Another Victim of Financial Fraud: Miles Jandejsek Was on Swindler’s List
Miles Jandejsek: 1884-1978 (Maternal Granduncle)
Miles
Jandejsek was a member of a club that no one willingly joins: a brotherhood of
victims of financial fraud. Fraudsters and crooks are sadly all too common in
the financial field, from the infamous Ponzi of the Ponzi scheme to Bernie
Madoff, to the crypto-fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried to the more common
small-scale crooks and cheats. All these schemes leave a trail of humiliated
victims crippled by financial losses, people whose lives are never the same.
Miles Jandejsek placed his trust in a neighborhood friend who betrayed him and wiped
out a large chunk of Miles’ retirement funds.
Miles
Jandejsek was the third of Emanuel and Emily Tomsche Jandejsek’s eight
children. He was born August 31, 1884 in Ceska Trebova, Czechoslovakia. The
Jandejsek family emigrated to the United States in 1888 when Miles was four
years old. They settled in Chicago where Emanuel found work as a carpenter.
Finances
were difficult for immigrant families, so Miles left school after eighth grade
to start earning wages. He appears on the 1900 census at age 15, working as a
day laborer. He remained a blue-collar worker, employed by Western Electric Co.
as a machinist until retirement.
Miles
married another Czech immigrant, Louise Slaby, on April 5, 1913. Louise was 18
years old, while Miles was 28. They moved first to Cicero, Illinois, and then
to nearby Brookfield. They never had
children. They acquired a summer home on Geneva Lake in Wisconsin, which they
sold following Miles’ retirement.
 |
| Sale ad for Miles Jandesek's vacation home, 1948. |
Miles and
Louise eventually moved to Bradenton, Florida where my husband remembers
visiting them. Miles, he recalled, would solicitously enquire of his
great-nephews and niece, “Would you like a milk and some cookie?” This was a
little reminder that English had not been Miles first language.
While
living in Brookfield, Miles became acquainted with a Chicago man named Miles
Fort who owned and operated a mortgage and insurance business. Fort was trying
to build his own retirement nest egg by investing in the stock market.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t a very good investor and lost most of his own money.
He decided to use other people’s money to try to recoup his losses. He
persuaded friends to invest money with him, claiming he was lending it out as
mortgages, for which his investors would earn the mortgage interest. He
falsified the mortgage documents, usually altering real mortgages he had
written previously on various properties.
At first,
he paid his victims their “interest” out of his own funds while he used their
cash to play the stock market. Apparently Miles heard about these mortgage
“investments” from others, and wrote to Fort from Florida, asking to invest
money with him. Miles ended up giving Fort $27,500.
Fort
eventually abandoned the stock market to try his hand at grain markets, and
once again lost money. He then claimed to have gotten “’inside information’ and
then invested heavily in egg futures. Instead of going up, as he expected, the
price of eggs went down. ‘They truly cleaned me out,’ he related sadly.” (From
news article cited below)
Fort’s
scheme eventually fell apart when he no longer had enough money to pay his
victims their monthly “interest” payments. He turned himself in to the state’s
attorney in Chicago.
According
to a Chicago Tribune article, Fort had defrauded thirteen individuals out of
nearly $300,000. The article stated that Fort “obtained amounts ranging from
$4,000 to $51,355 from his 13 victims, all of whom were friends or business
clients of long standing. In each case…the losses represented the life savings
of the persons.”
 |
| Excerpt of Chicago Tribune article on swindle |
Fort was
charged with forgery and held under $4000 bond in September of 1958.
My husband
doesn’t remember anyone in the family discussing Miles’ financial loss. He
suspects no one knew. Miles was probably embarrassed to have been so trusting
and naïve and would have been reluctant to confess he had been swindled out of
a large sum.
Miles and
Louise continued to live in Bradenton, probably making do with Social Security
and whatever additional funds they had saved over the years. Miles died November
26, 1978 at age 94, and was buried in Bradenton. Louise lived another twelve
years, dying at age 95 on August 2, 1990. She had apparently moved back to
Illinois before her death, because her death record was filed in Cook County,
Illinois.
Retirees
and the elderly are often the targets of financial fraudsters. Miles Jandejsek
was just another name on a “swindler’s list”. He became a member of the victims’
club of regretful investors in yet another fraudulent scheme.
Sources:
"Realty Man Swindles 13 in $300,000 Fraud", Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois. Sept 5, 1958. Accessed on Newspapers.com.
Miles Jandejsek Obituary. Bradenton Herald. Bradenton Florida. Nov. 27, 1978. Accessed on Newspapers.com.
Photo of Headstone from Findagrave. Photo by Donna McPherson. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/122807635/miles-jandesek?
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