fagin

noun

1. A person who entices children into criminal activity, often teaching them how to conduct those crimes, and profits from their crimes in return for support.

   “The indignation of the self-respecting deaf is aroused by the fact that nine-tenths of the mendicant peddling is engineered by slick Fagins who teach inexperienced deaf youths the tricks of the trade and then collect the lion's share of the profits.”

   “We sort of treat a situation whereby the proprietor or operator or person running a foster home, if he were to make a profit, we sort of regard him as sort of a Fagin because he has been making money off little kids.”

   “Each such group exercises a formative influence on the active dispositions of its members. A clique, a club, a gang, a Fagin's household of thieves, the prisoners in a jail, provide educative environments for those who enter into their collective or conjoint activities, as truly as a church, a labour union, a business partnership, or a political party.”

   “A few of its occupants were poor, law-abiding folk just trying to get by peaceably, but it was a heaven-sent recruiting center for Jack and Ralph who, Neal said, ran a Fagin-like academy for aspiring pickpockets, sneak thieves, and burglars.”

   “At Midwest there is a Fagin character, Quinton, who is running a school for terrorists or something on that order.”

2. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative form of Fagin.

   “From February until the following October, Latsky was daily in the streets with the "fagins," who made much of him; for at ten years of age he was admitted to be one of the very cleverest of all the young thieves on the East Side.”

   “You can always find a fagin or a madam for a kid. I don't know how prices are now — when I was thirteen, I brought fifty dollars." Norvell, his hair standing on end, said, "You?" "I guess I was lucky — they sold me to a fagin, not into a house.”

   “Native Speaker does not present the United States as a promised land but as an "orphanage:" "It's an orphanage and there is a fagin"”

   “Profiling the legendary biblioklept Stephen Blumberg ("the greatest book thief in U.S. history"), the New Yorker magazine writes, “He was a fagin. Many of his friendships were with adolescent boys. He gave them money to help him unload his truck and sometimes to steal things."”