George Edwin Brill

Who was George Edwin Brill?

George Edwin Brill, was an American postal inspector who was instrumental in the arrest of Frank M. Young.

Brill attended county schools and Shenandoah Normal College in Middletown, Virginia. After teaching school for some time in West Virginia, he started as a postal clerk in August 1889 and entered the railway mail service. Mr. Brill worked on Baltimore and Ohio mail trains between Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Grafton, West Virginia, becoming a postal inspector in the St. Louis, Missouri area on February 3, 1906. Brill became a postal inspector for the Baltimore-Washington district on July 1, 1911.

In 1922, Young's investment firm went bankrupt, and Young fled Baltimore shortly afterward. Brill set out a search that took thousands of miles until finally Young was arrested by Brill in Philadelphia. Young was convicted of illegal acts of mail fraud and sentenced to a five-year term in the Atlanta prison where he only served three. At the request of Judge John C. Rose in the United States District Court, George Brill was told to begin an investigation on the methods employed by Young’s “blind pool” operation which left an estimated $110,000 in assets and an estimated $2,700,000 in liabilities. Mr. Brill asked that all clients of Mr. Young cooperate with the postal authorities by mailing any communications or advertising matter they had received from Mr. Young to the inspector’s office. Brill asked for the envelopes in which the letters were received, as the postmarks serve as evidence that the letters were handled by the Post office.