COUNTERFEITERS

Hokitika Guardian, 30 December 1932, Page 7

COUNTERFEITERS

GANG ROUNDED UP NEW YORK December 20. ' A clever gang of counterfeiters, who ■succeeded m passing as lnucn as £200,000 of spurious money in America and Europe, has just been rounded up after eight months’ investigations by. score s of Secret Service agents. The long struggle to smash the ring was brougnt to a successful conclusion by a ram on a Brooklyn cellar which, proved to be the counterfeiters’ den. Here Secret Service men arrested an expert engraver and a printer, and took possession of plates from which perfect imitations of genuine notes had been turned' out in astounding quantities.

The engraver is alleged to have worked day and night for three months tediously engraving the plates by hand just as tiie Government engravers work in the Mint.

So exact was the reproduction of the note s that the counterfeits could be detected only by the fact that the same serial number (8277,234,86 a) was used for the notes.

The counterfeit notes were supplied in large numbers to a small army of "wholesalers,” who in turn retailed smaller quantities to minor crooks. The organisation of the gang was so perfect that none of those who actually passed the notes was able to learn the original source of supply. The distribution branch of the organisation even extended as far as Paris, and so many of the counterfeits began to appear in Paris, London and other Continental capitals where American money is changed without question, that the Treasury Department had to send a special warning to European hanks in which the spurious tendollar notes were described as "the most dangerous of all counterfeits.” The elusiveness of the gang has long caused the most serious concern to the Federal authorities. Month after month a steady stream of complaints from hanks poured into Washington. A long procession of victimised citizens came to the Secret Service offices with angry protests. At one period the Federal authorities were confiscating daily, on an-aver-age, bogus bills with a "face ; value” amounting to £BOO. Innocent members of the public eve® tendered counterfeit notes in payment of income tax—and had them accepted. One man paid a £2O court 'fine in violation of the prohibition laws with counterfeit ten-dollar bills. :