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Crime The Almighty Buck Government Idle

Remembering The Retiree Who Became America's Worst Counterfeiter (thehustle.co) 98

Posted by EditorDavid from the making-big-money dept.
The Hustle tells the story of a mysterious legend who "produced thousands of the ugliest counterfeit $1 bills ever made...so poorly done that the Secret Service thought the perpetrator was intentionally mocking them" -- using a small hand-driven printing press in his kitchen: It was printed on cheap bond paper that could be found at any stationary store. The serial numbers were "fuzzy" and misaligned, the Secret Service later said. George Washington's likeness was "clumsily retouched, murky and deathlike," with black blotches for eyes. And just for good measure, the ex-president's name was misspelled "Wahsington"...

He also never spent money in the same place twice: His "hits" spanned subway stations, dime stores, and tavern owners all over Manhattan. Investigators set up a map of New York in their office, marking each $1 counterfeit location with a red thumbtack. They handed out some 200,000 warning placards at 10,000 stores. They tracked down dozens of folks who'd spent the bills. But 10 years came and went, and the search for Mister 880 turned into the largest and most expensive counterfeit investigation in Secret Service history. By 1947, the Secret Service had documented some $7,000 of the distinctively terrible fake $1 bills -- about 5% of the $137,318 of fake currency estimated to be in circulation nation-wide. As it turned out, the worst counterfeiter in history was also the most elusive...

Agents busted into the brownstone, expecting to find a criminal mastermind. Instead, they were greeted by a jovial 73-year-old -- "5'3" tall, [with a] lean hard muscled frame, a healthy pink face, bright blue eyes, a shiny bald dome, a fringe of snowy hair over his ears, a wispy white mustache, and hardly any teeth." It was Emerich Jeuttner, the old junk collector. Juettner seemed unfazed and endearingly aloof. When answering questions, he'd pause and offer a toothless grin...

"They were only $1 bills. I never gave more than one of them to any one person, so nobody ever lost more than $1."
The likeable 73-year-old was given a lenient sentence of 1 year and 1 day, the article points out -- meaning Jeuttner was eligible for parole after four months. And he was given a fine of exactly $1.

Jeuttner then sold the rights to his life story for a 1950 film (which won an Academy Award) -- bringing him more money than he'd earned during all of his years as a counterfeiter.
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Remembering The Retiree Who Became America's Worst Counterfeiter More

Remembering The Retiree Who Became America's Worst Counterfeiter

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  • Just one question... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    why would you go to all that trouble to counterfeit bills... and choose single $1's?

    • Re:Just one question... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Sunday June 23, 2019 @08:42PM (#58811310)
      Today that $1 is equivalent to $15 so it would spend a good deal better. Also, people will be far less attentive over a one dollar bill as opposed to larger denominations so you're less likely to get caught out.

    • Re:Just one question... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Sunday June 23, 2019 @09:08PM (#58811398) Journal

      Because by using counterfeit bills he was robbing someone of money. So by using $1 bills and only ever giving each individual one such bill, he only ever robbed any individual person of $1.

      It got him four months in jail and more money then he knew what to do with.

      • I don't know how this happened. Usually criminals are not allowed to profit in this way from their criminal enterprise and if they sell their story the money gets confiscated.

        • Usually criminals are not allowed to profit in this way from their criminal enterprise and if they sell their story the money gets confiscated.

          That was a result of new laws passed in 1977 to prevent the "Son of Sam" killer from making a killing from selling his story to the tabloids.

    • Re: Just one question... (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Hell my parents grew up later than this man and they would always talk about what they could get with 25 cents. They would get a hot dog, soda/pop, and bag of chips for 25 cents at any convenience store back then.

      Or my dad said he could fill up his gas tank for about 40 cents.

      $1 back then is like the equivalent of today's $20 bills.

      In fact, the fact that this would even need to be pointed out shows how far Slashdot has fallen.

    • Do you put a dollar bill under the blacklight lamp?

      Do you put a 100 dollar bill?

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Do you put a dollar bill under the blacklight lamp?

        Do you put a 100 dollar bill?

        This was before light was invented

        • The point is that you won't question a one dollar bill while you will want to know for sure that a 100 dollar bill is genuine. Also, one dollar bills are usually much more worn out, nobody wonders when they don't look crisp as if they come fresh from the press, 100 dollar bills tend to see far less wear and tear. You don't crumple a 100 into your pocket, do you?

        • It was actually before color was invented.

    • $1 then is worth approx $15 today.
      Nobody's gonna eyeball the lowest bill like they would a 5, 10, 20 or 100.

  • Eddie the Eagle... (Score:4, Informative)

    by TWX ( 665546 ) on Sunday June 23, 2019 @08:23PM (#58811262)

    ...of counterfeiters. So bad that it was actually endearing.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I don't think Eddie was "bad", he was just outclassed by everyone else. At one point he was the ranked 55th in the world. If you're one of the top 100 people in the world at something, you're not bad at it.

