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"Soapy" the gangster Smith got his moniker from his infamous soap scam.

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Who would have guessed that soap had so many - not always legitimate - connections to money and power? Jefferson Randolph Smith, an American con artist, gangster, and crime boss, earned the moniker "Soapy" at the end of the 1800s after making a fortune with his prize soap sell con. It was a simple crime designed to quickly swindle unsuspecting passers-by, involving wrapping bars of soap in various denominations of notes, covering them with plain paper, pretending to mix them in with bars devoid of money, and then selling off these latter bars at an inflated price while maintaining the façade that some of the packages contained money. In reality, only members of Smith's notorious Soap Gang, who w

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