Counterfeiting and forensic science

DEFINITION: Creation of false currency or other items that are intended to be used, sold, or passed off as original or real.

SIGNIFICANCE: Counterfeiting, both of currency and of objects such as clothing, accessories, antiques, and pharmaceuticals, costs consumers, governments, and businesses millions of dollars annually. Counterfeiters range from amateurs trying their luck to international rings of professional criminals organized solely for the purpose of manufacturing and selling counterfeit merchandise.

The of coins, currency, and artifacts for profit has been a problem for as long as such items have existed. Counterfeiting operations cost honest individuals and businesses millions of dollars every year, and governments spend millions more in attempts to prevent and detect counterfeiting and on enforcement of laws against the practice. Methods for detecting counterfeiting and for gathering evidence to use in the prosecution of counterfeiters are constantly evolving as counterfeiters find new ways around them.

History of Counterfeiting

The first currency ever produced is believed to have originated around 600 BCE. in Lydia, a Greek province located in what is modern Turkey. The first attempts at counterfeiting soon followed. Ancient coins were generally made of precious metals, such as gold, silver, and copper, and were minted by local rulers or national governments. The process of making the coins usually involved heating small pieces of metal and then stamping them with likenesses of rulers, animals, or objects or with inscriptions. Because precious metals were valued by weight, each coin was supposed to weigh a certain amount, corresponding with the prescribed amount of metal. The first attempts to alter or counterfeit coins were often made by individuals who removed small amounts of metal from the edges of legitimate coins and then melted the removed bits of metal together to make more coins. Some counterfeiters melted legitimate coins, mixed in other, less valuable, metals, and stamped the mixtures into larger numbers of coins.

The introduction of paper currency presented new opportunities for counterfeiters as well as new challenges for the groups charged with protecting the integrity of the currency. In the early United States, paper currency was not issued by the federal government; rather, more than 1,600 different banks printed their own currency. Each of these banks used a different design for each different denomination of bill, resulting in a total of more than seven thousand designs of bills that were valid currency. It is not hard to imagine how difficult it must have been to determine real bills from counterfeit ones, as people were constantly presented with bills that looked different from any other bills they had encountered before. During the Revolutionary War, the British capitalized on this situation by counterfeiting American currency at a very high rate.

The problem of widespread counterfeiting that was encouraged by varying bill designs was a concern of many early American government leaders, but it was not until 1862 that the US government adopted a national currency and took over responsibility for printing that currency. Counterfeiting was reduced by this action, but it did not stop, and in 1865 the US Secret Service was created to protect American currency and to investigate and combat counterfeiting.

Although the designs used in modern US currency are much more complex than those used in the mid-nineteenth century, counterfeiting is still a significant problem. The US Department of the Treasury is constantly seeking new ways to prevent and detect counterfeiting; frequent changes to the designs of bills are part of the department’s efforts to make counterfeiting more difficult. The invention and widespread availability of computerized scanning devices and laser printers has allowed increasing numbers of amateur counterfeiters to experiment cheaply with producing false bills. The counterfeiting of items other than currency, such as clothing, accessories, antiques, and medicines, has also emerged as a widespread problem.

Counterfeiting Currency

At one time, the counterfeiting of American currency was a labor-, time-, and equipment-intensive process. Many counterfeiters used hand-carved metal printing plates, special presses, and carefully created dyes to imitate the printing on legitimate bills. Although the end of the twentieth century saw a surge in counterfeiters’ use of materials and technologies available to many people in their homes, the counterfeiting of US currency remains a difficult process, as many complicated security measures have been introduced into modern bills.

Counterfeiters often use high-quality scanners with very high resolutions to create pictures of the bills they want to counterfeit. Such high-resolution images contain many of the features of the original bills, even many of the features intended to prevent counterfeiting. Such bills usually do not look exactly right, but many people do not examine the bills they receive very closely, especially in crowded, busy shopping areas or in dark places such as bars or nightclubs.

