This Is Your FBI: The Seagull Shakedown

The Equitable Life Assurance Society presents This is your FBI. This is your FBI. The official broadcast from the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Presented transcribed as a public service by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States and the Equitable Society's representative in your community.

Many doctors agree that worry is often the real cause of what seemed to be physical ailments. The cause of much needless worry is money. Some men worry about the future security of their wives and children.

Others worry about poverty and dependency in old age. Others wonder how they'll ever give their children a good education. If any or all of these problems bother you, get in touch with a neighbor of yours.

He's your local representative of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. In about 13 minutes, I'd like to tell you more about him and the freedom from worry that comes with membership in the equitable life-assuring society.

Tonight, the subject of our FBI file, extortion, its title, the seagull shakedown. The professional criminal, almost without exception, depends on some kind of protection which will, he hopes, keep him out of prison.

this takes the form of gun and getaway car, or an attempt to establish alibis, or buy witnesses. However, there is one lawbreaker who counts on getting his protection from the very victims of his crime.

This is the extortionist. Statistics in the FBI file show that, as in the case you are about to hear, many of these criminal parasites have been able to operate for years without their activities ever being reported to law enforcement agencies.

Once the payoff starts, the hapless victim of the extortionist finds himself an accomplice in a conspiracy against his own pocketbook, his own peace of mind, and perhaps even his life. Tonight's FBI file opens at a fashionable beach club located in a small resort town a few miles from a large West Coast city.