Interesting and Amusing

Counterfeiting Existed in the First Century
and Will Continue into the Next Century
The crime of counterfeiting has been around at least as long as the first-century Roman Emperor Nero, who may have been the first known counterfeiter of minted money. Counterfeiting existed in Colonial times shortly after paper money first appeared in the original 13 colonies. "To counterfeit is death" read a 1777 Colonial note from Pennsylvania. Early counterfeit notes were often crude, but they still managed to fool some colonists who could not read or write. The British introduced more counterfeit notes by creating fake Continental notes. The genuine notes were issued by the Continental Congress to finance the Revolutionary War.

Counterfeiting continued throughout the Civil War, when more than one-third of American currency was estimated to be counterfeit. Counterfeiting may have been at its worst in the early 1860s when some Northerners were passing fake Confederate currency and forgers were manufacturing false private and state bank notes. In 1865, the U.S. Treasury created the Secret Service to wage war against counterfeiters.

As U.S. currency has changed over the years, counterfeiters also have attempted to adapt. Beginning in the early 1860's the U.S. Treasury experimented with various types of papers to discourage counterfeiters. In 1929, portraits were standardized, and red and blue fibers were embedded in currency. As currency became more standardized, counterfeiters were prevented from increasing a note's value simply by altering the numbers.

Today, the global economy has helped establish the U.S. dollar as a world standard, resulting in a new international arena for counterfeiters. The U.S. Treasury has estimated that approximately two-thirds of American currency in circulation exists outside of the United States. An estimated 64 percent of all counterfeit currency is produced abroad, sometimes in foreign countries whose governments facilitate the crime. As a testament to the effectiveness of the Secret Service, over 90 percent of all counterfeit U.S. currency in the United States is seized before it enters circulation. The introduction of the new anti-counterfeiting Federal Reserve notes and increased Secret Service efforts abroad may not eliminate counterfeiting, but they will slow it down considerably.