Con man John Riley hits a small town posing as a geologist looking for
oil - and before you know it, he has suckered some townfolks into buying
shares in his next drilling operation, and they hand over $100,000to him -
and wouldn't you know it, he starts drilling, too, but after a while he
stops again and pays everyone back their shares - or rather 75% of them -
in defense bonds, which leaves him with a neat $25,000 overhead.
Everything is waterproof it seems, but Captain Braddock (Reed Hadley) of
the Racket Squad has been on Riley's trail for quite some time (he has
pulled similar stunts in other areas) and now moves in for the kill -
metaphorically speaking of course. This depiction of a scam
starts out quite interesting, as it doesn't give everything away right in
the beginning, but then it gets over-convoluted, and in the end, it
doesn't make all that much sense: If con man Riley pays the townfolks back
their 75,000 he's left with 25,000 alright, but from that money he has to
pay for the whole drilling machinery (remember he did really start
drilling), personnel etc etc ... so his actual overhead might be nowhere
near 25,000 - and doing these mathematics it looks as if the con man got
conned ... Don't you hate it when nobody thinks a screenplay through?
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