      The sad thing is that it showed how elitist the Olympics really are. They made a rule to prevent anyone that wasn't "good enough" to get into the olympics.

      The widespread attention that Edwards received in Calgary was embarrassing to some in the ski jumping establishment. In 1990, shortly after the Ol

    • Oh, I heard a story of a UK counterfeiter of coins who was actually even worse than this guy.

      For twenty years or so, the UK has replaced one pound notes with a gold-coloured coin (now replaced by a two-part coin of two different alloys) which rapidly became a target for coin forgers, because it could be duplicated so easily. One coin forger decided that rather than the usual trick of striking coins out of zinc then colouring them appropriately, he would use an alloy that was actually the right colour to sta

  • Crime pays...

  • No Academy Award (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Despite what the summary says, Mister 880 received no Academy Awards. Edmund Gwenn, who played the role of the counterfeiter, was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role but lost to George Sanders in All About Eve.

  • all stores are stationary (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    unless they are on an aircraft carrier, I suppose.

    Perhaps

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • I saw this movie as a kid, but I had no idea it was based on a true story.

  • Longest and Most Expensive (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Sunday June 23, 2019 @09:29PM (#58811474) Homepage Journal

    How much did they spend to reign in the $7000 man?

    • Completely OT, but related to your sig.
      I used to use outsideip.net pretty frequently - it was quicker and far less spammy than visiting whatismyip.com but some time ago it stopped working... Is it still working for you, or have you just not updated your sig in a long time?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      How much did they spend to reign in the $7000 man?

      This took place in the early 20th century - think of it this way - the movie came out in 1950, the arrest happened in 1948 and the guy was born in 1890.

      So $7000 back then is probably closer to $70,000 today.

      Of course, it probably cost more, but it seems like people were constantly being fooled (he started counterfeiting in 1935), despite repeated warnings to check those bills. And generally speaking, counterfeiters don't generally counterfeit $1 bills - they

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Calydor ( 739835 )

        People were constantly being fooled, but if his statement is true that he never tricked the same person twice the individual losses are absolutely minimal.

    • Re: Longest and Most Expensive (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Much more almost certainly. But that's not the point is it? You don't let criminals get away with things because of the economics of catching them. If you got mugged on the street and they took $50 off you you probably wouldn't be too happy if the police said they'd search for the next 45 minutes and then give up.

  • The rareness created by circulating so few suggests he might have provided hidden value if someone still has one. Fun read . The effort and of course cost to monitor and catch the guy surprisingly disproportionate. But since he did at such low volumes snuck under radar.

  • I had heard about this story for years from my parents and always thought it was an urban legend because the arrest happened when they were kids and they didn't have the details right.

    It's always interesting to me the resources that are put into these investigations and you have to consider the cost/reward basis for this. I guess the important point that counterfeiters get the message that the Secret Service will always hunt them down, no matter how insignificant to ensure the safety of the US's money supp

  • In TFA they have pictures of the counterfeit vs the real thing. Other than the misspelling (which you'd never notice unless you were looking closely), the counterfeits actually look pretty decent. The colors all look correct and the photo of Washington just looks like the bill is dirty (which is a pretty common occurrence for bills in circulation).

    It's no surprise he was able to use them for 10 years without getting caught. They were good enough that dozens or hundreds of people never noticed that something

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Thud457 ( 234763 )
      Pretty sure the guy that was cutting the numbers off of real 20 dollar bills to turn 1 dollar bills into 20s was a worse counterfeiter. And probably a meth head to boot. Although the story might be apocryphal since I can't google up a reference.

  • Jeuttner then sold the rights to his life story for a 1950 film (which won an Academy Award) -- bringing him more money than he'd earned during all of his years as a counterfeiter.

    That's a shame... Didn't we already have laws by then banning criminals from profiting from their crimes?

  • So How Many Millions? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wisnoskij ( 1206448 ) on Monday June 24, 2019 @02:20AM (#58812218) Homepage

    So how many millions of dollars did this "most expensive counterfeit investigation" cost to catch the guy who printed a total of $7000 in bills?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      While the question is valid, it shouldn't drive a decision to not pursue a criminal.

      If you are robbed at gunpoint but you happened to have only a few bucks with you that night, I'm sure you wouldn't want the police just drops the case because even writing down the details would be more costly than the amount you lost, right? The "at gunpoint" part probably worries you more than the $20 or so they took, right?

      • While the question is valid, it shouldn't drive a decision to not pursue a criminal.

        If you are robbed at gunpoint but you happened to have only a few bucks with you that night, I'm sure you wouldn't want the police just drops the case because even writing down the details would be more costly than the amount you lost, right? The "at gunpoint" part probably worries you more than the $20 or so they took, right?

        Exactly.

