You have to love Vile's style. One wonders, is it peer pressure, or are Jews raised to be perfectionists? :
For two months I carpeted Chicago with deeds to lots in the
Elysium Development Company. I even gave lots to two detectives
who later rose to prominence in the police department. Both men paid
the recording fee before they discovered that the land was practically
valueless. Both were furious and if there had been anything they
could have done about it, I would have found free lodging promptly.
But I had not taken money from them: they had not been compelled
to have the lots recorded. So far as the law was concerned, I was clean.
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According to the Tribune, he told one judge: "The dastardly fabrications of the metropolitan newspapers, the reprehensible conduct of journalists to surround me with a nimbus — er — a numbus of guilt, is astonishing." Yet in his "Autobiography of a Master Swindler," he acknowledged his chosen profession, even as he bemoaned its decline. "There are no good confidence men anymore," he wrote, "because they do not have the necessary knowledge of foreign affairs, domestic problems, and human nature."
Weil was, in his own way, civic-minded. In 1928, doing time in the Leavenworth, Kan., federal prison, he sent letters to Chicagoans appealing for funds so fellow inmates might properly celebrate Passover. He signed the letter: "Joseph Weil, president Jewish congregation."
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