What is counterfeiting?

Legally, what is counterfeiting?
A few months back, the Trib printed a reproduction of the new mothers day dollar bill, I've also seen junk mail advertisements, and coupons printed to look like money.
How real does the reproduction have to look for this advertizing gimmick to turn into a felony?

Part of it is size ratio. If I was to make a dollar bill that looked real but was 3x larger than a real US dollar, it wouldn't be a problem. Other factors include if it was color or not (I wouldn't think anyone would fall for a black and white dollar) and what you put on it. Most smaller fake dollars have "Not legal tender" or the like printed in an obvious place.

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"I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn't."

Well, looking at the Trib copy, it is single sided, black and white on news print, but the size is probably only off by 2-5% and "this note is legal tender" is clearly visible.

I believe counterfitting also has to include intent; i.e., you print the fake currency with the intent of passing it off as real.

As you noted, the fake bill was B&W, so I don't think the Mint would construe any intent. If you look at fake money printed for ads, you'll notice that it's always a little bit off--colors are wrong, size is off, printed on glossy stock, etc. All ways to show that there was no intent to pass it off as real.

'scuse the stupid question but what are 'penny smushing machines'? If they are what I think they are, i.e. you put a penny at one end, turn a crank, and some sort of medal comes out at the other end, looks to me like a scam. I once saw one of the 'operators' surrepticiously substitute the penny for an already made medal, let it slide down the little chute and sell the whole thing for a couple of bucks.

Omni - You see these machines at places like Disneyland. First you put a penny on a little shelf then you put a quarter in a slot. As soon as you put your quarter in the penny drops onto a press that turns it into a very flat oval medalian with Donald Duck or whatever on it. You observe the whole process through a glass cover. Some of these machines are manuelly operated, and you have to pull a lever to make it work.

omniscientnot asked:
>'scuse the stupid question but what are 'penny smushing machines'? If they are what I think they are, i.e. you put a penny at one end, turn a crank, and some sort of medal [sic] comes out at the other end, looks to me like a scam.

No, these are real smushers. You turn a crank to align the smushing cog with a pattern of your choice, put in 51 cents (2 quarter fee and the penny you want smushed) then turn the crank so that the penny goes through and gets the imprint. It's in a glass box and very obvious that your penny is indeed being smushed.

I've seen these in all the rest stop malls along the New Jersey turnpike as well as other touristy spots like the Natural Bridge Visitors Center in Virginia.

As for counterfieting; has anyone else heard of an artist who makes hand printed duplicates of various national currencies and then trades them as art for products of real value like food, TVs, etc.If he's trading them as art he should not be charged with counterfeiting. Counterfeiting would be fraudulently attempting to pass one of his drawings as a real piece of currency. The federal law is 18 USC 471 et seq. Sorry, but my CD driver is down or I'd have exact text for you.

Anyway, the federal statute criminalizing counterfeiting starts "Whoever shall, with intend to defraud...deface or counterfeit (money)". Therefore, the reproduction of currency must be done with intent to decieve. The artist herein would (presumably) have no such intent.

This also reminds me of a story in Kurt Vonnegut's Bluebeard about an apprentice to the Russion currency engraver who supplanted his master by sucessfully passing his forgery to him. So it goes.

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President of the Vernon Dent fan club.

I forgot to mention: there's an plaque on the side of the smushers that explains exactly why this is legal. Basically, as long as you don't try to use the smushed coin as money thereafter, it's OK. You can barely see the original pattern after smushing, but not so clearly as the fact that it's now an oval shape with Valentine hearts imprinted on it.

The artist making fake currency is not counterfitting, he is bartering. He doesn't try to pass off his product as money, but trades it for goods and services. If the other person in the transaction agrees to the trade, the US Gov doesn't consider it illegal.

[quote] The artist making fake currency is not counterfitting, he is bartering. He doesn't try to pass off his product as money, but trades it for goods and services [quote]

Couldn't I (as a devilishly advocating counterfeiter) claim that my real-looking $20 bill was art? After all, cash is simply a medium for trading goods and services.

I think the difference is "does the person you're giving this to know that its a fake?" and "are you trying to pass it off as the real thing?". This doesn't just apply to money but to all sorts of things- i.e. I've seen many fake Mona Lisa's used for advertising purposes, probably without ramifications. But the moment you try to pass it off as the original is when you run into legal issues.

