A Louisiana justice of the peace in 1908 set up a counterfeiting plant in a room near his court. When culprits paid fines and got change, the change they got was counterfeit. A personable Midwesterner of the nineteenth century, Thomas Peter McCartney, lectured under the name of Professor Joseph Woods. His subject was the art of detecting counterfeits. But he was prudent enough not to reveal how to distinguish the counterfeits McCartney was putting out; he talked only about his competitors. A Milanese counterfeiter of American tens made a self-conscious commentary on the quality of his merchandise when he left out the first L in the third word of the phrase, “Redeemable in Lawful Money.”
Coiner Edward Berglund, who was enchanted by slot machines, fed them his own fifty-cent pieces. When he was caught, he insisted that what he was doing was legal because he had printed the word “slug” on every one of them. Forrest Starling, of Perry, Iowa, minted phony fifty-centers, using a homemade die and putting more silver into his coins than the United States Mint puts into its fifty-centers. Bold as brass, he passed some of them in stores in Leavenworth before a bank clerk noticed that the reeding (the grooved outer edge) was deeper than the Government’s. Secret Service agents made inquiries and arrested him. When asked why he made his reeding so deep, he haughtily replied they were his coins and that was the way he wanted them.
Bogus-money men, in the United States at least, are growing less colorful and less successful. Since 1863, when one third of the money in circulation was counterfeit (a situation brought about because of the huge number of state and “wildcat” banks), the amount of phony money in circulation has been chopped down to an infinitesimal proportion. This has been mainly because of the work of the Secret Service, established in 1865. Of the $30,000,000,000 in circulation today, only one one thousandth of one per cent is counterfeit. In the fiscal year 1959 agents of the Service — dogged shadowers and ingratiating mixers with crooks — captured nineteen plants for the manufacture of fake paper money. The total value of money seized was $1,923,536; only $260,329 of it got into circulation. Of $6,766.32 in phony coins, $6,359.07 got into circulation, but the Secret Service does not regard the coiner as a menace.
The record for the rounding up of a counterfeiting ring and the seizure of its equipment is eight hours. A few years ago, a grocer in Pittsburgh received a phony five-dollar bill and happened to notice that the woman who gave it to him got into a car with New Jersey plates. Remembering the license number, the grocer passed it along to Secret Service men, who checked it with authorities in Trenton. It developed that the car owner lived in Centreville. A few hours later an agent was on his way there, accompanied by a New Jersey state trooper. When they arrived at the house, the two pounded on the door but failed to wake anyone, so the agent went around back. He glimpsed a man in pajamas who was flourishing a shotgun. Busting in, the agent snatched it from him, kicked down a wall and found a set of plates, and turned the man over to the trooper.
Then he waited for the lady to return. She came in the car, along with a man. The agent blew a hole in the front tire, yanked the door open, and braked the car. It was filled with minor purchases bought with the phony money the afternoon before. Two trunks filled with counterfeit were located in the attic and two more plates were found hidden in the rafters. The three, comprising the entire gang, were taken into custody and the case was wrapped up. The Secret Service man, who had been sick, went back to bed.
There are fashions in forgery and counterfeiting just as there are in dresses and hats. Supply follows demand. Ancient Romans bought ancient Greek sculptures and coins that were forged. The Middle Ages, eschewing art, specialized in the counterfeiting of relics of saints and martyrs. During the Renaissance classical sculpture was admired; it naturally followed that it was forged. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries picture faking was the rage, while in the eighteenth, emphasis shifted to romantically inspired literary works, such as James Mac-Pherson’s “translations” of the poems of Ossian, a legendary third-century bard. Thomas Chatterton wrote a “play by Shakespeare” — Vortigem — which was produced in 1796 but was unfortunately howled off the stage. The golden age for antique forgery, as well as forged works of art of all types, was the nineteenth century. Expert criticism was rare and scientific detection methods were still in their infancy.
Great names have lent themselves to forgery. Michelangelo at the age of twenty-one sculpted a marble Cupid which he buried in the ground. Soon after it was exhumed and sold to a collector as an antique. Many great artists of the past had pupils copy their paintings as part of their training. A particularly good job was rewarded by the master’s affixing his signature to it. Rembrandt and Corot often signed pictures on which they had painted only a few strokes. Van Dyck painted, at most, eighty canvases, but 2,000 pictures have been attributed to him. In music, as a struggling violinist, Fritz Kreisler signed other composers’ names to his violin pieces so his repertory would not be drastically limited.
The beginning of the twentieth century is notable for the Lincoln forgeries of Joseph Cosey, the stamp forgeries of Jean de Sperati, and the famous Piltdown skull fraud of a highly respected English solicitor and fossil collector, Charles Dawson.
The middle of the twentieth century is notable for a fantastic rise in check forgeries and a booming new industry — the forging of trade names.
Check forging is the fastest-growing crime in America, with the amateurs outnumbering the pros. It is a problem for supermarkets, department stores, and independent grocery stores as much as banks. One fifth of check forgers are women.
One reason for its popularity is that 90 per cent of all business transactions are carried out by check. Another is that check forgers are so enchanted by the ease with which they can buy things and acquire cash that they are hard put to reform. One check forger, thrown into jail for a clumsy forgery, whiled away several years practicing his handwriting. When he came out he was a master. Another, after serving time for forgery, turned Square John, gave lectures, and became a sheriff’s deputy. Then he ran wild and wrote $3,500 worth of bum checks.
An even more ambitious forger, who had arthritis so bad he could hardly write, stole mail from building lobbies and then altered the names of payees on checks he found in pilfered letters. He changed the name Apple and Co. on a check to Appleton R. Coxbetner. Then he took out a fishing license in that name, used it as identification, and the bank clerk cashed the check. He clipped banks for nearly $25,000 this way.
One method of cutting down on the practice is the use by depositors of checks especially treated so that, when ink eradicator touches them, they break out in a rash of Void-void-void. Another is the installation of cameras at tellers’ cages to record photographically the face of the check casher, his check, and his means of identification. If the check casher refuses to let his picture be taken, the bank has every right to refuse to honor his check.
But equally as tempting as check forgery to make a quick buck these days is the sale of cheap, inferior products bearing the counterfeit labels of well-known brands. Almost every nationally advertised trademark has suffered abuse as a result of this new racket — Leica cameras, BVD’s, Victor records, Chanel perfume, Good Humor ice cream, Revlon nail polish, Singer sewing machines, Bendix-Westinghouse air brakes, and so on.