The Great Check Forger

In 1947, George A. Clark hired forty-six-year-old Ludwig P. Hofmann of Maplewood, New Jersey, to serve as Chief Clerk and his personal secretary. Hofmann’s résumé appeared respectable enough—he had previously worked as a teller for the Ironbound Trust Company, as a secretary for the Camptown Loan Association, and was with the Essex County Vocational Schools. By that time, the Rahway Valley’s business had grown considerably during the 1940s, and Clark, ever frugal, had long resisted expanding his office staff. The mounting workload finally forced his hand, and he reluctantly hired Hofmann to help manage the paperwork piling up in the Kenilworth office.

Clark later admitted that he had been warned. Hofmann had experienced unspecified “difficulties” during his time at Camptown, but Clark decided to “give him the benefit of the doubt.” Reflecting on the matter later, he confessed ruefully, “evidently a leopard cannot change his spots.”

It did not take long for Hofmann’s behavior to raise eyebrows. According to Clark, “after every lunch hour each day which averaged between two and three hours, he came in so inebriated, and so stupefied that he was entirely helpless.”

Before long, the situation took a criminal turn. Hofmann forged four Rahway Valley checks for $500 each—$2,000 in total, equivalent to about $27,500 in 2025 dollars—making them payable to himself. His scheme was uncovered, and he was arrested on February 24, 1948.

When Hofmann’s attorney later requested his client’s salary for the second half of February, Clark replied with characteristic bluntness:

“This check will be delivered to Mr. Hofmann, if he calls personally upon the writer at this office in order to afford me opportunity to tell him in no uncertain words just exactly what I think about him. In view of the abuse taken I feel as though I am rightfully entitled to this satisfaction.”

Clark never got that satisfaction—Hofmann’s check was delivered through an intermediary—but the railroad did recover the stolen $2,000. Hofmann entered a plea of “no defense” and was sentenced on April 15, 1948. Thus ended the short and infamous tenure of the Rahway Valley’s “great check forger.”