Part 54

It was obvious to agents that Mrs. Schmidbauer was only a dupe in the smuggling plot. Mrs. Schmidbauer was asked to cooperate in trapping Moritz’s accomplice. She quickly agreed.

Mrs. Schmidbauer dispatched a cable to her husband saying, “Gut angekommen.” Then two agents, Harold F. Smith and Abraham Eisenberg, accompanied Mrs. Schmidbauer and Mrs. Obermaier to Mrs. Obermaier’s apartment to await the call from Moritz’s accomplice.

They did not have to wait long. Mrs. Obermaier received a call from a man who identified himself as Hans Berger. Berger said, “I understand Mrs. Schmidbauer is visiting you and that she has something for me.”

Mrs. Obermaier said that Mrs. Schmidbauer was ill and could not talk to the caller herself. She added that she did have something for him if he would call at the apartment the next morning at ten o’clock.

The agents were hidden in the apartment the following morning when a knock came on the Obermaiers’ door. Mrs. Obermaier opened the door and a man stepped in.

“You are Hans Berger? You called yesterday?” she asked.

The caller said, “Yes. May I see Mrs. Schmidbauer?”

Mrs. Obermaier invited him into the living room. She asked him what he came for and who had sent him.

Berger said he was sent by “Moritz.” He handed her a slip of paper which said, “Dear Mrs. Schmidbauer--I hope you arrive safely in New York. I beg you to be kind enough when you receive this piece of paper to turn over the things. Best regards, Your Moritz.”

At this point the agents stepped from hiding. Questioning of Berger convinced the agents that he had called to pick up two suitcases and a package from Mrs. Schmidbauer without any knowledge that he was getting involved in a smuggling plot. He thought he was merely doing a favor for his friend, Moritz, who would show up later to claim them.

But Moritz never showed up in New York. Berger was not prosecuted, and Mrs. Schmidbauer was given a six-months suspended sentence.

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One of the largest smuggling rings dealing in Swiss watch movements was broken up by customs agents in 1956 on a tip received from customs officials in Germany. This ring involved a foreign shipping firm working with an American importer, an American shipping official, and a dishonest customs broker in New York.

This case began to develop when four packing cases of roughly the same dimensions arrived in the foreign trade zone in Germany from Switzerland. Two of the cases, documented as containing camera tripods, were consigned to a firm in the United States. The other two cases were documented as containing 4,488 Swiss watch movements.

A German customs officer became suspicious when he saw two men transferring the watch movements from their original cases into the cases marked as camera tripods. The Customs officer made no move at that time to interfere with the transfer of the merchandise, but he notified his superiors and an investigation was begun. The Germans at that time believed that it was an effort to avoid payment of German customs. When they realized that the transfer was being made as part of a scheme to violate American customs laws, the U.S. Customs agent stationed in Bremen was informed of the facts in the case. These facts were forwarded to agents in New York, who were alerted to be on the lookout for the arrival of the boxes labelled as carrying “camera tripods.” Several days later a German customs official advised the Customs agent in Bremen that the two suspect boxes, marked IH74 and IH75, were being shipped aboard the SS Black Falcon manifested as camera tripods valued at $200.

The SS Black Falcon arrived at the port of New York on January 23, 1956, and docked at the Smith Street Pier in Brooklyn. Customs agents kept the two boxes under surveillance. They were watching as the boxes were moved from the pier by a trucker to a warehouse. Agents hidden in the warehouse saw the trucker and the broker switch the watches from the cases and replace them with camera tripods.

Had this scheme succeeded, the chiselers would have paid duty on camera tripods valued at $200 rather than on watch movements valued at more than $50,000.

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Stephen Schrieber of New York City was one of the cleverest of the chiselers. He was a tall, thin, balding man in his middle years who was engaged in the import-export business. Customs had no reason to suspect Schrieber of wrongdoing until agents got a tip that he was smuggling gold out of the United States, selling it on Europe’s black market, and then smuggling diamonds into this country.

On April 29, 1952, Customs agents learned that Schrieber was preparing to make another trip outside the country and that he had booked passage for Cherbourg, France, aboard the SS Queen Mary. Schrieber also had arranged to export a car on the Queen Mary as “accompanying baggage.”

After Schrieber delivered his car to the pier to be taken aboard the liner, agents made arrangements to examine the vehicle, a 1949 Pontiac. The examination began at approximately 4 P.M. They searched the car for ninety minutes without finding any contraband.

At last one of the agents said, “Why don’t we weigh the car and check its weight against the Blue Book weight that is listed by the manufacturer.”

With the cooperation of Customs inspectors and Cunard Line officials, the car was removed from Pier 90 to the scale house at Pier 84. The automobile Blue Book listed the Pontiac as weighing 3375 pounds. But when it was put on the scales, it registered 3840 pounds. There was a discrepancy between the listed weight and the actual weight of 465 pounds. It was obvious that something was concealed somewhere on the vehicle and that the hiding place had not been discovered.

The car was then moved back to Pier 90 and driven to a service station at the corner of 51st Street and Eleventh Avenue. It was run over a grease pit in order that the searchers could take a better look at the underside. One of the searchers began tapping the gas tank of the Pontiac and then tapping gas tanks on other automobiles in the station to compare the sound. He called to an agent, “There’s something wrong with this gas tank. It doesn’t sound like these other gas tanks when I tap on it.”

With the help of service station personnel, the searchers removed the gas tank. As soon as it was loosened from its fastenings, they knew that they had discovered hidden contraband: the gas tank was so heavy that it took the combined efforts of four men to lift it out of the grease pit. It was specially built of heavy steel.

Inside the gas tank, the searchers found a cleverly concealed compartment which contained thirty-three individually wrapped packages of gold bullion, valued at $110,000.

Apparently Schrieber became suspicious that he was suspect or he was tipped that the gold hoard had been discovered. At any rate, he did not show up as a passenger before the Cunard liner sailed. He was reported to have fled from the United States on a phony passport. After that, he was reported variously in Canada, in South America, and in Europe.

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