Shown here are the mug shots of Joseph Bernard Lynch of Boston. When his cellmates asked him what he was in for, he would have to tell them “tube rebranding.”

His scheme is exposed in the July 1956 issue of Radio News.  He bought bad tubes for two or three cents each. The magazine noted that the sellers should have been suspicious, because there was no legitimate use for them. He then fraudulently rebranded them, and labeled them to show that they were still under warranty. He then returned them to the manufacturers and got replacement tubes, which he sold at a discount.

But the long arm of the law eventually caught up with him, and he was sentenced to two years. The magazine gives his address as 82 Carver Street. That was apparently the bad side of town. The address no longer exists, having given way to urban renewal in the 1960s.