Who is Daniel West? Michigan legislator discovered to be con man
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Grifter. Cheater. Con artist. These are just a few of the words that are hurled at American politicians. But in Michigan — in at least one case — it was true.
In 1964, a criminal investigation uncovered that a state legislator wasn’t actually who he said he was. He was using the name and résumé of a dead man and leveraged that gravitas to expand a tax fraud scheme, all while collecting a check from Lansing.
Looking back: How the Kerns Hotel fire shook Lansing, Michigan’s Legislature
The crazy part? It’s all still a mystery. After a warrant for his arrest was issued, the person impersonating Daniel West disappeared. He has successfully evaded authorities and is possibly still alive and on the lam today.
The biography inside the 1963-64 Michigan Legislature Manual says Rep. Daniel W. West was born in Tennessee, graduated from Swarthmore College, earned his law degree at Yale and was a practicing lawyer in New York. All of that was technically true. Except West died in 1961 and never ran for office in Michigan.
To this day, we don’t know the exact identity of the man who used West’s name and story to fake his way to the state House. Michigan historian and Grand Valley State University professor Matthew Daley said the mystery man used a lot of key con man tactics in building his backstory.
“He shows up here and he said he had all of these crazy jobs like he was the public works commissioner in the Virgin Islands, all of these sorts of things,” Daley told News 8. “They were all jobs that were very hard to track down. They sounded great but they are all these remote places. … Who was going to check it? That’s partly how he was able to play that game.”
The ‘other’ mounds: Lost history is a part of West Michigan’s story
According to the Detroit Free Press, “West” first tried to run for a House seat in 1954 and again in 1960 to no avail. In 1962, he was elected to represent Wayne County’s 6th District and quietly served for two years. “West” was easily re-elected for a second term in November 1964 but was never seated in the new Legislature as the scandal started to unfold.
It started as a fraud investigation. While “West” made his name as a practicing lawyer, campaign documents from his 1960 filing said he was working as an accountant, according to MLive.
“He was accused of essentially shorting people, shorting businesses and individuals on tax returns and tax preparation. It’s one of the oldest schemes in the book,” Daley said. “Essentially, he would say, ‘You’re going to get a $100 refund.’ Well, you are actually getting a $200 refund and he’s pocketing the other $100.”
Daley continued: “Apparently one of his clients thought something didn’t sound right, so they got a second opinion, and that person said, ‘Oh no, you’re getting shorted.’ They complained to the fraud department of the Detroit Police Department, who referred it to the state police.”
In the days following the election, investigators brought “West” in for questioning and took a copy of his fingerprints. That is when everything fell apart.
The fingerprints matched “West,” but showed he had served prison time following several criminal convictions. He was reportedly sentenced to 18 months at the Minnesota State Reformatory for burglary. He was arrested on larceny and breaking-and-entering charges years later in Virginia and was also given a 15-year sentence in the Iowa State Penitentiary for forgery, all under different names.
“They realize he is a felon. … Well, if they’ve got his fingerprints and he was a felon, what is his real name? Well, the names in his (criminal records) were false, too. So we don’t know who this guy is, really,” Daley said.
Pigeon Hill: Another piece of West Michigan lost to time
The timeline gets murky from there. The Detroit Free Press talked to “West’s” neighbors in Detroit, asking what they knew about him. Investigators, both police and journalists, searched for him. They cased two properties connected to him in Detroit — a two-story home on South Junction Street and a rented flat on Whitfield Street.
One person claimed that “West” was sick and had been staying with his brother for several weeks. Another neighbor admitted to being completely clueless about who he was. She said they talked briefly about the recent election, but he never mentioned that he was a lawmaker.
“I thought he was a garbage man. He was standing by the truck,” she told the Free Press.
The man who lived in the flat below “West” said glumly, “You never know who you are voting for.”
When the Legislature reconvened for the new year, “West” was nowhere to be found. He didn’t show up for the first session. And even if he had, he wouldn’t have been welcome. According to Gongwer News Service, the Legislature refused to seat him — “the only known time to have taken such action” — and the district’s seat was declared vacant.
The formal indictments finally came in June 1965. After investigators estimated that he defrauded more than 1,000 clients, “West” was eventually indicted on 117 counts of income tax fraud and two counts of voter registration fraud.
“It was a very clever scheme. Being a legislator and being respectable opens doors. If you are running one con, you can run an even bigger con,” Daley admitted. “You are going to be able to open lots of doors because you are a member of the Michigan Legislature. It allays people’s fears. Who is going to look into that? You got elected to office. You must be who you say you are.”
1883: The logjam that nearly sank Furniture City
An arrest warrant was issued for the so-called West, but he was nowhere to be found. His first court date came and went without him appearing, officially making him a fugitive.
According to Gongwer, a handful of sightings were reported in the years following “West’s” disappearance. One person who reportedly worked on West’s 1964 campaign team claimed to have saw him at a restaurant more than 10 years later across the river in Windsor, Ontario.
“When ‘Mr. West’ saw (the person) staring at him, he got up and left without ordering any food,” Gongwer reported.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WOODTV.com.