One difficulty encountered by counterfeiters who use computer scanners is in printing bills from even excellent digitized images. High-quality printers can print very small lines, but the lines on modern currency have been designed to be small enough to foil most computer printers. In addition, computer printers cannot reproduce the effects of the special inks used in legitimate currency, which change color depending on the way light hits them. Bills printed by laser printer also do not contain the small blue fibers present in real bills, nor can such bills contain the metallic strip that has been added to US currency as a security device.

Even with all of these shortcomings, the bills that counterfeiters can create using many widely available laser printers can look very much like real bills, and many could survive the quick glance that bills generally receive during a transaction, except for one important feature: the paper. The kinds of paper used by photocopiers and computer printers is not the same as the paper on which the US Treasury prints money. US currency is printed on paper made of linen and cotton fibers; it is thinner than copier and printer paper, and it has a distinctive feel to the touch. The types of paper normally used in copiers and printers are made out of tree fibers that contain cellulose, a starch; the paper on which real currency is printed does not contain starch.

Although some counterfeiters may be able to obtain paper made of linen and cotton fibers, it is highly unlikely that any can obtain the same paper as that used by the Treasury Department, as possession of such paper is very tightly controlled. In many cases, similar types of paper may suffice.

Although many modern counterfeiters use widely available means to produce moderate- to low-quality imitation currency, some use other techniques to make counterfeit bills. Some counterfeiters bleach the parts of small-denomination bills that show the denomination and then print the resulting blank areas with images from larger-denomination bills. In this way, they use real Treasury paper, so the counterfeited bill has the feel of a real bill, because in a way it is a real bill. In this technique, the original bill’s serial number can be left on, so each counterfeited bill has a distinct serial number, making the counterfeiting somewhat more difficult to detect. Large-scale counterfeiting operations may use metal printing plates, special inks, and other devices in their attempts to imitate actual currency.

Detection of Counterfeit Currency

Some types of counterfeiting can be detected through the visual and tactile examination of the currency in question. Counterfeit bills created using printers and photocopiers do not feel like real bills, and close visual inspection of such bills often reveals lines that run together and images that appear to be slightly off in color. An important first line of defense against counterfeiting is proper training in recognizing the signs of counterfeit bills; bank tellers, cashiers, clerks, and anyone else who frequently accepts money in exchange for goods, services, or credit should receive such training. Many counterfeiting operations, especially those being run by relative amateurs, have been stopped after their bills were detected by just such individuals.

Not every clerk or cashier is likely to receive thorough training in spotting counterfeit bills, however, and during busy times with many customers making transactions, it is often not reasonable for businesses to expect employees to inspect closely all bills that pass through their hands. For these reasons, devices have been developed that can make counterfeit detection easier and more efficient. Counterfeit-detection pens offer a fast, easy, and inexpensive way for persons with little or no training to check the authenticity of currency. Such pens contain iodine, which reacts with starch; when the iodine comes into contact with a counterfeit bill made on a printer or photocopier, the mark turns a dark color because of the starch in the paper. On genuine bills, these pens’ marks do not change color because the paper in the bills does not contain significant amounts of starch. Ultraviolet counterfeit-detection machines are also fast and effective. Cashiers or tellers quickly view bills under the devices’ ultraviolet lights to ensure that the bills contain the security threads found in genuine US currency.

Over time, the US Treasury has added many complex features to paper currency to help prevent counterfeiting. Among these is the use of special types of ink. For example, the denomination is printed in the lower left-hand corner of the front of each bill in a special optically variable ink, which appears to be different colors when the bill is viewed from different angles. This aspect of genuine bills is extremely difficult to reproduce. Another special ink used in the printing of genuine bills is magnetic ink, which can be detected by the bill-accepting devices in vending machines. Such machines will automatically reject bills on which they cannot detect the presence of such ink.

