CRIME: The Lost Wheelbarrow

Almost anyone could mistake Lloyd J. Moore for an honest man. His well manicured hands, steel-grey hair and assured manner suggest that he might be an eminently successful professional man, perhaps a surgeon. But for most of his life Moore has been interested in just one kind of operation: removing money from suckers’ bank accounts. Three of his stock promotions brought him. by his own reckoning, $270,000. Last week in Great Falls, Mont., the law caught up with Moore.

“Found More Skeleton.” The scheme that finally got Con Man Moore was his “Lost Wheelbarrow Mine.” To help promote it, in 1936, he used one of the most spectacular stunts in the long history of mine frauds. He got an unsuspecting partner to tell the story to millions of prospects all at once on the nationwide radio program, We the People.

The story, according to Moore: in the 1880’s two prospectors discovered a fabulously rich vein of gold-bearing ore in the hills 20 miles outside of Moscow, Idaho. One shot the other, then headed to town, leaving a wheelbarrow to mark the mine.

When he returned, an avalanche had covered up the wheelbarrow and he was never able to find the vein again. Who found it? Moore, of course. And he also found the wheelbarrow, the dead partner’s skull and the well-rusted murder weapon, a Winchester rifle. To prove his point, he displayed a battered old wheelbarrow in a Moscow general store in 1936. Newspapermen sent stories and pictures of the wheelbarrow all over the country, and then Moore mailed out a blizzard of clippings.

All this built up his story so well that some 1,200 investors, replying to his golden-phrased letters, bought stock in the mine. To keep interest at a high level, Moore sent to stockholders such telegrams as “Found more of skeleton. Skull has bullet hole through temple. Everything going good.”

Every Word of It. Finally, in 1943 the Securities & Exchange Commission caught up with Moore, had him indicted on 40 counts of fraud. But he slipped away to Canada and continued plying his trade there. This year British Columbia officials informed the SEC that they had found the old (65) con man and were quizzing him about some Canadian stock promotions. Moore startled SEC men by agreeing to return to the U.S. voluntarily to face the old fraud charges.

Once in custody, Moore (who said his name really is Ferroll Warren Cottrelle). demonstrated that he was still a good salesman. He said that his desire to return to the U.S. was fired by the sight of the American flag in a parade. And besides, he wanted to clear his record for the sake of his two American-born, teen-age children. In court, he trembled, dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief, and pleaded guilty to one count of fraud. As a result of his cooperative and contrite air, his penalty was comparatively light:§ a fine of $2,000. three years in prison. He will be eligible for parole in a year.

In his cell this week Moore, as usual, had a lot of ideas running through his head. He plans to sell magazine articles telling readers how gullible they are. As for his story about the Lost Wheelbarrow Mine, it is all absolutely true, he said. Every word of it.