> 10 years went by and the search for Mister 880 turned into the largest and most expensive counterfeit investigation in Secret Service history.
The article doesn't explain why the Secret Service made this their biggest case, and it doesn't make much sense to me. If the dollars were accepted by the general population, it would cause an infinitesimal increase in inflation of no consequence to others. And if shopkeepers wised up to the false dollars and rejected them, at worst he was defrauding the public by a few hundred dollars a year. In either eventuality, surely the Secret Service had more notorious counterfeiters to track down?
The state reserves some of the harshest punishments for counterfeiters, since large scale counterfeit operations is one of the few crimes that is an attack on the state itself.
The US secret service was originally created specifically to combat counterfeit money, it's no surprise that they would keep tracking this man for a decade.
This man is unusual because he did the tiniest amount of one the most severely punished crime.
I have two "counterfeiting" stories - both of which are humorous even though one involve the Secret Service.
The first was in college. A buddy of mine scribbled a facsimile of a $20 onto a piece of paper with a green marker. He then handed it to the checkout clerk at the cafeteria who took it and started to hand them back change. He stopped her and said "no, no it's a joke - look at what I just handed you". She was embarrassed but they both laughed together.
The second story which does involve the Secret Service is when my friend had a bunch of presents that he had wrapped and put in his front porch until was going to depart for a party. One of the presents was wrapped in a sheet of uncut dollar bills - which you could buy for that purpose.
A neppy neighbor saw it through the window and called the police who called the FBI who called the Secret Service who came knocking on his door to investigate. They were also embarrassed but I don't think they laughed. My friend told him he understands that they're just doing their job and that it's an important one.
I remember my friend coming home from his first year in college and telling me about how he passed a counterfeit $30 he'd found to a clueless clerk and they actually made the correct change. My wise-ass response was that that wasn't actually counterfeit, it was just fraud.
If it's being passed off as money, then someone thought it was. I don't think the Secret Service cares if it's an invalid denomination or has Bozo the Clown on the front. Probably not a high priority for them given the overall lack of believability, but the attempt is what counts.
I don't think that the parent comment is making the case it's not a crime, but rather that it's not specifically counterfeiting. There comment reads as playfully snarky to me, since, when discussing counterfeit currency, we almost always take counterfeit to mean "to make a fraudulent replica of".
> The state reserves some of the harshest punishments for counterfeiters, since large scale counterfeit operations is one of the few crimes that is an attack on the state itself.
Which is pretty ironic, given that the state need not be involved in providing physical cash at all.
The number of countries where life imprisonment is available possible sentence for counterfeiting seems to confirm it having some of the harshest punishments.
> number of countries where life imprisonment is available
All of those, I believe, have the death penalty for e.g. corporate fraud.
This is a bit of a nut job hypothesis. States don’t collapse because of private counterfeiting. It simply becomes an economic nuisance. The budget given to anti-counterfeiting in any country is generally a rounding error compared with other policing.
A small leak can sink a ship. The fake dollars weren't knowingly accepted.
If public confidence in the value of money is lost, we're all in big trouble.
The Secret Service was right to pursue the case zealously.
I think the public take a pretty pragmatic view on this and don't care as long as they are not losing money on it. A few years ago it was estimated that 3% or so of the 1 pound coins in the UK were fake (there is now a more secure coin type); AFAIK the quality was pretty good, so they weren't glaringly obvious, and it seems no-one really cared - if the supermarket or pub would accept it, then it's effectively money, right?
> if the supermarket or pub would accept it, then it's effectively money, right?
Only long as you both accept the same shared understanding of what it is. If one of you believes it's counterfeit and the other doesn't (whether it actually is or isn't!)... then it's not effectively money, no. For example, I don't know about you, but I sure as hell wouldn't knowingly pass off a counterfeit on the basis that the supermarket would accept it.
I think it depends... if everyone else was treating the counterfeits same as genuine coins, so you're continually getting a mix in change, and no-one is rejecting them when you pass them on, then I think most people would just do the same. If you are not going to get in trouble by spending one (assuming you even noticed in the first place - probably not), and can be pretty much 100% assured it'll be accepted, then it'd be a bit perverse to squint at every coin you handle.
Fiat currency has no inherent value - it's just a system of communal acceptance. If everyone accepts the fake coins then they ARE money. As you note, the system only breaks down if some people stop accepting it.
It'd be interesting if someone from the UK could chime in: Were you aware of all the fake pounds circulating (1 in 30!) ? Did you notice if you got one? Did you care?
> I think it depends... if everyone else was treating the counterfeits same as genuine coins, so you're continually getting a mix in change, and no-one is rejecting them when you pass them on, then I think most people would just do the same.
I think you're directly affirming this: it's fine as long as you both accept the same shared understanding of what it is.
£1 coins are a small proportion of the value of cash in circulation and cash is a small proportion of the money supply. Coins are easier to counterfeit than notes so even if other coins have similar rates of counterfeits its a small problem in context.
We have the benefit of hindsight. The Secret Service couldn’t know the true scale of the operation, how many fake bills were in circulation, and that they were only singles.
To set an example, as a deterrent to larger operations. If they go after even the smallest impact counterfeiters, it leaves no room for a plausible level at which an operation can safely run under, no matter how small.
