a Tammany Hall politician, controlled the territory of Manhattan below 14th Street. It is not known if the Considines (and Sullivan) were silent partners with Ryan in the turf investment scheme. After leaving St. Louis in 1901, Ryan got control of a piece of land in the suburbs of Covington, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, which had been used as a racetrack in the past. He reopened the track as the Newport Race Track; acting as track manager he brought together a group of horsemen and began organizing races. At the same time, he opened a poolroom in Tuxedo Gardens, an unincorporated area a mile north of the track. He also operated a horse farm at Elkton, Maryland where he claimed that he owned and bred a racing stable. With this setup, Ryan returned to St. Louis, and opened an office for the John J. Ryan Turf Investment Company, and began offering shares of stock to the public at $5.00 per share. The shares came with five, $1.00 coupons attached, entitling the shareholder to cash in one coupon one week at a time. Investors were told that the company's capital was to be used to bet on the outcome of horse races at the Newport track selected by Ryan. Because of the lack of public transport there was no substantial public attendance at the races. It appears reasonably clear that Ryan, through his control of the track operations, controlled the outcome of the races. Whether or not the company took paper profits or losses on betting the horses, Ryan's game was a pyramid scheme. By paying large sums for newspaper advertisements, and mailing promotional literature, he attracted capital and used part of it to pay for the redemption of the coupons from shares sold earlier, skimming, in the process, huge sums for himself. Between November 1902 and February 1903, Ryan's company gained 60,000 subscribers and accumulated capital of over $1 million. In February 1903, other "get rich quick" scams going on in the city collapsed when the public panicked; the panic spread to Ryan's operation, causing him to seek bankruptcy protection. At the end of the process, the company's creditors: paper manufacturers, printers, and newspapers, received a penny on the dollar. John Folk, the city circuit attorney, indicted Ryan for fraud in late 1903. At the trial, the charge was dismissed by Judge Ryan O'Neill on the grounds