A counterfeit day in the life

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Feb 4, 1997 by Kirby Lee Davis Assistant Managing Editor

It doesn't take much to get Big Brother on your back.

My day from hell started when I withdrew $150 from my savings account at Will Rogers Bank. I badly needed the cash in my Boatmen's checking account, which at any moment could receive a $138 note I knew would tip the scales of my balance in a very negative way. Since I was in a big hurry, I took the drive-thru lane and, without checking the bank slip, folded the money envelope into my left breast pocket and headed off to work.

That act of impatience brought me to the attention of the U.S. Secret Service. "What we have learned is that people don't take the time anymore to look at their money," commented Patricia Thompson, the public affairs supervisor for the Oklahoma City branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. "People now can take time to alter a bill, cut the corner off a bill and paste it on another one, and people don't notice the difference." That's pretty close to how it was with me. Pausing at my office only to turn on my desktop computer, I hurried across the street to Boatmen's Bank. Filling out the deposit slip, I went to the teller, withdrew the Will Rogers Bank envelope and handed her the money, keeping one $20 bill for lunch purposes. The teller promptly identified one of the $20s as counterfeit. I was dumbfounded. A bank had given me a counterfeit bill? My bank? I had passed a counterfeit bill? Strangely, my first active thought was to give them the $20 I'd hung on to -- just to make sure I'd be depositing $130. But the Boatmen's people had other plans. Leading me into a glass cubical alongside the main lobby, I was gently interrogated by two tellers and an unidentified bank officer about the fake $20. I was made to sign a document stating I had indeed passed a counterfeit bill, which was confiscated. And they showed open shock and disbelief that another bank could have given me the bill. "Are you sure you don't know how you got it?" I was questioned by two different people, to which I pointed out -- with ever increasing anguish -- that I had just received the bill from another bank. The last man who sought me out actually laughed at my answer. In exasperation I asked them just how rare this was. The teller seemed amused. "Very," she said confidently. "We're trained to spot them," another noted, as if it was impossible to believe a bank teller would ever be fooled by such a ploy. "One of the things that bank tellers do is to undergo training to learn about the distinctive feel of U.S. currency, the distinctive colors," explained Mary Beth Guard, the general counsel and chief operating officer for the Oklahoma Bankers Association. "They get very good at accessing what a bill should weigh, how it should feel." As proof, the Boatmen's teller showed me the bill -- all the while urging me not to touch it. Looking upon it closely for the first time, I could see her point. Helen Keller could have spotted this one. That leads to a growing concern among Secret Service officials -- the ability of anyone with a personal computer or copier to make currency. Local federal officials do not see any increase in counterfeiting at the present time. Out of the $10 million in currency it cleans and presses on any given day, the Oklahoma City Fed branch averages only one counterfeit bill. "And when you consider all the dollars we process here, that is very low volume," said Thompson. The Secret Service, which keeps tabs on such things for the Treasury Department, reported $78,000 in counterfeit bills were passed in the Oklahoma City district in fiscal 1996, which for the Service ends Oct. 1. That compares with $30 million passed across the nation. "As you can see, that's not much," said Steve Israel, an assistant special agent with the Oklahoma City office. But hidden within that total is an increasing number of counterfeits produced by computers and copiers -- and not just bills, but also consumer and traveler's checks. "Virtually anyone with a home computer can counterfeit," he said, and even though the Treasury Department's armed service historically seizes 90 percent of all counterfeit bills before they ever get passed, "unfortunately a lot of this is getting into circulation." "The number of computer generated notes that we saw," he said, "probably quadrupled in 1996 over 1995." The Boatmen's people apologized several times for confiscating my $20, which they couldn't credit to my account. I couldn't blame them. The Boatmen's tellers also expressed little hope that Will Rogers Bank would help. After all, who was to say I had not slipped the fake $20 into the envelope myself? It would be my word against theirs. On that account, however, Will Rogers proved itself worthy of its name. Stating they wouldn't play such games with me, a bank official credited $20 to my savings -- even as she pointed out how unlikely it would be for a trained bank teller to hand out a counterfeit bill. "Perhaps she was just having a bad day," Guard said of the teller. Israel took a different slant. "I'd say you were very lucky," he said. However you look at it, the bottom line of both my accounts balance once more, so all's well that ends well. Yet as I lay me down to sleep, in my darkest dreams I still see shadowy specters of anonymous Feds sorting through every file of my jumbled past -- all because I rushed through a drive-thru window. "That is, after all, how we gather all our criminal intelligence," said Israel. So I put it to him bluntly: Does the Secret Service indeed investigate every such counterfeit report? Yes -- when the data fits their trend patterns. "Let's say you took a thousand jigsaw puzzles, each with 500 pieces. You mixed them all in a drum, take it up in the air and spread it across the country. Well, eventually all of those pieces end up in our hands. And it's our job," said Israel, "to piece the puzzles together." In my spotless case, the Secret Service faces one dilemma: trying to decipher how anyone so foolishly trusting (or lazy) that he'd withdraw $150 and not even check to see if the bank had given him the right amount... how such a person could end up a second in command in such a cynical business as the newspaper industry. "I bet you'll be looking at your money now," Thompson laughed. That's a sure thing.