That article had an unsatisfactory and anti-climatic ending. It ended right when the Secret Service arrested the counterfeiter, where a normal reader would expect more discussion of how the Secret Service found the man and how they questioned the man after the arrest.
Did you read all three parts? They laid the groundwork by alerting local police and store owners about the counterfeiter probably living in that area of Manhattan and got lucky because the neighbor's apartment caught fire and the building owner threw out some of his burned possessions, including the plates and some counterfeit bills.
> Juettner began working as a maintenance man and building superintendent in New York's Upper East Side. His job allowed him and his family to live rent free in the basement of the building where he worked.
Do they? I certainly don't - it's just a wad of notes. I'd probably notice if the one on top didn't have a "20" on it, and that's about it. When I spend it I'm also just looking to see if it has a "20" on it.
I hate speding dollars. All the bill sizes being g the same, and the colors similar. Too easy to make mistakes. I feel for the blind...how do they cope?
In the US, IIRC they have a trusted person sort the bills by denomination for them -- like a friend or a bank teller -- and then they fold them into different orientations so they know what they've handed to a checkout clerk. No way for them to prevent being shortchanged, unfortunately.
I really don't know. Even as a seeing person you need to have your wits about you, and I think most people sort notes by value in their wallet. Most other countries have notes whose size and color differs by value, so it's much harder to make mistakes.
My guess is that almost everyone was paying with cash, so a $1 bill was not uncommon.
I don't remember the last time I paid $20 in cash. [That's like AR$30K here in Argentina. For that ammount, we mostly use credit card, debit card or one of the apps with QR.]
Since they were silver certificates he could have redeemed them for a 26.73g coin composed of 90% silver and 10% copper. In 2026, the value of the silver has fluctuated between about $46 and $94 (and the value of the copper content has stayed a little over 3 cents).
Would owning his apartment disqualify him from being a folk hero? If he was a renter, does he deserve to be a hero? Just wondering. If he'd gotten rich from printing fake currency and become a right wing dictator would you think the same as if he was just a broke tenant? Why or why not?
I'm talking about the vague implications the parent poster was making - the purposes of which weren't very clear, but which I interpreted as: "A) Money is worth less than it was, (so printing fake money is justified) B) But on the other hand maybe he was part of the propertied class (in which case it wouldn't be)". I was asking whether they had a moral compass.
Maybe because it sounds like a question on a 10th grade exam. It’s demanding and didactic, both in framing the question and the form of the expected answer.
Fun fact: in parts of East Africa, a $50 bill may be worth about 60-70 $1 dollar bills, due to the $1 bill being easier to counterfeit (and also more likely worn down).
Very interesting. It's probably because fewer people take the time to counterfeit $50s, $10s or $2s than anything else. What about $100 bills? In Argentina, if you have an older $100 bill, no one will take it. And apparently there's a roaring trade in fake $20s in Costa Rica, which I only learned at a casino there recently when I took USD directly out of an ATM and had it inspected by a pit boss in the same establishment. It's ironic, because if I were someone with an interest in counterfeiting, I'd focus on forging Pesos or Colones or something no one looks at before I'd take a stab at USD.
In Tanzania specifically, the $100s were fine. The weird pricing seemed driven partly by perception. It was usually street vendors who would say $1 bills were worth 2000 shillings (~84 cents), while the larger banknotes were fine. Other vendors would charge X shillings or Y dollars, and when you did the calculation, it would be about 70 cents per dollar. I had crisp $1 bills and asked them why they discounted $1 bills so much? And some responded they were easy to counterfeit. There was also something about banks not taking pre-2009 (if I remember correctly) dollars, and sometimes they may not be bothered to check the dates.
But even at exchanges, the bid for $50s was beating the ask for $1s, I was thinking there's a trivial arbitrage opportunity haha.
I’ve had USD rejected both for being too new and for being too old in various corners of the earth - different cultures seem to want their currency differently aged.
Uncirculated notes feel weird and also tend to stick together. Thankfully, it doesn't take much handling for them to wear in enough to not stick.
I did have a food stand on the boardwalk in New Jersey once refuse a worn bill, which was wild. I think it was a $1 and it may have been slightly torn near a corner. I'd expect that if using USD outside the US, but I guess Jersey is different.
I gave a bonus tip to a tour guide in one of these countries.
I'd brought USD notes from Europe to spend and as an emergency fund. They were all brand new (sequential numbers) $50 notes, just what my bank gave me.
At the end of the trip, I swapped about $300 of old notes the tour staff had for $300 of new notes. This included a very slightly damaged $100 note which the tour guide said had been a tip, which he was unable to use because of the damage.
It's been a while since I've tried to change money but even as recently as 10 years ago, money changers in a lot of places wouldn't accept even slightly wrinkled bills or bills older than a specific series. Every time before a trip I'd have to go to the bank and ask the teller for notes with series > X and not wrinkled/showing signs of being folded.
It is more an artifact of being cut off from the US mint/banking system. For a domestic US bank they can swap any worn currency for new stuff for free.
So as US currency degrades over time it slightly loses inter exchangeability in the third world.
