Counterfeiting

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 sp�cialit� - 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 g

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aving the original stamped gold surface as intact as possible, covering up the minuscule removal point(s) with skillful soldering and gold plating. The removed gold, as with sweating, was then melted into bullion, while the debased coins were put back into circulation. These practices were only stopped with the Gold-Prohibition Act of 1934, when possession of gold per se was limited within the United States to controlled circumstances such as dentistry and jewelry. As can be readily ascertained, coin counterfeiting in America remained a profitable enterprise only so long as coins themselves contained metal of intrinsic value to their designated worth. In 1853 that situation began to change: the "reduced-value" coin was introduced into circulation by the United States federal government. Also known as "representative value" currency, the concept behind the reduced-value coin follows the logic that the government issuing said coin admits readily that it is not comprised of metals equal to the value designated by its stamp; instead, the coin simply represents the value of metals that the government holds in reserve (gold, silver or both, depending upon the standard) - and, theoretically, the government can redeem its coin f

Category: Government - C