Counterfeiting Money in the USA

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Counterfeiting money in the United States has been going on since the very beginning of the nation. The craft can be traced back to men in Europe who counterfeited coins and then brought their art to the New World. Records will prove that colonial Americans were arrested for reproducing counterfeit money or spending it. Replicating coins was a laborious task, but fortunately for counterfeiters it was facilitated with the presentation of paper money. Close to the period of the American Revolution, a shift from coins to paper money occurred for counterfeiters. Paper money was first printed in 1775 at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Although the colonies were mostly reliant on gold coins, the utilization of paper currency had become an increasingly more common practice. This innovative paper money was lighter and easier to carry. The primary reason for switching medians of currency was not to prevent counterfeiters, but instead simply for consumer convenience. Over the ages the government became weary of these counterfeiters and further developed money in order to prevent the creation of imitation bills, but as money evolved so did the counterfeiters. Counterfeiting remains a viable crime regardless of the security measures and technology created to prevent it.

In 1716 security measures were low and counterfeiting was still an arduous task. An infamous imitator named Mary Peck Butterworth was prominent in Rhode Island. Rather than using the common method with metal plates, “Butterworth used starched cotton cloths to produce counterfeit bills.” With the aid of a slightly dampened piece of starched cloth she could lift the ink from a genuine bill. Then with a hot iron, she moved the pattern from the cloth to a bl...

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...ickly began buying Upham's novelty notes, trimming off the notice at the bottom and circulating these fake bills. Unknowingly these Southerners began ruing their own economy due to inflation. Upham then began to produce them on a larger scale as a demand for them increase. Two years after the foundation of his business, Upham was in trouble with Union authorities who felt that Upham was creating not only counterfeit bills of the Confederacy but also fraudulent Union money also. Much like Mary Butterworth, Upham escaped any jail time and had his case thrown out of court. By the end of the war other printers were making and selling their own counterfeit bills following the footsteps of Samuel C. Upham (Laws.com).

On April 14, 1865 President Lincoln created the Secret Service due to the fact that one third of the currency in circulation was counterfeit.

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