Nobody will accept a €500 note in Europe - not even banks - you have to get it changed at a central bank, and you can expect a lot of questions, like “what kind of drugs did you sell to get this?”
An easier option if you have one, is going to a forex office in Vietnam or somewhere - and even then they may not take it.
I was lumbered with a couple of them for a few years, until I dumped them in Uruguay.
Yeah, it's truly strange because up until around 2012, I used to pay my rent with €500 notes when I lived in Spain. Just go down to the bank and get them. Then there was some sort of crackdown on drug smuggling and no one would touch them. Barbaric, rather fascistic or communist way of dealing with a social problem, since of course this means normal people can't pay rent in cash anymore without a ton of bills, and the only real purpose is to track so much more of the casual, unofficial economy. Drug dealers do find ways around.
German 50 Trillion (Marks) _stamps_ from 1923 are (literally) a-dime-a-dozen because postal services had a giant amount of them printed for issue in fall-1923 - just to have the whole lot rendered obsolete by the November currency reform. Unstamped/new they're not worth the paper they're printed on. Verifiably used / franked actually on a postal package they are much rarer. Fortune reversal - the worthless item becoming the collectible...
Old family story: Back in the 1920's and 1930's, one of my cousins (a bit removed) was a poacher in rural northern Michigan. Everyone from the County Sheriff on down knew that she was a poacher. Everyone also knew that she was a widow with several children, living in (even for the place and time) grim poverty, and the she was poaching to feed her children.
As kids, we were told more details - both to know about our extended family, and to support various lessons about poverty and charity and pre-WWII rural communities.
But one of the more subtle lessons was that "the law" and society's actual rules are, at best, overlapping circles on a Venn diagram. No matter what lawmakers, those invested in the legal system, and those telling simplistic stories to children might say.
Under ordinary circumstances, a federal counterfeiting arrest would have generated little sympathy. But the story of Emerich Juettner struck the public imagination immediately. Here was an old man surviving in poverty by printing crude one-dollar bills one at a time. He was not violent, greedy, or glamorous.
At trial, Juettner admitted his activities openly. The judge sentenced him to only a year and a day in prison, and he was paroled after 4 months. He was also made to pay a fine of $1. It has been agreed that Juettner’s complete lack of greed was the rationale behind the light sentence. …
Juettner returned to a life of normalcy, and lived out the rest of his days in the suburbs of Long Island, where he died in 1955, at the age of 79.
After his release, Juettner briefly achieved celebrity status. His notoriety became so widespread that Hollywood adapted the story into the 1950 film Mister 880, directed by Edmund Goulding. Eventually, Juettner made more money from the release of Mister 880 than he had made by counterfeiting.
About 20 years ago there was a gang that made fake Brazilian R$1 coins (they must have been worth 50 US cents then, I don't recall precisely). And I have collected a couple of very shady R$0,50 coins that I'm pretty sure are fake. I collect commemorative coins so I always check my change carefully.
I don't think the materials are expensive, but the electricity required might be. So my guess is that this might make sense if someone steals the power. One guy was busted stealing electricity to mine bitcoin a few years ago.
This was pretty common with £1 coins until they moved to bimetallic coinage. The fakes would be rejected by vending machines.
The biggest tells were poor reeding quality and slightly soft detailing. On very low quality fakes, the face and obverse weren't aligned, though I never encountered one of these in the wild.
Back in the 2000s/10s I had a little jar of various £1 and a couple 50p I was certain were fake. Interestingly the fake £1 I got most frequently were -from- vending machines - I wonder if those refilling them slipped them in?
Sadly not sure where they are now, they were also mixed in with a good few £5 coins I bought, I used to love paying for things with a £5 coin. Hope I find them again!
> I wonder if those refilling them slipped them in?
I recall reading that they were smuggled into the country by organized crime. They'd then sell them for around 60p on the pound to coin heavy businesses (esp. laundry and vending.)
Really? Man that's a shame, you used to be able to 'buy' them at the post office for £5 - so I'd get at least £50worth a month and spend them around east London, I seemed to find it hilarious at the time - but after a quick chat I don't remember anyone refusing them anywhere.
> The 70-year-old retiree who became America’s worst counterfeiter. [link]
He evaded capture for 10 years, making him one of the best. Also got less than a slap on his wrist and ended up making legal money on the whole ordeal.
Is it possible that he might have spent almost $1 in materials and labor and allocated capital expenses on equipment ... to create each of these counterfeits.
Attempting this today would probably surely cost that much in today's dollars?
EDIT: on a second thought ..this almost feels like "proof of work" for currency :)
The U.S. government spends approximately 4.1 cents [1] to produce each $1 bill. It would probably be more expensive to counterfeit it because of the volume, but I doubt it would be more than $1.
If I hypothetically set out to create a single fake one dollar bill that can pass for real ... i would have to spend a lot more than one dollar on the materials ro pull it off, surely?
Granted, a nickel was worth more in the 1930s...but not that much more.
It's illegal to own these counterfeit nickels because it's illegal to own any counterfeit currency, but they pop up from time to time in collector circles. I don't think the Secret Service cares at this point.
This was an interesting read. I am somewhat reminded of J. S. G. Boggs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._G._Boggs), who used to hand draw banknotes and bills as a performance art of sort.
