In Rochester, New York in the late 1940s, Samuel Norman Savitt appeared to be just the person to want to handle investments. Savitt had made a small fortune by investing in the stock market during World War II. Many Rochester citizens turned to Savitt to invest their money. He did invest some of the money, but after giving investors big enough returns to keep them happy, he kept the rest of their earnings. Savitt played games with his taxes as well. He instructed his clients to make out their checks to him and sign blank tax forms. He changed the information on the draft forms, and adjusted the amount of his client’s tax deduction on the final forms. Savitt would then pocket the difference between what his clients really owed and what his falsified forms claimed. Government agents suspected Savitt of stealing money from his clients, but wanted to arrest him for more than just not paying his own taxes.

Savitt had used the U.S. mail to send in the tax forms. On March 17, 1950, the Postal Inspection Service took over the case. Within two months inspectors had obtained a warrant for Savitt’s arrest, but he had already fled the country. Two years later, using information provided by a people who had corresponded with Savitt, inspectors learned that he had joined the French Foreign Legion after leaving the United States. Inspectors asked the French police to look for him, and Savitt was arrested in Paris on September 1, 1952. When extradition proceedings began, the U.S. attorney was shocked to discover that, according to the 1909 extradition treaty with France, only two of the forty six counts in the federal indictments against Savitt covered extraditable offenses. Savitt was finally extradited to the United States in March 1953. He pled guilty to one federal indictment and was sentenced to prison.