Man Arrested For His Business Which Provided Perjury To Help People Get Divorces
In 1922, Jack Berkowitz was arrested for starting a booming business that used actors to fabricate evidence and provide perjury in New York divorce cases
When people are stuck in bad marriages, they will sometimes go to extreme lengths to free themselves from the shackles of marital unhappiness. That’s what Jack Berkowitz of New York City counted on a century ago when he started a business where he would exchange carefully facilitated evidence and perjury to help gain divorces — crimes for which he was eventually arrested.
In 1922 New York, the only official legal grounds for divorce was infidelity. Accordingly, Berkowitz believed he came across a million-dollar idea by starting a syndicate where he carefully arranged evidence and provided witnesses willing to swear in court that they had been participants in extramarital affairs.
It was alleged that Berkowitz employed professional actors to pull off his scheme. This included using makeup and clothes to make his performers closely resemble the victims of his lies, who would then get “caught” by others in compromising circumstances.