Another question is "does anyone really care?" which applies to Peso and Ruble counterfiters.

I got this from the Secret Service webpage:

The Counterfeit Detection Act of 1992, Public Law 102-550, in Section 411 of Title 31 of the Code of Federal Regulations, permits color illustrations of U.S. currency provided:

the illustration is of a size less than three-fourths or more than one and one-half, in linear dimension, of each part of the item illustrated;
the illustration is one-sided; and
all negatives, plates, positives, digitized storage medium, graphic files, magnetic medium, optical storage devices, and any other thing used in the making of the illustration that contain an image of the illustration or any part thereof are destroyed and/or deleted or erased after their final use.
Title 18, United States Code, Section 504 permits black and white reproductions of currency and other obligations, provided such reproductions meet the size requirement.

I've seen copies of the artist's work before, and they are obvious fakes (his face instead of Washington, etc.). Making a real-looking fake $20 and trying to use the "It's only art!" defense wouldn't work.

I got this from the Secret Service webpage:

The Counterfeit Detection Act of 1992, Public Law 102-550, in Section 411 of Title 31 of the Code of Federal Regulations, permits color illustrations of U.S. currency provided:

the illustration is of a size less than three-fourths or more than one and one-half, in linear dimension, of each part of the item illustrated;
the illustration is one-sided; and
all negatives, plates, positives, digitized storage medium, graphic files, magnetic medium, optical storage devices, and any other thing used in the making of the illustration that contain an image of the illustration or any part thereof are destroyed and/or deleted or erased after their final use.
Title 18, United States Code, Section 504 permits black and white reproductions of currency and other obligations, provided such reproductions meet the size requirement.

I've seen copies of the artist's work before, and they are obvious fakes (his face instead of Washington, etc.). Making a real-looking fake $20 and trying to use the "It's only art!" defense wouldn't work.

In regards to defacing money... Its YOUR money, you can feel free to smush it or write on it, burn it or whatever.
If you try to spend it afterwards, then you run into trouble.
In the old Greek days (I believe) there was a practice called clipping, where a miscreant clips a little off of all his coins, spends the snipped coins, then melts down the clippings and sell them as well.
Somebody got the bright idea to put ridges or lips on the outside of the coin to detect clippers, but these days coins minted with junk alloys that have very little scrap value.

A modern version of clipping is snipping the corners off of $20 bills and gluing them on $1 bills, Sounds stupid, but when my wife worked in the vault at Macy's she came across several of these, so apparently, some cashiers are not real observant

The artist's name is J.S.G. Boggs, and he has a website http://jsgboggs.com . Judging by the Appeals Court transcripts, he has had quite a bit of trouble with the Secret Service over his artistic endeavours, although I don't think he's actually been jailed for counterfeiting.

Rick

Those may be the real laws about copying US money {Cuz falcon didn't say what country he was talking about!} [Boy, I hope the moderator doesn't notice our delicate topic] but you can't copy money at Kinkos nor can you copy using a color copy machine [Just try it and see what the employees say]. One sided, twice as big or whatever, believe me, they won't let you copy it in any way shape or form, at least at Kinkos.

I'm not even going to ask how Handy knows that.

And I'd just like to say how proud I am of myself for getting you all to say 'smushing'

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"I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn't."

...which brings us to a related matter: why is it illegal to deface currency?

why is it illegal to deface currency?

Beats me.. all I know is that I got a $20 the other day written on and it said for me to put this message on ten other $20's for good luck. My thought was 'If I had ten other $20's I wouldn't need good luck.

'Sides, those penny smushing machines are legal, aren't they? Well, the penny smushing machines that don't run on rails.

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"I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn't."

I've wondered about the penny-smushing machines myself. My theory is that when they empty the coin box on those machines, they fill out some sort of form for the Treasury Dept. stating how many pennies were smushed. I think destroying currency is probably legal as long as you notify the government.

As for counterfieting; has anyone else heard of an artist who makes hand printed duplicates of various national currencies and then trades them as art for products of real value like food, TVs, etc. Some people think he is the ultimate combination of a visual and performance artist, and some people(like the mints of several countries) think he is a counterfieter. I think he is cuurently being tried in a US federal court on that charge.

