Early American Crime

boot-leg – 1. coffee or, more precisely, alleged coffee, served in prison; 2. illicit liquor (a witty play on the former definition). boot-leg plan – a set up based on trickery or evasion, in reference to the saying, “the boot is on the other leg,” i.e., not as someone would normally understand something. Use of […]

beat – 1. to get the best of him; 2. to rob or swindle; 3. the part of a town in which a criminal or gang works; 4. to escape from prison; 5. to cheat or defraud (as in beat the hotel out of its bill). beat out of – to extort money from (a […]

backer – the person who supplies the genuine dollar bills that are shown to a prospective victim in a greengoods con-game. The greengoods con-game entails the sale of a large quantity of counterfeit money at a steep discount from its face value. In a show of demonstrating the high quality of the counterfeit bills to […]