This intriguing wanted poster pertains to a theft in Mexico perpetrated by a Frenchman from New Orleans. It was produced by the Railroad contracting firm Read & Cambpell and disseminated in order to apprehend a sticky-fingered clerk who absconded with about $26,000 of the company’s cash in March, 1892. A New York Times article published a few weeks later describes how the “slick swindle” was carried out. The firm “sent out a clerk to collect the sum of $27,975 from the Banco Internacional Dehipotecario…he then proceeded to the London Bank, where he deposited $1,975 to Read & Campbell's credit, keeping $26,000 in his own pocket. He received from the London Bank a deposit receipt for $1,975, which he altered to read the $27,975, and turned it in to his as receipt of his collections. The clerk disappeared on the following day.”

The culprit, Marcel Lubet, was described as a man “well known in New Orleans” who clerked for a leading crockery. He fell in love with and promised to wed a local woman shortly before growing weary of his employment and heading west to seek his fortune. After the theft, detectives found that “the accused was still corresponding with his sweetheart” and that he was possibly traveling back to New Orleans. “For six weeks authorities faithfully shadowed the house of Lubet's sweetheart, but the man failed to put in an appearance.”

This information was published in the New Orleans Times-Democratic in 1894, after a seemingly-unrelated affair renewed interest in this one. In March of that year another New Orleans citizen, George D. Alexis, was fired from his position at the Chimawa Indian Training School in Oregon for plying some of the students with alcohol. The subsequent news coverage on the scandal piqued the authorities' interests, as Marcel Lubet was reported to have used the alias "George D. Alexis."

Defending himself in the press, Alexis told a Times-Democrat reporter, “My position is an unfortunate one, owing to the fact that an unscrupulous individual has assumed the name of George Alexis in the West and much of his misconduct has been laid at my door.” Alexis, however, gave no opinion as to why Lubet chose his identity to assume. Perhaps it was because the men shared extremely similar biographies. Both were New Orleans residents about the same age. Both were fluent in multiple languages including French and Spanish, both clerked for retail stores and both traveled to Mexico at the same time before hurriedly relocating to the American West.

Another similarity was that both men had a proclivity for straying from the straight and narrow. Alexis ran afoul with the law both at home and abroad but was apparently well-liked and well-connected enough that charges against him rarely stuck. After the Indian School affair he abandoned his new wife and fled to San Francisco, seemingly intent on leaving the country. He ended up back in New Orleans where, in 1898, he was charged for embezzlement but got off. Later that year he was in Cuba, serving with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, where he got in a fix for forging a document which allowed him to dance the Rumba. A year later he was back in New Orleans working for the Post Office, until he was arrested for swiping packages. Marcel Lubet, on the other hand, was never heard from again.

Given the biographical similarities, one might conclude some type of criminal collusion between Lubet and Alexis, but such speculation is perhaps best left to the armchair detectives.

Old tape to both sides, some tears at edges, otherwise good condition.

From the estate of Ron Lerch.