Nicholas Moran, Dandy Forger (Cleveland, Ohio, 1906)

Newspaper reporters described his as “tall and aristocratic looking, with gray hair and beard.” He typically wore a Prince Albert jacket and a fur coat. He carried a diamond-encrusted pocket watch, which was attached to his jacket with a heavy gold chain. The dandy was a dead-ringer for the character “Twist” in the classic film The Sting about a cabal of con men in Chicago.

Nicholas Moran (AKA George Cole and Edward Hunt), like his fictional counterpart “Twist,” also worked Chicago as a forger and con man extraordinaire. Pinched in May, 1900 as a “hotel thief,” Moran’s mug shot became a fixture in “rogue’s galleries” throughout the Midwest, including the voluminous archives of Chicago’s famous McGuire & White Detective Agency. On the streets, he was known as “King of the Hotel Workers.”

Moran was born in 1856, the son of a horse trader named Thomas. As a young man, he worked for a while as a teamster before he discovered more lucrative ways to make a living, probably after he broke his arm in an 1880 accident.

In 1906, Chicago police identified Moran as the brains behind the Longpre Gang—a dangerous group of forgers who profited by passing fictitious pay checks. Louis Longpre, an expert etcher, created the checks. Moran and a group of grafters then posed as laborers and passed the bad paper.

By 1906, the group had fleeced businesses in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Missouri of $50,000, bringing intense pressure on authorities to identify the key players and end their reign of fiscal terror. Their biggest mark was South Chicago’s Illinois Steel Company.

One by one, members of the gang were arrested by Chicago detectives. They were tried, convicted, and sent to Joliet Prison, but the elusive Moran evaded capture. At one point, private eyes followed his trail all the way south the Havana, Cuba.

Then in November, an informant told the Chicago dicks that Moran had left Chicago for Cleveland. Chicago Police Chief Collins wired Cleveland top cop Kohler and requested that Moran be arrested on sight. Collins included a vivid description of the dandy forger, including a detail that would prove fatal to Moran: his fondness for fur.

A man answering the description, complete with fur coat, turned up at the tony Hollenden Hotel, where a Cleveland cop named George Koestle slapped a pair of “bracelets” on his wrists and dragged him off to jail. Koestle, as head of Cleveland’s Bertillon Bureau, had a great memory for details. He spent most of his time taking Bertillon measurements of suspects, which included details like height, wingspan, and head length.

“It’s an outrage,” Moran howled as Koestle led him to the paddy wagon waiting outside the hotel lobby.

“He’s the most distinguished prisoner we have had in years,” Kohler gloated after Moran’s arrest.

Extradited to Chicago, tried, and convicted, Moran joined his confederates in Joliet penitentiary.