Counterfeit bills are almost always detected eventually. Some are detected very quickly by cashiers or tellers who notice telltale signs, such as bills that feel wrong or multiple bills with the same serial number. Others are not detected until long after the individuals who originally passed them are gone. Many businesses, including banks, scan bills regularly using a variety of devices available to detect counterfeits. The US Treasury Department also regularly scans bills that come back to it, using machines that are extremely complex, with more than thirty separate sensors to help evaluate all aspects of a bill.

Cases of possible counterfeiting are investigated by the US Secret Service. Although it is permissible to make copies of American currency for novelty purposes, the copies must differ from real currency in one or more of these ways: printed in black-and-white ink, 50 percent larger than real bills, or 25 percent smaller than real bills. Anything else can be considered counterfeiting, and the Secret Service has a strict zero-tolerance policy for counterfeiters. Counterfeiting is a felony offense in the United States, punishable by up to fifteen years in prison, a fine, or both. Bleaching and reprinting real currency with larger denominations is also considered counterfeiting and is punishable in the same way.

Other Types of Counterfeiting

Noncurrency counterfeiting is also a crime of increasing concern in the United States and throughout the world. In general, in such counterfeiting an imitation of something of high monetary value—produced using lower-quality, inferior materials and workmanship—is sold or passed off as the high-value item. In some cases, the aspects of the imitated items that give them value are their age or their historical significance rather than their strict monetary value.

One of the most common types of counterfeiting that involves noncurrency items is the counterfeiting of clothing and accessories. Brand-name merchandise is often expensive, and many consumers are happy to find low prices on what they believe to be brand-name goods. Designer and brand-name goods are often made of high-quality fabrics, metals, or plastics and bear trademarked names and logos. Such clothing and accessories are often relatively costly to produce, with the cost including the value of the designs themselves.

The counterfeiters of designer and brand-name clothing and accessories often have complex operations, often of a very large scale; they frequently operate outside the United States, where manufacturing and copyright regulations are not stringently enforced. They create very similar products out of inferior-quality components and infringe on trademarks and copyrights by using brand names and logos without permission. They then sell the products to consumers, leading the consumers to believe that the items are genuine. In many cases, counterfeiters attach fake labels and tags to their products to increase their plausibility. Some of these items are easily understood by most consumers to be fakes, such as the “Rolex” watches often sold on urban streets. Others, however, are much harder to identify, and even wary consumers might purchase counterfeit goods occasionally without ever realizing it.

In addition to clothing and accessories, toys, auto parts, and even edible goods such as baby formula have been known to be counterfeited. When goods such as these are counterfeited, they are not produced under the supervision of any regulatory body, so consumers who purchase and use these products are at serious risk of getting inferior, and even possibly dangerous, goods.

The rising prices of prescription drugs in the United States, in conjunction with the fact that large numbers of Americans have no health insurance or inadequate insurance, have led to what is probably the most dangerous of the many kinds of counterfeiting operations: the counterfeiting of medications. This is a problem that presents many different dangers to unaware consumers. Pharmaceutical companies spend millions of dollars developing new drugs and putting them through the extensive testing required before they can be approved for sale by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Although this process contributes to the high cost of drugs, it also allows consumers access to many lifesaving medications that have been tested for safety and effectiveness.

Counterfeit drugs, in contrast, may be manufactured under unsanitary conditions, as the factories that produce them are not regulated. Some counterfeit drugs are not even produced in factories at all; rather, they are made in home “laboratories” or warehouses. These products may not contain the ingredients that make the genuine drugs they imitate effective (the active ingredients), they may contain the wrong amount, or they may contain a chemically similar substance. In some cases, unsanitary manufacturing conditions or the substitution of ingredients may lead to serious side effects and even death. Counterfeit drugs are often sold over the Internet, although they may also be sold in other locations as well. To protect themselves against the dangers of counterfeit drugs, consumers should always have prescriptions filled at state-licensed pharmacies and should be aware of what the medicines they receive should look like.

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