There is an excellent book about him by Lawrence Weschler called _Boggs: A Comedy of Values_.
Slightly off topic, Vladimir Nabakov wrote a beautiful, sad story about a guy like this -- a lonely counterfeiter that made a small number of individually crafted bills. It is called The Leonardo.
In short, there are a great many US 100s out there that are so good that experts are required to spot them. The companies that sell/service the equipment necessary to print these only deal with national governments. So all eyes are on north korea.
Slightly off-topic, but the first time I saw a (real) 2-dollar bill, I almost called the Secret Service on a customer. Was then educated about the legality of 2-dollar bills.
The Frank Bourassa story is pretty incredible. There’s a TV series but I recommend listening to his interviews. I think NPR has one that is pretty good. The level of planning, logistics and craft the guy put into his illegal money printing shop is admirable. Extremely intelligent and driven person. He could have succeeded in any other legal business if wanted to, but looks like it would not be the same thrill for him. His counterfeit US bills were so good that allegedly some of it is still in circulation with silent approval of the US government.
It's ok for the govt to print as many notes as is needed to satisfy the govt's needs needs but it is not ok for the common Joe to do the same. One is labeled as inflation or quantitative easing and the other is labeled a crime
Money is actually generated by changing the interest on, and selling, bonds.
Various governments can, and many have, done what you describe, but banking in this day & age is about moving digits in a register, not shipping truckloads of $100-bills.
These days it is much more effective to pay employees to swap payment terminals (or just employees doing it themselves), changing where the money ends up, and banks don't really know what to do about it.
Accusing someone of using AI is a pretty bad thing to do. It's even worse when it's qualified by "perhaps". If you have something meaningful to say, try responding to the meat of the comment, not to who or what authored it.
> 10 years went by and the search for Mister 880 turned into the largest and most expensive counterfeit investigation in Secret Service history.
The article doesn't explain why the Secret Service made this their biggest case, and it doesn't make much sense to me. If the dollars were accepted by the general population, it would cause an infinitesimal increase in inflation of no consequence to others. And if shopkeepers wised up to the false dollars and rejected them, at worst he was defrauding the public by a few hundred dollars a year. In either eventuality, surely the Secret Service had more notorious counterfeiters to track down?
The state reserves some of the harshest punishments for counterfeiters, since large scale counterfeit operations is one of the few crimes that is an attack on the state itself.
The US secret service was originally created specifically to combat counterfeit money, it's no surprise that they would keep tracking this man for a decade.
This man is unusual because he did the tiniest amount of one the most severely punished crime.
I have two "counterfeiting" stories - both of which are humorous even though one involve the Secret Service.
The first was in college. A buddy of mine scribbled a facsimile of a $20 onto a piece of paper with a green marker. He then handed it to the checkout clerk at the cafeteria who took it and started to hand them back change. He stopped her and said "no, no it's a joke - look at what I just handed you". She was embarrassed but they both laughed together.
The second story which does involve the Secret Service is when my friend had a bunch of presents that he had wrapped and put in his front porch until was going to depart for a party. One of the presents was wrapped in a sheet of uncut dollar bills - which you could buy for that purpose.
A neppy neighbor saw it through the window and called the police who called the FBI who called the Secret Service who came knocking on his door to investigate. They were also embarrassed but I don't think they laughed. My friend told him he understands that they're just doing their job and that it's an important one.
> The first was in college.
I remember my friend coming home from his first year in college and telling me about how he passed a counterfeit $30 he'd found to a clueless clerk and they actually made the correct change. My wise-ass response was that that wasn't actually counterfeit, it was just fraud.
The fraud of passing off something of lesser value as the genuine article is the definition of counterfeiting.
But there is no such thing as a “genuine” $30 bill.
If it's being passed off as money, then someone thought it was. I don't think the Secret Service cares if it's an invalid denomination or has Bozo the Clown on the front. Probably not a high priority for them given the overall lack of believability, but the attempt is what counts.
I don't think that the parent comment is making the case it's not a crime, but rather that it's not specifically counterfeiting. There comment reads as playfully snarky to me, since, when discussing counterfeit currency, we almost always take counterfeit to mean "to make a fraudulent replica of".
It's still fraud, and an attempt to deceive.
If you’ll allow yourself to go one step further in the pedantry, there is no such thing as genuine money either.
There is if we agree that there is.
Which we have.
Isn’t this “uttering”?
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4489683
The best are sheets of $2 bills with perforations, as Steve Wozniak did: https://youtu.be/LJ1TIYxm1vM
^ This clip made me want to watch the full interview, which was somewhat difficult to find. I eventually managed to pull a copy out of the Wayback Machine. In case anyone else wants it: https://web.archive.org/web/20111214055934if_/http://cdn22.c...
That's wonderful. what a prankster is Wozniak!
https://www.usmint.gov/paper-currency/uncut-currency/ Expensive wrapping paper and cutting it wrong may be defacing currency!
Darren Brown paying with blank paper. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vz_YTNLn6w
What is neppy?
