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By the time legendary swindler George Graham Rice met Larry Sullivan at Sullivan’s gambling palace in Goldfield, he was doing a booming business in Nevada. He provided a full-service kind of operation — not only placing ads for investors, but also sending out hundreds of fake “human interest” stories about life in the mining camps for East Coast and West Coast newspapers to run. These articles were basically dime-novel narratives of feuds and gunfights and gold strikes and virtuous-maiden-rescuings; and, of course, they prominently featured Rice’s clients in heroic roles. They were eagerly run by newspapers all over the country, and the people who read them came to feel like they knew the mines and the people who ran them. Naturally, they were much more comfortable investing their money in them. It was some of these stories, reprinted in the Portland newspapers, that initially attracted Larry Sullivan to Goldfield. Soon, Rice was happily gambling away large swaths of his “earnings.” After Sullivan arrived and built the Palace, he did a lot of his gambling there. By this time, of course, he was a pretty good gambler; Larry probably had his work cut out for him keeping him from winning too much. One day, Rice was cashing out $2,500 in winnings, and Larry came out to talk to him. “Say, young feller, why don’t you cut me in on some of your mining deals?” he said. “I’m game!” “Are you?” Rice shot back. “Well, stack up $2,500 against that money and I’ll see if you are.” Sullivan came across on the spot.... (Goldfield, Nevada; 1905) (For text and pictures, see http://offbeatoregon.com/20-09.larry-sullivan-goldfield-swindles.html)