Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Going Down for a Penny!
The federal government has seized over 8,000 $1 million bills in Denton, Texas. There are, of course, no $1 million dollar bills. These are fake bills with a religious message on them. They do bear a resemblance to actual currency. Therein lies the problem. According to law, facsimile bills must be 50 percent larger or 25 percent smaller than the real thing. These bills were the same size. The Rev. Darrel Rundus does not understand how he can be suspected of counterfeiting when there is no such thing as a $ 1 million dollar bill.
Maybe he should check with Wal-Mart. Back in March a 35-year-old Georgia woman walked into her local Wal-Mart and scooped up over $1500 of merchandise. She then presented a $1 million bill to the cashier and wanted her change. Now I know some clerks that simply would have given her the money. But this clerk was a little on the smart side. The Red Light went on and the manager checked to see what was the matter. The manager said that he had never seen such a bill and wanted to know where she got it. She pulled out a couple of more from her purse and politely told him that they came from her husband. She was arrested and booked.
I know of another large company in the Alaska seafood industry that paid its employees with a check and included a Xerox copy for their records. The practice stopped when a customer tried to cash the Xerox copy at a bank. Actually, the customer tried and succeeded. The company stopped making copies of the checks.
Forgeries can show up anywhere, but they are turning up in increasing numbers on eBay. The tone was set back in 2000 when Kenneth Walton, a Sacramento lawyer, sold a fake painting by Richard Diebenkorn for a whopping $135,805. He was subsequently caught and prosecuted. He even has a book out on how he did it. There is a web site that actually tells you how to sell fake artwork on eBay. It is a spoof, but here is the frightening thing. If you cut a picture from a book, make sure there is not text on the other side of the picture. If you are trying to fake the artist signature and your hand is a tad shaky, date the work a year or two before he or she died. Guarantee that the medium is authentic, but not the signature. Offer a refund if it can be proved with 7 or 10 days that the piece is not authentic. People believe these things. How else do you explain the fact that people are still falling for the Nigerian Money Scam? Which, by the way, is now the third leading industry in Nigeria. Where have these people been for the last 10 to 20 years? In a monastery? Well, perhaps not. But, some have been in a nunnery. A group of Australian nuns gave every penny that they had to help those poor blokes in Nigeria with their money problems.
Art forgeries have been around for a long time. Back in the 1920’s, Adolph Hitler was making a modest living by selling fake art. He was clever enough to have someone else hawk his wares. But, he did boast that he could put ordinary tap water in a bottle, stick on a label and then convince people that if they would spray it on their windows it would make them shatterproof. Now how good a salesman was he? I’ll leave that one for you.
Now everything that looks like a fake is not necessarily so. Back during World War II the U.S. government churned out a horde of steel pennies. The rumor soon started circulating that Ford Motor Company would give you a new car if you presented them with a 1943 copper penny. Ford and the U.S. Treasury denied the existence of the copper penny. It turns out that at least 17 of the copper coins did make their way into circulation. One sold for over $82,000 in 1996. Hmmm! About enough for a new Hummer! But, there are some fake 1943 copper pennies out there. Now I know that if you are younger than 30 that you don’t bother to pick up those stray pennies that make their way to the pavement. But, could you live with yourself if you passed up a 1943 copper penny?
The federal government has seized over 8,000 $1 million bills in Denton, Texas. There are, of course, no $1 million dollar bills. These are fake bills with a religious message on them. They do bear a resemblance to actual currency. Therein lies the problem. According to law, facsimile bills must be 50 percent larger or 25 percent smaller than the real thing. These bills were the same size. The Rev. Darrel Rundus does not understand how he can be suspected of counterfeiting when there is no such thing as a $ 1 million dollar bill.
Maybe he should check with Wal-Mart. Back in March a 35-year-old Georgia woman walked into her local Wal-Mart and scooped up over $1500 of merchandise. She then presented a $1 million bill to the cashier and wanted her change. Now I know some clerks that simply would have given her the money. But this clerk was a little on the smart side. The Red Light went on and the manager checked to see what was the matter. The manager said that he had never seen such a bill and wanted to know where she got it. She pulled out a couple of more from her purse and politely told him that they came from her husband. She was arrested and booked.
I know of another large company in the Alaska seafood industry that paid its employees with a check and included a Xerox copy for their records. The practice stopped when a customer tried to cash the Xerox copy at a bank. Actually, the customer tried and succeeded. The company stopped making copies of the checks.
Forgeries can show up anywhere, but they are turning up in increasing numbers on eBay. The tone was set back in 2000 when Kenneth Walton, a Sacramento lawyer, sold a fake painting by Richard Diebenkorn for a whopping $135,805. He was subsequently caught and prosecuted. He even has a book out on how he did it. There is a web site that actually tells you how to sell fake artwork on eBay. It is a spoof, but here is the frightening thing. If you cut a picture from a book, make sure there is not text on the other side of the picture. If you are trying to fake the artist signature and your hand is a tad shaky, date the work a year or two before he or she died. Guarantee that the medium is authentic, but not the signature. Offer a refund if it can be proved with 7 or 10 days that the piece is not authentic. People believe these things. How else do you explain the fact that people are still falling for the Nigerian Money Scam? Which, by the way, is now the third leading industry in Nigeria. Where have these people been for the last 10 to 20 years? In a monastery? Well, perhaps not. But, some have been in a nunnery. A group of Australian nuns gave every penny that they had to help those poor blokes in Nigeria with their money problems.
Art forgeries have been around for a long time. Back in the 1920’s, Adolph Hitler was making a modest living by selling fake art. He was clever enough to have someone else hawk his wares. But, he did boast that he could put ordinary tap water in a bottle, stick on a label and then convince people that if they would spray it on their windows it would make them shatterproof. Now how good a salesman was he? I’ll leave that one for you.
Now everything that looks like a fake is not necessarily so. Back during World War II the U.S. government churned out a horde of steel pennies. The rumor soon started circulating that Ford Motor Company would give you a new car if you presented them with a 1943 copper penny. Ford and the U.S. Treasury denied the existence of the copper penny. It turns out that at least 17 of the copper coins did make their way into circulation. One sold for over $82,000 in 1996. Hmmm! About enough for a new Hummer! But, there are some fake 1943 copper pennies out there. Now I know that if you are younger than 30 that you don’t bother to pick up those stray pennies that make their way to the pavement. But, could you live with yourself if you passed up a 1943 copper penny?