At a Pittsburgher, I assumed it was a misspelling of “nebby”.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Nebby
Also a fascinating read: The Nazi counterfeiting operation, intended to devalue the Pound and crash the British economy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard
north korea has been doing it against the US for decades. they are better at printing our currency than we are.
I suppose mostly to fund their "ventures"?
> The state reserves some of the harshest punishments for counterfeiters, since large scale counterfeit operations is one of the few crimes that is an attack on the state itself.
Which is pretty ironic, given that the state need not be involved in providing physical cash at all.
> the state reserves some of the harshest punishments for counterfeiters
This is empirically untrue [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfeit_money#Penalties_by...
The number of countries where life imprisonment is available possible sentence for counterfeiting seems to confirm it having some of the harshest punishments.
One of the fastest ways to make a state powerless is to make the money they issue and use to pay for everything worthless.
> number of countries where life imprisonment is available
All of those, I believe, have the death penalty for e.g. corporate fraud.
This is a bit of a nut job hypothesis. States don’t collapse because of private counterfeiting. It simply becomes an economic nuisance. The budget given to anti-counterfeiting in any country is generally a rounding error compared with other policing.
"since large scale counterfeit operations is one of the few crimes that is an attack on the state itself"
If somebody beats someone else up, to teach him a lesson - this is also a direct attack on the state itself, the monopoly on violence.
But "large scale"? This old man with his crude tools and bad 1 dollar notes?
"The press adored him and the public sympathized with him. "
That is probably the bit, that got them engaged. Cannot have this set as an example that works out for someone.
> this is also a direct attack on the state itself, the monopoly on violence.
not quite, the state monopolises _legitimate_ violence. it delegitimises the violence of individuals by making assault etc illegal.
I don't fully understand how this isn't a monopoly on violence.
Saying “the state has a monopoly on violence” is basically saying the state is a state. I’m not sure it ever really provides much real insight.
Maybe it's just that any investigation that takes 10 years is by definition one of the more expensive ones.
A small leak can sink a ship. The fake dollars weren't knowingly accepted. If public confidence in the value of money is lost, we're all in big trouble. The Secret Service was right to pursue the case zealously.
I think the public take a pretty pragmatic view on this and don't care as long as they are not losing money on it. A few years ago it was estimated that 3% or so of the 1 pound coins in the UK were fake (there is now a more secure coin type); AFAIK the quality was pretty good, so they weren't glaringly obvious, and it seems no-one really cared - if the supermarket or pub would accept it, then it's effectively money, right?
> if the supermarket or pub would accept it, then it's effectively money, right?
Only long as you both accept the same shared understanding of what it is. If one of you believes it's counterfeit and the other doesn't (whether it actually is or isn't!)... then it's not effectively money, no. For example, I don't know about you, but I sure as hell wouldn't knowingly pass off a counterfeit on the basis that the supermarket would accept it.
I think it depends... if everyone else was treating the counterfeits same as genuine coins, so you're continually getting a mix in change, and no-one is rejecting them when you pass them on, then I think most people would just do the same. If you are not going to get in trouble by spending one (assuming you even noticed in the first place - probably not), and can be pretty much 100% assured it'll be accepted, then it'd be a bit perverse to squint at every coin you handle.
Fiat currency has no inherent value - it's just a system of communal acceptance. If everyone accepts the fake coins then they ARE money. As you note, the system only breaks down if some people stop accepting it.
It'd be interesting if someone from the UK could chime in: Were you aware of all the fake pounds circulating (1 in 30!) ? Did you notice if you got one? Did you care?
> I think it depends... if everyone else was treating the counterfeits same as genuine coins, so you're continually getting a mix in change, and no-one is rejecting them when you pass them on, then I think most people would just do the same.
I think you're directly affirming this: it's fine as long as you both accept the same shared understanding of what it is.
£1 coins are a small proportion of the value of cash in circulation and cash is a small proportion of the money supply. Coins are easier to counterfeit than notes so even if other coins have similar rates of counterfeits its a small problem in context.
exactly, plus punishment also acts as a deterrent.
We have the benefit of hindsight. The Secret Service couldn’t know the true scale of the operation, how many fake bills were in circulation, and that they were only singles.
> If the dollars were accepted by the general population, it would cause an infinitesimal increase in inflation of no consequence to others.
That would depend on how many counterfeit dollars were out there, which the authorities did not know at that point of the investigation
To set an example, as a deterrent to larger operations. If they go after even the smallest impact counterfeiters, it leaves no room for a plausible level at which an operation can safely run under, no matter how small.
If you want to know more, there is a much better and very entertainingly written series of articles about this, from a 1949 issue of the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1949/08/27/old-eight-eigh...
That article had an unsatisfactory and anti-climatic ending. It ended right when the Secret Service arrested the counterfeiter, where a normal reader would expect more discussion of how the Secret Service found the man and how they questioned the man after the arrest.
Did you read all three parts? They laid the groundwork by alerting local police and store owners about the counterfeiter probably living in that area of Manhattan and got lucky because the neighbor's apartment caught fire and the building owner threw out some of his burned possessions, including the plates and some counterfeit bills.
Oh thanks! I didn’t realize there are two more parts; the link to the other parts were at the top rather than the bottom of the page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcuDTEbR8CE. Mr 880, a movie loosely based on the case.
https://archive.ph/MLJHu
Emerich Juettner would approve of bypassing a paywall for a news article.
