Counterfeiting is almost as old as the coin. In America, in fact, counterfeiting predates coinage: within a year of landing at Plymouth Rock certain Pilgrims and their less honorable cohorts were trying to palm off counterfeit wampum - strung-together shell beads - on their Indian neighbors. The ruse seldom worked: the Native Americans of New England were adept at running strings of wampum under their noses and ferreting out the genuine from the glass-beaded fakes. Not to be outdone, though, they seemed perfectly willing to pass off their own bogus wampum to less-perceptive new arrivals. The tone was set. As the National Intelligencer editorialized in 1863:
It may safely be stated that the art, as pursued in the United States, is without parallel, and that without vaunt or hyperbole, we can "beat the world" on this our national spécialité - counterfeiting.
At times the problem has been extreme. The first head of the Secret Service, which was founded to combat counterfeit currency, estimated that nearly half the money in circulation in 1865 was counterfeit. Supposedly, sophisticated printing technology and improved criminal detection virtually eliminated counterfeiting in the U.S. since the turn of the century. Even so, over 5,000 persons were arrested for the offense between 1955 and 1965, the so-called "crimeless" era cited by 1994 nostalgists and political office-seekers. Computer technology, electronic financial communications and an ever-expanding global marketplace have changed the equation once again: in 1993, with roughly two-thirds of the $350 billion in U.S. currency circulating abroad, $120 million in counterfeit money was seized in foreign countries; another $44 million was discovered domestically. Even religious cults have taken to counterfeiting these days, while "plastic" and "electronic money" - credit cards, electronic transfers of Treasury funds - introduce new opportunities for individ...