The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-11-14
MONEY HE ''MADE:" HAD FOOLED MANY
 EXPERT CASHIERS
Career of 29- -Year-O Old Coun. terfeiter Ends-Faces a
 Long Term in Jail.

l
 to-day faces a penitentiary sentence of
 anywhere up to fifteen years when he
 is tried at San Francisco for coun- | terfeiting. But, while he may drop 1 out for a time. he will have left be- | hind him a lot of visiting cards-in l the form of the most nearly perfect | counterfeit $1, $5 and $10 bills ever | showed across counter in payment for small purchase, according to | the Secret Service.
 Wilken was arrested at Santa Cruz, l Cal, by Secret Service men, who claim to have obtained a confession during
 a subsequent trip to San Francisco, where he is held for trial. When he
 landed in jail Secret Service men,
 from Chief Flynn down to the newest operative, heaved long, deep sighs of , relief.
 Wilken is young man. Where he started the police do not know. The first time the Secret Service ever
 heard of him was when particularly
 excellent counterfeit bills began com ing to the Treasury from banks all
 over the country, which had accepted them as genuine. The chase for their
 manufacturer started. It led the Se- cret Service throughout the country several times and ended in Santa Cruz Trail of Commercials. For some years Wilken fitted gayly about from town to town, the Service says, leaving in his trail all sorts of
 counterfeit bills. The first charged
 to him were $1 bills, made of two
 sheets of paper pasted together, with
 the familiar strands of silk in be-
 tween. Lots of the bills were found
 and many worthy citizens who tried
 to use them found their way into po-
 lice stations to undergo questioning.
 But there never was a trace of the
 owner.
 While Wi1ken's masterpiece-alle
 ed-was a $10 Federal Reserve note,
 warnings regarding which were dis
 tributed by the Secret Service a few
 weeks before his arrest, there were a
 lot more bills attributed to him which
 are preserved by the Secret Service as
 works of art.
 The Secret Service is authority for
 this story about one of them. A
 Binghamton, N. Y., bank one day sev-
 eral years ago received $1 bill about which there was some question-appa-
 rently after it had been accepted as
 genuine. No other bill of the series
 being in the bank, a runner was sent to neighborhood bank for sample actly with the questioned bill. Then some one investigated bill No. 2. It also was counterfeit.
 Look Out for Buffalo Five.
 One of Wilken's bills-a counterfeit of the Buffalo. $5 Treasury note is regarded by many experts as one Of the best-or worst-counterfeits ever "put over." One official who dis cussed it after Wilkens arrest asked that warning be sent for the banks to watch for speci- mems of it, which, it is feared, will be ''foaters''-e exceptionally we'll made commercials that circulate long after the maker has been arrested-going around through the country until they wear out. These bills are declared to be in nearly every large city in the country. AS to paper and engraving they match almost perfectly a gen uine bill-and amateurs have been un- able to detect them even when told they are counterfeit. But one de- feet resulted in it's discovery. Tn the headdress of the Indian there are a number of tiny fine feathers in the case of genuine bills. In the counterfeit these are missing, and there is a white space. But few persons have stop ped to examine it, fewer still have mo- ticed the lack of feathers, and still less have known by their absence that the bill is counterfeit. It has been as have other bills, at banks as genuine-and they probably will continue to be accepted.
 Banks now are watching for Will ken's last alleged bill, the $10 Federal Reserve. That is another bill said to be one of the best out.
 Wi1ken was caught after years of search, during which is is declared he circulated counterfeit bills of the face value of over $100,000. And if he hadn't stayed at the little town of San- ta Cruz, where persons who spend one type of bill are easily found, he might l not have been arrested. In larger cit 1 ies the bills always had been discov- cred days or weeks after they had been 1 on the town.
 It IS Del1eVed by many that W1lken has the secret of making the "dis- l tinctive" paper used by the Govern ment for it's notes. Some of his billsi are believed to have been raised from smaller ones, but many of them, al- most impossible to detect, bear the ap- pearance of having been made from | distinctive" paper of unauthorized | Such bills are expen- sive to make; but ,as in the case of | many counterfeit gold coins, some times worth $3.50 where $5 is the rep value, there is margin of f profit"
 Wi1ken himself, from his photo graphs, is highly artistic. He looks like an Italian, with big dark eyes, an exceptionally high and broad forehead, 1 B small black mustache over a small i and dark features. Altogeth- er he bears a really good resemblance to portraits of Poe. If the Secret i Service stories are accurate, he drove after his own fashion, almost as good 1 3 pen.