I don’t get a paywall for this even in private browsing. Just me somehow?
I didn't get a paywall, either. Brave with Ublock Origin on Win11
One dollar in 1943 is worth about $19 today's dollars.
He started in 1938 and was arrested in 1948:
Enough to buy some supplies, but how did he pay the rent? Perhaps he owned his apartment.https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1948?amount=1
> Juettner began working as a maintenance man and building superintendent in New York's Upper East Side. His job allowed him and his family to live rent free in the basement of the building where he worked.
Yes, but he was forced to counterfeit when that job ended.
I think it's a fairly reasonable assumption that he retired (he was 60 in the 1930s) but the article could have made that part explicit.
On my first read I thought he had become a junk collector out of depression for the death of his wife.
If $1 is $19 I am suprised more people didnt check that their $1 notes are legit back then. Story makes it sound like $1 was chump change.
Do you check the $20 bills the ATM spits out, or just stuff them in your wallet and spend them?
Mmm I don't even check the 100$ ones from the ATM why wouldn't you trust the bank?
If I were a shopkeeper I might check $20 notes handed to me. To some extent.
people compare them to the $20 bill it spat out last time
Do they? I certainly don't - it's just a wad of notes. I'd probably notice if the one on top didn't have a "20" on it, and that's about it. When I spend it I'm also just looking to see if it has a "20" on it.
I hate speding dollars. All the bill sizes being g the same, and the colors similar. Too easy to make mistakes. I feel for the blind...how do they cope?
In the US, IIRC they have a trusted person sort the bills by denomination for them -- like a friend or a bank teller -- and then they fold them into different orientations so they know what they've handed to a checkout clerk. No way for them to prevent being shortchanged, unfortunately.
I guess technology could help though - this would be a great application for smart glasses.
Some countries chose different physical sizes and/or embosed bumps in the corners.
I really don't know. Even as a seeing person you need to have your wits about you, and I think most people sort notes by value in their wallet. Most other countries have notes whose size and color differs by value, so it's much harder to make mistakes.
My guess is that almost everyone was paying with cash, so a $1 bill was not uncommon.
I don't remember the last time I paid $20 in cash. [That's like AR$30K here in Argentina. For that ammount, we mostly use credit card, debit card or one of the apps with QR.]
A shabby NYC apartment in the 1940s could be rented for $30/month. So producing just 1 bill a day would be enough to meet the rent.
Since they were silver certificates he could have redeemed them for a 26.73g coin composed of 90% silver and 10% copper. In 2026, the value of the silver has fluctuated between about $46 and $94 (and the value of the copper content has stayed a little over 3 cents).
If you swap them in stores, maybe. But taking counterfeit bills to the national bank is just stupid, even if very well made.
Any quarters and dimes he would have received in change would have been about 90 per cent silver.
Those stopped being redeemable for silver in 1968, so their value is no longer defined by the metal prices of 2026.
Would owning his apartment disqualify him from being a folk hero? If he was a renter, does he deserve to be a hero? Just wondering. If he'd gotten rich from printing fake currency and become a right wing dictator would you think the same as if he was just a broke tenant? Why or why not?
The hell are you talking about?
I'm talking about the vague implications the parent poster was making - the purposes of which weren't very clear, but which I interpreted as: "A) Money is worth less than it was, (so printing fake money is justified) B) But on the other hand maybe he was part of the propertied class (in which case it wouldn't be)". I was asking whether they had a moral compass.
I think you're reading way too much into that comment. Sometimes questions are just questions out of curiosity, not accusations of the opposite.
I'm surprised people have such a knee-jerk reaction to my question.
Maybe because it sounds like a question on a 10th grade exam. It’s demanding and didactic, both in framing the question and the form of the expected answer.
Yes, it's asking for an essay. Oh well.
Fun fact: in parts of East Africa, a $50 bill may be worth about 60-70 $1 dollar bills, due to the $1 bill being easier to counterfeit (and also more likely worn down).
Very interesting. It's probably because fewer people take the time to counterfeit $50s, $10s or $2s than anything else. What about $100 bills? In Argentina, if you have an older $100 bill, no one will take it. And apparently there's a roaring trade in fake $20s in Costa Rica, which I only learned at a casino there recently when I took USD directly out of an ATM and had it inspected by a pit boss in the same establishment. It's ironic, because if I were someone with an interest in counterfeiting, I'd focus on forging Pesos or Colones or something no one looks at before I'd take a stab at USD.
In Tanzania specifically, the $100s were fine. The weird pricing seemed driven partly by perception. It was usually street vendors who would say $1 bills were worth 2000 shillings (~84 cents), while the larger banknotes were fine. Other vendors would charge X shillings or Y dollars, and when you did the calculation, it would be about 70 cents per dollar. I had crisp $1 bills and asked them why they discounted $1 bills so much? And some responded they were easy to counterfeit. There was also something about banks not taking pre-2009 (if I remember correctly) dollars, and sometimes they may not be bothered to check the dates.
But even at exchanges, the bid for $50s was beating the ask for $1s, I was thinking there's a trivial arbitrage opportunity haha.
