Scourge of Scoundrels #2: Jefferson “Soapy” Smith, The Greatest Con Man in the West

The Robber Barons of the Gilded Age and the Monopolists of the early 20^th Century were not the first ones to build an empire with vertical integration and synergies. No, the true business pioneer who invented these techniques was a bearded con man born Jefferson Randolph Smith II. Many knew him as Soapy Smith

Soapy Smith ran Denver, Colorado for almost eight years in the 1880’s. He was no lone wolf either. He had a handpicked crew of scoundrels working for him. His greatest innovation was learning to cultivate the right people in the community so instead of being wandering drifters and grifters, the Soapy Smith Gang set up shop permanently.

What He Did:

Soapy Smith arrived in Denver in 1879. By the time he left Denver for good he owned a good chunk of the business district including a saloon, a (fake) lottery shop, a “stock” exchange, a cigar store that was also a front for an illegal poker club, a counterfeit jewelry store, and a small office that sold stock in non-existent businesses.

Soapy Smith also controlled the police force, the mayor, and most of the city council of Denver. He ran the elections, always ensuring the “right” man won.

Soapy was not all about himself. He also built churches, donated to charity freely, and paid for the occasional prostitute’s funeral expenses. He was regularly called upon by at least one Denver clergymen to help organize food drives and for donations to financially strapped parishioners.

When the heat got too hot in Denver, Soapy Smith and his gang headed out to Creede, Colorado to take advantage of a nearby silver strike. There he used his connections with local prostitutes to convince influential civic leaders and businessmen to sign over most of Main Street to him while he turned around and leased the properties to his friends and allies.

He left Creede just before most of the business district burned down and spent a little while longer in Denver.

After almost triggering a civil war in Denver, he left and headed to Skagway, Alaska where he begin to build yet another criminal empire.

During the Spanish American War Soapy formed a volunteer army with the approval of the United States government and got himself the rank of Captain with a letter to President McKinley.

How He Did It:

Soapy started his career with an ingenious scam. He would stand outside the train station in Denver where travelers where coming into town, looking to get washed up and find a hotel. He sold them soap. He would take ordinary soap and sell it for 25 cents a piece. Of course the soap could be bought at a local store for 5 cents. Once he gathered a big crowd, Soapy would wrap the bars in tissue paper and make a big show of placing a $100 bill in a wrapped bar of soap. Then he would place a $50 bill and a $20 bill in other wrapped bars of soap. One of his gang would buy a bar and show how he had won.

The travelers quickly started buying the soap. Through careful slight of hand only the ringers ever won. Many travelers would buy multiple bars trying to recoup their losses.

If the crowd was really big, he would start auctioning off the remaining bars of soap, again ensuring he knew the winning bidder for the $100 bar of soap.

Soapy also operated games of “chance” like three card monte, at all of his businesses. So someone coming into the cigar store for a rigged poker game would often play three-card monte while he waited for a table, loosing more money. The same would be true at the stock exchange, where the only thing that was exchanged was money and hot air.

Soapy assembled an all-star gang of conmen and grifters including legends like Texas Jack Vermilion and “Big” Ed Burns.

Soapy got the support of the community by only targeting tourists and being a generous citizen. He also had most of the police on politicians on the take.

Back Story:

Soapy was born in Georgia to a wealthy plantation family that was financially ruined by the Civil War. They moved to Texas where he saw outlaw Sam Bass get gunned down in Ft. Worth. He left home as a teenager and moved right into the life of a conman.

How It Ended:

Soapy Smith eventually found a game he couldn’t fix. His associates were operating a game of three-card monte. A miner balked at paying his heavy losses at what he rightly assumed was a rigged game.

The associates during the argument liberated $2,700 worth of gold from the miner.

When Soapy refused to refund the gold, a local committee requested a meeting at the Juneau Wharf. At that meeting an argument broke out and Soapy was fatally shot, but he did manage to take out one of the committee member before going down.

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Scourge of Scoundrels is a series about the women and men in history who never let a little thing like rules or the law keep them from getting what they wanted.

Click here for Scourge of Scoundrels #1: Ching Shih, She Was the World’s Greatest Pirate

You may also like my series Intellectual Ninjas.

All images are in the public domain or are my creation. All rights reserved.

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Jason McBride is the creator of the Intellectual Ninja and the Scourge of Scoundrels series. He is also the author of Watch Out For Sneaker Waves. He is currently hard at work on his first book of fiction, available Spring 2014.

He is the proud father of four amazing children and the happy husband of one wife. He aspires to be an extreme sleeper.