People seem to be guessing what counterfeit law should be using common sense. But it's a federal law, right? (Right there in the constitution, Article I Section 8.) So what's the law? It has to be available as public record, or how can they prosecute? Is it available on the internet?

-Quadell

Yes, Barrons's Legal Dictionary says: forged, false, fabricated without right; made in imitation of something else with a view to defraud by passing the false copy for genuine or original

So if I clone myself and send my double to dinner with my mother-in-law, will the Secret Service arrest me and confiscate (egads! possibly destroy) my double?

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There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order, method, and discipline. -Montaigne

Well, i don't know how universal it is, but the copy machines in my design lab at school, and the new ones at Kinkos won't even copy a dollar bill. You put it in and all that comes out is a black sheet of paper. I assume th companies have a agreement with the government to self regulate some of these concerns.

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The facts expressed here belong to everybody, the opinions to me. The distinction is
yours to draw...

Omniscient; BAG

I'd just like to point out:
Guy Propski showed us the actual law concerning which 'copies' of money are legal and which are not. This law doesn't mention 'intent to defraud' or any sort of 'reasonable person' test. According to this law, if I hand drew a dollar bill, actual size, both sides, in bright red and orange (not black and white), and then put it in a frame in an art museum, I'd still be breaking the law. Right?

-Quadell

Yeah, what if you have a cheap inkjet printer that only does composite black?

Ok, wait, paraphrasing the Counterfeit Detection Act. The legal rules are:
Wrong size; One-sided; AND plates destroyed
or
black/white; wrong size.

Wrong size is in both clauses, but the Tribs copy of the dollar was about the right size.
Somethin' ain't right.

quadell, if you decide to make your 1:1 art version of US currency, you might still have nothing to worry about. The introduction to the regulation Guy quoted is as follows:
Notwithstanding any provision of chapter 25 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, authority is hereby given for the printing, publishing or importation, or the making or importation of the necessary plates or items for such printing or publishing, of color illustrations of U.S. currency provided that:
What this suggests is that if you make a copy that doesn't fit the rules in the regulation, then you are still subject to the law of counterfeiting. Therefore, you might not be in trouble if you do not have an intent to defraud. Frankd6 cited US law on counterfeiting. The text of some of those sections:
Sec. 471. Obligations or securities of United States
Whoever, with intent to defraud, falsely makes, forges, counterfeits, or alters any obligation or other security of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than fifteen years, or both.
and
Sec. 472. Uttering counterfeit obligations or securities
Whoever, with intent to defraud, passes, utters, publishes, or sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or with like intent brings into the United States or keeps in possession or conceals any falsely made, forged, counterfeited, or altered obligation or other security of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than fifteen years, or both.
Federal laws are available on the internet. The US Code, Code of Federal Regulations and many other materials can be found at
http://www.access.gpo.gov/

For more info on the penny smushers, here's an interview with a guy who used to sell them:

http://www.word.com/work/stories/062/index.htm

Apparently, the reason you're smushing the pennies is important. If you're doing it for the value of the materials, it's bad. If you're doing it for the novelty of smushing a penny, it's ok.

It used to be, at least in Canada, that silver dimes ended up having their metal be worth more than their face value. For a while, therefore, there was a law that you couldn't deface coins, meaning melt them down and sell the silver (i.e. for more than the coin's face value.) Eventually, the government figured things out and began to make dimes out of nickel instead.

Having worked at Kinko's for a short while, I can attest that they are pretty darn paranoid about people coming in and copying dollar bills.

Sure, you might be able to copy a dollar on a regular copier, but the color copier is behind the counter where walk-in customers cannot get to it.

There are warnings posted on all copiers regarding copyright and counterfeit laws.

I was even told by one copy tech that some color copiers can detect (how?) when a dollar is being scanned for copying and will immediately lock the user out with an error code. The code is a red-flag that someone tried to copy currency, and the tech I was talking to swore that if someone called it in, the Secret Service would show up on their doorstep.

This part I read: that a specific type of copier that has protection is the Cannon 500 & 700 Series, and the reason is that if you would color copy 1 $5 bill onto rice paper it would be virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. I think I saw/read an expose where the person passed every $5 bill made in this way.

this part is true: I used to work with a Cannon 500 and you cannot copy a dollar bill on it. The cannon 500 is a combination copier/scanner, so I imagine there is some software in there that recognizes the image.

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