Or there's an efficient market and when you mail yourself 9,999 $1 bills and take them to the bank you find out 30% are counterfeit.
Or street vendors see an American and immediately mark up their price by 30%. If it were me I'd walk away.
I’ve had USD rejected both for being too new and for being too old in various corners of the earth - different cultures seem to want their currency differently aged.
Uncirculated notes feel weird and also tend to stick together. Thankfully, it doesn't take much handling for them to wear in enough to not stick.
I did have a food stand on the boardwalk in New Jersey once refuse a worn bill, which was wild. I think it was a $1 and it may have been slightly torn near a corner. I'd expect that if using USD outside the US, but I guess Jersey is different.
I gave a bonus tip to a tour guide in one of these countries.
I'd brought USD notes from Europe to spend and as an emergency fund. They were all brand new (sequential numbers) $50 notes, just what my bank gave me.
At the end of the trip, I swapped about $300 of old notes the tour staff had for $300 of new notes. This included a very slightly damaged $100 note which the tour guide said had been a tip, which he was unable to use because of the damage.
It's been a while since I've tried to change money but even as recently as 10 years ago, money changers in a lot of places wouldn't accept even slightly wrinkled bills or bills older than a specific series. Every time before a trip I'd have to go to the bank and ask the teller for notes with series > X and not wrinkled/showing signs of being folded.
It is more an artifact of being cut off from the US mint/banking system. For a domestic US bank they can swap any worn currency for new stuff for free.
So as US currency degrades over time it slightly loses inter exchangeability in the third world.
And the only places you can change a €500 note are outside of Europe.
what?
Nobody will accept a €500 note in Europe - not even banks - you have to get it changed at a central bank, and you can expect a lot of questions, like “what kind of drugs did you sell to get this?”
An easier option if you have one, is going to a forex office in Vietnam or somewhere - and even then they may not take it.
I was lumbered with a couple of them for a few years, until I dumped them in Uruguay.
Yeah, it's truly strange because up until around 2012, I used to pay my rent with €500 notes when I lived in Spain. Just go down to the bank and get them. Then there was some sort of crackdown on drug smuggling and no one would touch them. Barbaric, rather fascistic or communist way of dealing with a social problem, since of course this means normal people can't pay rent in cash anymore without a ton of bills, and the only real purpose is to track so much more of the casual, unofficial economy. Drug dealers do find ways around.
In parts of the USA (well, amazon.com), you can buy bills of $10,000,000,000 from Africa for very little.
example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01L3536O2
In parts of the US (well, eBay.com) you can by bills of 50 trillion from Europe for very little.
In other words, Africa is a big place. Just say "Zimbabwe".
German 50 Trillion (Marks) _stamps_ from 1923 are (literally) a-dime-a-dozen because postal services had a giant amount of them printed for issue in fall-1923 - just to have the whole lot rendered obsolete by the November currency reform. Unstamped/new they're not worth the paper they're printed on. Verifiably used / franked actually on a postal package they are much rarer. Fortune reversal - the worthless item becoming the collectible...
I'd like to think that they would switch to scientific notation past a million…
Immersed yourself there or…?
That guy East Africas
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Old family story: Back in the 1920's and 1930's, one of my cousins (a bit removed) was a poacher in rural northern Michigan. Everyone from the County Sheriff on down knew that she was a poacher. Everyone also knew that she was a widow with several children, living in (even for the place and time) grim poverty, and the she was poaching to feed her children.
As kids, we were told more details - both to know about our extended family, and to support various lessons about poverty and charity and pre-WWII rural communities.
But one of the more subtle lessons was that "the law" and society's actual rules are, at best, overlapping circles on a Venn diagram. No matter what lawmakers, those invested in the legal system, and those telling simplistic stories to children might say.
Literally the single paragraph you omitted:
(Thank you!)
>He was also made to pay a fine of $1
I wonder if the cashier checked the bill closely when he paid it.
If he wrote a check the office would’ve had a bet pool on whether it would be returned
Maybe it was a test.
it would be impossible to rely on the test, the cashier could keep the fake dollar to frame it or sell it later, and chip in the real dollar themself.
About 20 years ago there was a gang that made fake Brazilian R$1 coins (they must have been worth 50 US cents then, I don't recall precisely). And I have collected a couple of very shady R$0,50 coins that I'm pretty sure are fake. I collect commemorative coins so I always check my change carefully.
I don't think the materials are expensive, but the electricity required might be. So my guess is that this might make sense if someone steals the power. One guy was busted stealing electricity to mine bitcoin a few years ago.
OTOH, maybe they just do it for fun.
This was pretty common with £1 coins until they moved to bimetallic coinage. The fakes would be rejected by vending machines.
The biggest tells were poor reeding quality and slightly soft detailing. On very low quality fakes, the face and obverse weren't aligned, though I never encountered one of these in the wild.
Back in the 2000s/10s I had a little jar of various £1 and a couple 50p I was certain were fake. Interestingly the fake £1 I got most frequently were -from- vending machines - I wonder if those refilling them slipped them in?
Sadly not sure where they are now, they were also mixed in with a good few £5 coins I bought, I used to love paying for things with a £5 coin. Hope I find them again!
