Picked this up from Powell\u2019s. It\u2019s a 1986 book drawing from jailhouse interviews with \u201cSam\u201d, a burglar-turned-fence active in \u201cAmerican City\u201d (from context, Philadelphia).
\n\nSam had a secondhand/antique store, he\u2019d buy things he knew were stolen, and then he\u2019d sell them on the shop floor, at auction, to other shopowners, or to private buyers. dead_dove.jpg, I don\u2019t know what I expected.
\n\nThat said, there\u2019s plenty of interesting stuff in there. Like, Sam talks about the Mafia (and lesser-known Greek and Jewish organized crime) as a force in the underworld but not a ruling one, that\u2019s interesting. They reserved monopolies on some categories of stolen goods - cigarettes and, interestingly, sugar, and taxed the crews doing truck \u201chijackings\u201d (almost all inside jobs with drivers paid off), but didn\u2019t otherwise bigfoot around. Really, Sam was happy and proud to have the opportunity to bring them in on deals \u2013 they\u2019d take their cut but effectively guarantee things, allowing Sam to confidently make bigger, riskier deals than he could otherwise.
\n\nTwo things jump out as necessary conditions for Sam\u2019s operations that no longer hold and explain why \u201cthe fence\u201d isn\u2019t a familiar figure today.
\n\nFor one, the corruption. It wasn\u2019t just that high-profile lawyers and judges would defend and acquit guys despite knowing they were \u201creally\u201d criminals. It wasn\u2019t just that they would make and accept four-figure bribes for acquittals. These pillars of the legal system would tell underworld figures when a rich client was leaving town so they could hit his vacant house, in exchange for help building their private collections.\n
\nSam paid off beat cops by offering them goods below cost (writing off the difference as haggling or encouraging custom), but any given cop, if he hadn\u2019t been paid off by Sam, had been paid off by someone, and had no interest in bringing the system down. It seems the only thing that could make a dent (what got Sam, after all) were State Police investigations combined with too much press attention to quietly bribe out at trial or on appeal.\n
\nSecond, in a pre-electronic, pre-database, pre-chain retail world how much easier things fall through the cracks.\n
\nSales were in cash and receipts were handwritten - or not, one source of margin was selling without sales tax - and if Sam got a load of stolen Hi-Fi equipment, he could buy a clutch of junk at auction and if the law comes asking who\u2019s to say those \u201cradios x 5\u201d on the receipt didn\u2019t establish his legal ownership? Hell, who\u2019s to say the receipt wasn\u2019t written up and signed by his buddy in the back room?
\n\nWhen a law required secondhand buyers to record purchases for the police, Sam dutifully carted boxes of index cards to the precinct house, who told him to chuck \u2018em \u2018cause what, they seriously expect someone to go around to every station and riffle through a few filing cabinets whenever some old biddy gets her TV swiped? C'mon. And for stuff \u201cwarm\u201d enough to draw actual police effort, Sam could just truck it to auction over state lines; with the crime in one jurisdiction and the evidence in another, there was no entity with the scope to put 2 and 2 together.
\nThe overwhelming share of product didn\u2019t come from guys crawling through windows but shrinkage - factory, warehouse and loading dock guys, stevedores at the pre-containerized docks, delivery drivers on rounds who stopped off to let a few items fall off their truck and then shrug to their boss it must\u2019ve been misloaded. Sam says the hardest work there was getting the guys to stay under the radar and not to take too much too fast too regularly.
\nPart of it\u2019s that there were mom-and-pop stores to unload to, that used the no-questions-asked prices as an edge against department stores and chains. Even if you got a load of great hot TVs today what would you do with them, drive to Best Buy and try to flip them to the floor manager?
\n\n(The real answer today is \u201ceBay\u201d, or maybe combine with fake/scavenged receipts for return fraud. Also sometimes professional shoplifters \u2013 \u201cboosters\u201d who put Tumblr \u201clifters\u201d to shame \u2013 unload through the newer ethnic crime syndicates. I remember in LA seeing one tobacco shop in Little Armenia that had nowhere near enough product for its floor space, a sign offering heavy discounts for paying in cash, and three tracksuit-and-cigar types talking in the back office and like, hmm. Also at the meth level there\u2019s a thriving market in stolen Tide detergent.)\n
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