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."