The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-15
THE GRADE OF
 THE C0UNTERFElTER The Making of Money and Its
 Dangers SECRET SERVICE SYSTEM Base Metal Coins Is the Commonest Form of Bad Money Which Has
 Been Discovered by
 officers
SECRET SERVICE SYSTEM

from the NeW I0rk Sun
 Three patches of money makers ar rested within ten short days, and all
 inside the city limits of this very town.
 may set some of us wondering little about the profession of counterfeiting. What are its methods? How does it pay? How are bad bills and bad coins discoverable? How likely we are our selves to have bogus money passed on to
 us and how can we determine that it is hogus-or can. we at all? The answers
 to these questions are rather interest,"
 ing. To set any fair idea of what the
 counterfeitlng proposition is We have
 first got to know something about the
 business itself from the counterfoiter's
 point of view How the proposition can
 possibly pay is puzzling. The larger the
 coin or bill to be counterfeited the
 greater the danger of detection, and
 hence the need of more expensive plant. The commonest form of making spurious money is the turning out of
 base metal coins-even copper cents but the operation Is always an expen- sive one. Silver, for instance, cannot
 be successfully cast Base coins with sil- yer in them must therefore be struck off
 with a steel die-a die representing days of work on the part of an expert en-
 graver. Then there must be a powerful press to make the impression, to say nothing of all the expenses of running a chemical laboratory and keeping 1t se- cret.
 Two Principal Methods There are two principal ways of mak- ing counterfeit coins with endless varia- tions of each. One is casting the other stamping the cold metal. The latter al ways produces sbetter results, as the coin is more accurate and more clearly cut. In the casting process a mold is gener- ally made from fresh and genuine coin. In stamping die is either cast or cut by hand-both operations require hours and hours of careful work and then the counterfeit metal is put in this die and struck with one sharp blow of a heavy press.
 Expert counterfeiters do the work so we'll that the average person is easily fooled. In making silver coins they use a certain amount of silver and adjust the alloy of the other metal so that the finished product rings almost absolutely true. Gold coins, being worth more. are often even more carefully worked over. The men take, say, genuine $10 gold piece and cut about s4 worth of good metal out of it, generally from the cen
 ter, in one or two borings. This they pocket, filling in the hole with a base dilOy WlllcH IS treated CnemlCdly so that 1t gives every appearance of the gold N self. Ring the coin or test the edge and it seems good-and detection in work
 like this is made hundredfold harder than in the commercials where none of
 the pure valuable metal Is used. This
 is the sort of work which the two men
 arrested last Sunday in Astoria are ac-
 cused of doing.
 Foreign Coins Often Used AtAf Co. ~.t4 terfeiters Is to take silver coins of Gen. tral and South American republics,
 which are many times below even our silver in value, and strike them off as United States coins under a powerful
 press which absolutely effaces the old designs. The new coins are silver and
 they look all right. The only fault Is that they are light in weight.
 In the counterfeiting of paper money there are four methods used much of tener than any others. The first Is the copying of notes by hand, putting in every finest line and initiating every silk thread in the paper of the original with delicate pen and ink work. Some of these notes are done so carefully and so accurately that they cannot be detected with the naked eye by some experts The second method of making counter felt notes is the engraving or a steel
 
 printed. This engraving must always be done by hand; most of the men who
 have been caught at it have been expert engravers, often graduates of some gov ernment's treasury department. The Lupo gang, which was traced to It's lair last winter and of which the nine men arrested on December 2 are alleged to be members, was putting out work of this sort-which so nearly approximated
 the common bills of our d y circulation that for months the couhterfeits were not even suspected.
 Photographs Detected
 Photographic reproduction is the third | favorite method of turning out counter ! felt paper. At first thought 1t would seem that this should be absolutely ac- | curate and that it should be most diff- cult of all counterfeit work to detect.
 but, strangely enough, it is not so. If
 it were. the secret service might have a
 engraving process is not so good as the
 old fashioned hand system. The camera Reproductions are somewhat weak and flat and can be easily detected.
 l The fourth method is the raising of genuine bills and notes-taking a S5 bill
 for instance, and changing it to a $10 1 The numerals are erased in the corners
 and the blanks are then filled in so care | fully that time and again bank cashiers and tellers have been fooled. It takes
 good man whole day to change one | bill. Elves raised to tens are the most | frequent offenders of this sort. The