Jüri was born in Kehtna Parish as the first child of farm tenant Jaan Rummo and his wife Anne.

He once stole a piece of meat (according to other records, a bottle of wine) from the manor for his sick father, for which the gentleman sentenced him to corporal punishment.

Some time later, the Harju County Court sentenced him to 6 months in prison for stealing goods from a Russian itinerant merchant.

The German and Estonian-language newspapers of that time (Tallinna Sõber) complained that an "understood nation" was holding him "because of the luster that shines around this scammer", calling him the "Rinaldo Rinaldini of Estonia", "Fra Diavolo of our province", "Estonia's Don Juan" and stating that "women have helped or hidden him here and there in escapes".

Then the prison inspector reported in the same newspaper that there had been a bar only until the cell was finished, now Jüri had only his hands shackled.

[3] After sending Jüri to Siberia, a message appeared in some newspapers about his escape on the way, after which panic began in Estonian manors.

Only Alfred Keyserling, the inspector of the forced labour camps, brought reliable information about his work in Siberia in his memories.