> I wonder if those refilling them slipped them in?
I recall reading that they were smuggled into the country by organized crime. They'd then sell them for around 60p on the pound to coin heavy businesses (esp. laundry and vending.)
Aren't 5 pound coins worth more than the face value?
Really? Man that's a shame, you used to be able to 'buy' them at the post office for £5 - so I'd get at least £50worth a month and spend them around east London, I seemed to find it hilarious at the time - but after a quick chat I don't remember anyone refusing them anywhere.
> References:
> The 70-year-old retiree who became America’s worst counterfeiter. [link]
He evaded capture for 10 years, making him one of the best. Also got less than a slap on his wrist and ended up making legal money on the whole ordeal.
Is it possible that he might have spent almost $1 in materials and labor and allocated capital expenses on equipment ... to create each of these counterfeits.
Attempting this today would probably surely cost that much in today's dollars?
EDIT: on a second thought ..this almost feels like "proof of work" for currency :)
The U.S. government spends approximately 4.1 cents [1] to produce each $1 bill. It would probably be more expensive to counterfeit it because of the volume, but I doubt it would be more than $1.
[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12771.htm
The US penny and nickel are the only bits of currency we use that cost more to produce than their face value.
I meant the cost of counterfeiting
If I hypothetically set out to create a single fake one dollar bill that can pass for real ... i would have to spend a lot more than one dollar on the materials ro pull it off, surely?
Now let's take that up a notch with the story of Francis Henning, who counterfeited nickels.
https://coinweek.com/a-collectible-counterfeit-the-story-of-...
Granted, a nickel was worth more in the 1930s...but not that much more.
It's illegal to own these counterfeit nickels because it's illegal to own any counterfeit currency, but they pop up from time to time in collector circles. I don't think the Secret Service cares at this point.
It's not illegal to own fake currency. It's only illegal to possess with intent to defraud: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/472
Probably, but if you want to make a second one you'll have all the stuff right there still.
This was an interesting read. I am somewhat reminded of J. S. G. Boggs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._G._Boggs), who used to hand draw banknotes and bills as a performance art of sort.
There is an excellent book about him by Lawrence Weschler called _Boggs: A Comedy of Values_.
Slightly off topic, Vladimir Nabakov wrote a beautiful, sad story about a guy like this -- a lonely counterfeiter that made a small number of individually crafted bills. It is called The Leonardo.
It reminds me of Bojarski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceslaw_Bojarski
The 2025 movie is worth watching https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35495035/
> Eventually, Juettner made more money from the release of Mister 880 than he had made by counterfeiting
I'm guessing this was before the law where you couldn't benefit from crimes?
First enacted 1977 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_Sam_law
The other side of the trade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar
In short, there are a great many US 100s out there that are so good that experts are required to spot them. The companies that sell/service the equipment necessary to print these only deal with national governments. So all eyes are on north korea.
> He was also made to pay a fine of $1.
I see what they did there.
Meanwhile on TV now there are real, serious, expensive advertisements selling a 50 cent roll of pennies for TEN DOLLARS
Whatever legal business we are in otherwise, apparently it's the wrong one
The lack of greed is wonderful. It makes me think of how many endeavours would have succeeded if the founders and advisors weren't greedy.
At least this story shows that the lack of greed didn't improve quality.
Slightly off-topic, but the first time I saw a (real) 2-dollar bill, I almost called the Secret Service on a customer. Was then educated about the legality of 2-dollar bills.
So you're the person that called the cops on that guy at Best Buy?
I don't know which story you are talking about. I was working at a frozen yogurt place.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/2005/03/08/a-tale-of-customer-s...
There's a legendary Reddit story about such an incident at Taco Bell's.
Ignorance is not a rare trait.
Ask Steve Wozniak about his two-dollar bills.
The Frank Bourassa story is pretty incredible. There’s a TV series but I recommend listening to his interviews. I think NPR has one that is pretty good. The level of planning, logistics and craft the guy put into his illegal money printing shop is admirable. Extremely intelligent and driven person. He could have succeeded in any other legal business if wanted to, but looks like it would not be the same thrill for him. His counterfeit US bills were so good that allegedly some of it is still in circulation with silent approval of the US government.
Moral of the story:
It's ok for the govt to print as many notes as is needed to satisfy the govt's needs needs but it is not ok for the common Joe to do the same. One is labeled as inflation or quantitative easing and the other is labeled a crime
The US does not pay its bills with printed cash.
Money is actually generated by changing the interest on, and selling, bonds.
Various governments can, and many have, done what you describe, but banking in this day & age is about moving digits in a register, not shipping truckloads of $100-bills.
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Crime paid modestly and then a jackpot for the movie rights
These days it is much more effective to pay employees to swap payment terminals (or just employees doing it themselves), changing where the money ends up, and banks don't really know what to do about it.
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Or perhaps, you're posting AI generated comments and should bugger off!
Accusing someone of using AI is a pretty bad thing to do. It's even worse when it's qualified by "perhaps". If you have something meaningful to say, try responding to the meat of the comment, not to who or what authored it.
Really not AI generated, I promise, nor even AI assisted. Just a little too whimsical or self-important for HN's taste, I suppose.