A receipt from the Laval railway station assured a buyer that merchandise had been duly dispatched. According to the indictment, Gogué would transmit this forged document, pocket the advance promised upon shipment, and then vanish: not a single parcel had ever left the depot. To this Parisian contrivance was joined another, inaugurated in Brussels, wherein suppliers surrendered goods that Gogué promptly resold without ever settling their cost. The Seine Assize Court tried both men as associates in the affair, yet their postures diverged at the bar: Gogué confessed, whilst Franskin denied all complicity.
In late June 1878, the Seine Assize Court heard the case over two sittings, on the 24th and 25th, under the presidency of M. Sevestre. The report published in the Gazette des Tribunaux on 28 June opens with the bill of indictment, tracing its principal transactions before detailing the prisoners’ responses, the depositions, and the ultimate sentence. It is thus primarily through the voice of the prosecution that most particulars have come down to us; the newspaper provides neither the unabridged depositions nor the addresses of counsel.
Gogué had emerged from the grain trade. He had traded in the Orne, then, following business reverses, had established himself in Brussels, where he wed late in 1875. Beginning in 1876, according to the indictment, his commercial dealings assumed a distinctly fraudulent cast. He caused printed letterheads to be struck under the name of Rattier, merchant in grains, flours, malts, oils, wines, and colonial produce. When seeking out new suppliers, he offered as references Franskin, styled as a banker, his own genuine name, or else a fictitious merchant named Bersmans—the family name of his lawful wife.
This apparatus of correspondence and references served a precise design. Merchants were led to believe they were entering into relations with a long-established house, or dealing with a purchaser whose solvency was guaranteed by a reputable third party. Goods were ordered; promised payments took the form of drafts upon Paris or notes subscribed by insolvent individuals and endorsed by Gogué, who was utterly devoid of means. The moment he secured the goods, he sacrificed them at knock-down prices. The proceeds of these sales never reached the suppliers: their invoices remained wholly unpaid.
Not all vendors, however, surrendered their freight without precautions. Some demanded payment on delivery; others, warned of the buyer’s dubious standing, instructed the station to release the crates solely against hard cash. Gogué would then refuse the cargo, leaving the seller to bear the burden of the return freight. More often than not, according to the prosecution, he had already intercepted the shipment en route and taken delivery. These carriage losses pertained to the first stratagem, in which a vendor had genuinely consigned goods for transport; they must not be confounded with the forged receipts, which attested to no dispatch whatever.
When judicial proceedings commenced, Gogué fled Brussels for Paris. Toward the end of 1876, he took lodgings first at No. 16 Boulevard Magenta under the name of Mercier, then at No. 4 Rue Saint-Lazare under that of Cotin. The indictment ascribed to him several further aliases—Morel, Lunel, Dubray, Reiser, and Rattier—registered for lodgings in various quarters where he never resided, but where his correspondence was directed. Addresses multiplied alongside commercial houses: one received the mail, another sheltered the man, and identities shifted to meet the convenience of the hour.
In Paris, a second device was grafted onto the former. Gogué succeeded in procuring blank station forms intended to certify the dispatch of goods from the Laval railway depot, where he enjoyed regular access for his own shipments. The bill of indictment states that he abused the station clerks’ confidence to purloin these papers. He would then offer merchandise to prospective buyers in diverse locales; once the bargain was struck, he stipulated that a substantial portion of the price be remitted to him upon production of the consignment note. He posted the forged document, pocketed the cash, and disappeared. When the purchaser presented himself to claim the freight, he discovered that no parcel had ever been entrusted to the line.
The two operations were distinguished by the reality of what was delivered: on the one hand, genuine merchandise surrendered and resold without payment; on the other, an advance obtained for a shipment that existed merely upon paper. The indictment estimated the sums secured through these varied devices at some thirty thousand francs, noting that Gogué squandered the proceeds chiefly on travel and in gaming hells. Those merchants fortunate enough to recover their goods suffered an additional three thousand five hundred francs in transport fees or deterioration, according to the prosecution. This latter sum denotes neither a third fraud nor the value of the phantom shipments: it represents the expenses and damage incurred by the reclaimed cargo. The indictment joined the thirty thousand francs yielded by both artifices without apportioning the total between the Brussels transactions and the Paris ventures. It thus separated the funds Gogué had reaped from his maneuvers from the incidental losses sustained by the merchants who had recovered their wares.
Franskin had pursued a disparate course. Formerly an assistant master in a private school at Vouziers and an auxiliary schoolmaster at Reims, he had settled in Brussels in September 1872. There he had found employment with a printer, in an intelligence office, and later with a confectioner. The indictment recalled that he had been sentenced in absentia, on 13 June 1877, to two years and six months’ imprisonment for theft and forgery to the prejudice of his master, prior to removing to Paris. This antecedent conviction belonged to an entirely separate matter; it must not be confounded with the verdict rendered in June 1878. The two men had formed an acquaintance in Brussels, and the prosecution attributed to Franskin an active share in several of Gogué’s combinations. His name had served as a reference under the guise of a banker; the indictment does not detail his individual share in each separate transaction. At the bar, he repudiated all concert, presenting himself merely as another victim duped by Gogué.
During the proceedings, the postures of the two prisoners diverged sharply. Gogué, who had offered steadfast denials throughout the preliminary investigation, made a clean breast of his guilt, admitting both his forgeries and his swindles; the journal describes him as utterly dejected, suing for pardon and the court’s indulgence. Franskin, by contrast, vigorously contested the accusation, maintaining that he had acted in all good faith—not as a confederate, but as the innocent dupe of Gogué’s designs. The Gazette adds that the depositions of the witnesses substantiated the charges.
Following the closing address of the Advocate General de Bertheville and the pleadings of Maître Crochard for Gogué and Maître Démange for Franskin, the jury found both prisoners guilty, granting them the benefit of extenuating circumstances. The court sentenced Jean-Clément Gogué to seven years’ penal servitude (réclusion) and Franskin to three years’ imprisonment. Gogué, to whom the indictment ascribed both systems of fraud, had confessed to the facts; Franskin, who had protested his own credulity, was likewise adjudged an accomplice.
The letterheads of the house of Rattier had promised suppliers a remittance that never arrived; the Laval consignment notes had caused buyers to await parcels that had never been loaded. To the former, Gogué left goods recovered only after a ruinous journey; to the latter, he gave the mere shadow of an imaginary transit. The verdict of the Assizes determined the fate of the two prisoners: seven years’ hard labor for the man who confessed, and three years behind bars for him who protested that he was merely deceived.