Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1886-07-16
TRICKS In BANK NOTES.
STORIES TOLD BY AN OFFICIAL IN
TIE NATIONAL TREASURY.


Clever Counterfeits--Detec Skill
of Clerks-Redeeming Mutilated
BiIIs-Stories of Crime.
A Washington letter to the New York
Mail and ErpgesS says; There is white
haired, sharp-eyed little man in the
Treasury who has been one of the features
of the place for years. Into this gentle
mans hands, speaking metaphorically, 1
happened to fall, and it required no par
ticular effort to make tie official talka-
tive. He was inspecting at the moment
spurious 500 note, and this circum-
stance gave rise to his first anecdote.
Il tell you," he said, there is appar-
emily no limit to the clever tricks of
counterfeiters. just look at this note.
1t doubtless deceived over a hundred
people before it came into our hands. l
know for a fact that it was accepted as
genuine by a bank teller in high stand
ing, and yet the instant a certain voting
woman In one Of our departments let her
experienced eye fall upon it, she detected
its worthless character The neat work
manship on the bill reminds me of case
which came to our notice me time ago.
A counterfeiter had got up number of
800 notes on six separate banks. The
copy used was on bank which made its
500 notes in this style On one end of
the paper was an engraving of ship,
the yard-arm of which ran between two
delicate flourishes underneath the word
the which was the first word of the
name of the bank cf Issue; as, for in
stance, The National Bank of the Re-
public, or The First National Bank.
The fraud would have been particu-
larly neat one had the counterfeiter made
his notes p 'yable by the same bank from
watch he obtained his original specimen.
Instead of being sufficiently shrewd,
however, to avail himself of that precau-
ton, or perhaps through an excess of
caution, he made them payable by six
other banks. Each of these latter insti-
tutions had one dist 'nctive feature on
their one hundred dollar notes. The
yard arm of the vessel iusteld Of running
between the two minute fourishes barely
touched the outside of the flourish nearer
the top of the note, and approached
closer to the word the by the sixteenth
of an inch. OF course the counterfeit,
which was capital piece of workman
ship, with the one exception mentioned,
deceived merchants easily, and deceived
many bank tellers as well. The moment
the notes passed through the hands of Il
lynx-eyed young lady at the Treasury,
she discovered their spurious quality in
twinkling."
cit must be difficult, then," I re-
marked, "to hoodwink your clever fe-
male clerks2"
Eyes, indeed, it is. Their eyes are so
thoroughly educated as to make a mis-
take almost impossible"
GLOW do they educate their eyes"
"By constantly running over money.
To casually watch these women at work
you would probably imagine that their
sole aim was simply to count the money
as rapidly as possible. Not so. A clerk
will take pile of bills, tightly fastened
together by rubber bands, and without
SO much as loosening the fastenings, she
will begin to count at lightning rate
by merely turning over quickly the
upper right-hand corner of each note.
Still, though she has only such small
portion of the note for her guide, she
will discover counterfeit readily. Lei
me relate little incident which hap
pened while the Seventh regiment wa!
In the city. Some of the boys, among
them paying teller from a New York
bank, paid us call, looking very ele
giant in their tasteful uniforms. Thel
were engaged fer several moments il
watching the clerks count money in tn
manner described. Suddenly one of tn,
young women snapped note from tn
package which she was running over
After she had thrown it aside in an ap
parently careless manner, | picked it VI
and handed it to the visitors for inspec
ton. 1t was passed from one to anothe
without eliciting any special comment
Finally it reached the man whom | knew
to be paying teller. He examined i
for moment and returned it to m
possession without word. l asked hin
if he had noticed anything peculiar il
regard to it. He replied in the negative
And yet it was an ingenious counterfeit
as the experienced eye of the clerk hac
detected the instant she had turned up
corner of it."
sis it possible" l asked, "for not
to be so split in two as to show bot
sides of it intact2"
"Oh yes, and it is very easily done
You procure q certain kind of gum, an
paste the note face downward to piec
of paper. Then you paste another picc
of paper over the back of the note. B
carefully pulling the two pieces apar
the fibre of the note will split, and wha
looks like difficult transaction is easi
accomplished. Nothing, however, ca
be gained by the operation. If one-ha'
of such bill were forwarded to us TO
redemption, we would return 10 tn
sender one-half of its face value. Sharp
ers indulge occasionally in little gam
which consists of piccing notes. Tha
is, they will make nine notes out of eight
each note being pieced once. When yor
come to measure them you will find tina
they are precisely one-eighth shorte
than they should be. Merchants ar
readily duped by them, but rarely ban
cashier"
"What is the rule relative to the re
demption of mutilated currency"
"We redeem nothing smaller than one
half of note, and we pay in proportio
to the quantity of the note sent, excep
where there is only one-tenth missing
In the latter case we pay the full fac
value. If you were to send us one
dollar note, one-quarter of which ha
been torn away. we would give yo
seventy-fve cents for it. If within 81
months, not later you succeeded i
recovering the missing part, we would
on its presentation, pay you twenty-fv
cents more Suppose you brought us
shred of note, with the edges singed
and asserted that Il was the remnant of