut him up, fixed Scaffa's bail...