Wichita Eagle

SWINDLERS CAPTURED.

Alleged Michigan Property Owners Work a Slick Game Too Often.

Topeka, Kan., Aug. 10.-Last June N. S. Holmes, proprietor of the Rock Island restaurant in this city, desired to trade twenty acres of property just outside the limits of Lawrence. A friend of Holmes saw Darius W. Gunn and H. C. Neely in the office of Powell & Co., real estate dealers in Kansas City, and learned that they had a mortgage on some Michigan property which they were anxious to negotiate for cash or western real estate.

Holmes was informed of the fact and Gunn and Neely came to Topeka to make the trade with him. They exhibited their mortgage and abstract and convinced Holmes that everything was regular. The mortgagor named in the document was Fred Shambold, and the mortgage purported to be given to secure $4,000 balance due on the property, which Gunn and Neely conveyed to him, the consideration being $5,330, the lands being situated in Clare county, Michigan, near Harrison, and containing 160 acres. The two represented at the time that the farm was well improved and the trade was consummated by Holmes transferring his Lawrence property, consisting of twenty acres, to Gunn and Neely and accepting in return the Michigan mortgage all right and interest in and to which had been assigned to Holmes.

Gunn and Neely then went away and July 9 a deed to the Lawrence property from Gunn and Neely to some fictitious person, was placed on file in the register of deeds' office in this county.

Holmes thought he had better find out if the Michigan land was free from incumbrance and what it was worth in the Michigan market and wrote there and learned to his disappointment that the land was unimproved and assessed for taxation at $1 an acre, and that it had back taxes charged against it for three years.

Holmes was not fully satisfied and wrote a second time and the answer to this letter was the same. Holmes then began a search for Gunn and Neely and Tuesday located them at Kinsley, where they were immediately placed under arrest on a telegram from here. Holmes was deputized to go and bring them to Topeka, which he did, arriving today.

They were arraigned before Justice Jamison this afternoon and bond fixed at $1,500 each, which they have not yet been able to furnish. They will have their preliminary examination August 18. Meanwhile they have been endeavoring to effect a settlement with Holmes.

Neely claims to reside at Kenton, O., and Gunn at Harrison, Mich. They are said to have been engaged in similar transactions at other places.