        Not only is there more at stake than money, there's a fallacy here about things remaining static. They don't. If it became known that police won't pursue cases involving under $X, then guess what? Cases involving under $X multiply.

        Think about that the next time someone talks about how low the "chances of being killed by a terrorist" are, and such things.

        • Not only is there more at stake than money, there's a fallacy here about things remaining static. They don't. If it became known that police won't pursue cases involving under $X, then guess what? Cases involving under $X multiply.

          Think about that the next time someone talks about how low the "chances of being killed by a terrorist" are, and such things.

          That is a bad analogy.
          More accurate one would be "Doing it for the LULZ." AKA "I was just playin" as an excuse for committing a crime without actual monetary gain for the perpetrator.

          "How low the chances of being killed by a terrorist are" is a comparison of overpromotion of such cases in the media - compared to far greater chances or numbers of people, say, being killed in traffic.
          It's a critique of sensationalism and the appeal to fear, often in order to push a specific narrative on the public.
          Like... I d

        • Not only is there more at stake than money, there's a fallacy here about things remaining static. They don't. It has become known that police won't pursue cases involving stolen mobilephones, and guess what? Cases involving stolen mobilephones have multiplied

      • If you are robbed at gunpoint but you happened to have only a few bucks with you that night, I'm sure you wouldn't want the police just drops the case because even writing down the details would be more costly than the amount you lost, right?

        The expected cost and benefit of the investigation are always relevant in deciding whether to pursue it. Naturally, any reasonable costs related to regaining the stolen property—regardless of its actual value—ought to fall on the perpetrator of the crime, not the victim or the public. However, I wouldn't expect the police to take the case pro bono (much less at taxpayer expense) unless they were confident that they would eventually find the perpetrator and collect enough of the resulting judgeme

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tom ( 822 )

          If that isn't likely to happen but I want the case pursued anyway for personal reasons then I'd expect to pay those up-front costs myself,

          You seem to be living in the wrong society.

          Part of why I pay taxes is to cover such costs. In return, I expect the police to pursue a criminal out of the obligation of pursuing criminals, which I have paid for with my tax money. If they can recover some of that through fines - nice, they can use my tax money for something else - but that should not be the deciding factor.

          If I have to pay for justice directly, then there is neither legal nor moral nor financial justification for a state-owned police force.

    • So by your reasoning we should just let petty cringe go unpunished. What arbitrary limit would you set on breaking the law? Is there a customer card which you get stamped where the 5th felony entities you to some tax payer funded accommodation?

      • All I am saying is that if the guy was black, stealing or destruction under $100 would not even be considered a crime. This guy never stole more than $1.

        • All I am saying is that if the guy was black, stealing or destruction under $100 would not even be considered a crime. This guy never stole more than $1.

          True, stealing 75 cents, acting like a white man or whistling at a white woman [wikipedia.org] isn't exactly three-fifths of a dollar - but then again neither is being sentenced to year and a day plus 1$ exactly the same as being lynched.
          But you just go on doing you! Your racism is probably the most appealing side of your character anyway.

          https://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/ite... [cuny.edu]

          Across the South, someone was hanged or burned alive every four days from 1889 to 1929, according to the 1933 book The Tragedy of Lynching, for such alleged crimes as "stealing hogs, horse-stealing, poisoning mules, jumping labor contract, suspected of stealing cattle, boastful remarks" or "trying to act like a white man." One was killed for stealing seventy-five cents.

          Like the cotton growing in the field, violence had become so much a part of the landscape that "perhaps most of the southern black population had witnessed a lynching in their own communities or knew people who had," wrote the historian Herbert Shapiro. "All blacks lived with the reality that no black individual was completely safe from lynching."

          â"Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

        • Actually this guy never stole anything. He committed a federal offence of counterfeiting.

          So again. What arbitrary basis do you wish to set by which laws become important to you?

    • You're making the point wrong - you need to tie in banks and wall street steal more. And say it with an air of moral superiority.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by flink ( 18449 )

      So how many millions of dollars did this "most expensive counterfeit investigation" cost to catch the guy who printed a total of $7000 in bills?

      The article mentioned that $7000 was the amount the Secret Service documented. He probably passed way more than ever wound up in the hands of the SS. Also, you want to catch counterfeiters not just for the face value of the money, but because unchecked it undermines people's confidence in the currency, which does way more economic damage than the initial currency fraud.

  • The likeable 73-year-old was given a lenient sentence of 1 year and 1 day, the article points out -- meaning Jeuttner was eligible for parole after four months. And he was given a fine of exactly $1.

    I recon that was before mandatory minimum sentences and strict guidelines for judges? You know, when a judge could still actually apply judgement?

  • "the ex-president's name was misspelled "Wahsington"...".

    Almost as bad as not knowing the difference between a stationary store and a stationery store.

  • I have never before seen Washington described as an "ex-president".

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