Perry Fuller

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/68436065/perry-fuller

Perry Fuller: Indian Agent, Self-Made Man, and White-Collar Criminal

http://www.franklincokshistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Perry...

Perry Fuller was a Kansas territorial representative and senator.

Fuller was the leading scoundrel in 1860s Kansas politics. He stole money from Indian tribes, and government programs designed to help them. He illegally cut timber from reservations and rustled tribes' cattle, covering his tracks by paying off officials in the federal Indian service. State investigations later concluded that, in 1867, Fuller bribed enough Kansas legislators to win U.S. Senate seats for Edmund Ross and Samuel Pomeroy.

In 1868, Fuller and Senator Edmund Ross were together for much of the last 24 hours before before Ross cast the deciding vote that prevented the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. After Ross received his share of the bribes from the "acquittal fund", he asked the president to appoint Fuller as the Collector of the Internal Revenue Service, the plum of patronage jobs. Dutifully, Johnson made the appointment. To its credit, the Senate refused to approve it. The president then appointed Fuller chief collector of revenues in the port of New Orleans. That port was one of the most famously corrupt government agencies, and it would seem the Senate decided that New Orleans and Perry Fuller deserved each other. The Senate approved the request in 1868.

In seven months in that position, according to a grand jury indictment, Fuller stole $3 million of federal tax revenue. When Fuller won pretrial release, Edmund Ross guaranteed his bond. Charges against Fuller were still in process when he died three years later.

Fuller was never convicted of a crime. He never spent a day in prison. Most of the Washington establishment were probably pleased to hear of his demise. Though he was an orphan who grew up in Kansas Territory in its most violet era, he can be thought of as the perfect representative of the Gilded Age in which he matured. That boom time of unregulated Capitalism and corruption saw many men who gamed the system like Perry Fuller.