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Hi is Saron?
Hey, what's up with Liz Bit?
What's up?
Hey? I got a question for you.
No, I have a question for you.
Do you really? What is it?
What's you know?
I do ridiculous? Okay, you're from northern California. You're a California Native.
Generation's deep, aggressively so and obnoxiously so.
Okay, I got something to help you be extra obnoxious amongst your like California natives. And you guys have your excuter club meetings or whatever. So do you know how Calistoga.
Got its name Calistoke Town of Calistogah. No, So, in eighteen sixty two, this cat Sam Brannon, right, he's he was a Mormon. He was a he was a Mormon to moved to California, and back when he was a Mormon, he didn't drink alcohol. But then he left the church, came to California, he got really into alcohol.
Like, this is amazing. I got to tell more people about this. So he then eventually opens this place called Hot Springs Resort. Yeah, and he's like, oh man, I have people come here. They're gonna get drunk and they're gonna get the Hot Springs is amazing. This is the best thing ever. I know why people don't know about this right now at this point, what he's drinking is French champagne. That's his drink of choice. Really, he would sit in bubbles, he would drink bubbles. He's like cold bubbles,
hot bubbles. All about the bubbles. Right, So that the grand opening banquet for his Hot Springs resort, he raises a glass of champagne and he goes to toast his new resort. Now he wanted to compare it to its inspiration, Sarah Tooga Springs in New York. So he gets up there and he's like, I will make this place the Saratoga of California. But he'd been drinking so much champagne. Instead, he said, I'll make this place the Calistoga, Caarafornia. Yes, it's been called Calistoga ever since.
It's so perfect beautiful.
But there you go, and that's that's your country.
Yeah, it is.
Ridiculous.
That is really so ridiculous. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Dude?
Do I?
It's actually ridiculously brilliant low value counterfeiting. This is Ridiculous Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
You damn right?
Did you just fall out of the ceiling tipe?
I got dropped, But yeah, I'm here.
Okay, a sad one. If you had a bundle of counterfeit cash, say like one hundred thousand dollars worth.
Okay, I have a bundle. Oh, I don't have to actually say it.
No, what would you do with it?
Like?
How would you bend it?
Okay? This is an interesting question because I've actually been confronted with this a much smaller number. But I went to a bank in Los Angeles and I cashed a check and they gave me half of the money in counterfeit bills. And then I went to go get gassed with one of the hundreds and the person's like, dude, this look at you see this at twenty This is a fake bill. Don't try to pass this, man, And I was like what No, And I went back to
the bank. I'm like, you gave me these four, you know, fake hundreds, and they're like, no, man, you walk you can't try to do that pass this, and so I got loud right and I'm like, you're trying to pass fit counterfeit bills, trying to hope people will get mad in line. I don't know what I thought would happen Themander comes over and goes get the hell out of the bank, and I was like, oh darn it. They wouldn't get me my money back. So now I've got
these four hundred fake hundreds. So I'm like, well, what can I do? So I'm like, I'll go on Craigslist and buy something. So I put in Craigslist and I tried to buy a computer, assuming it was a stolen computer. I'm like, I'll give them counterfeit bills. It'll all be even. So I tried to go buy a laptop and I
had to drive like way into East LA. And I show up to this guy and I'm like trying to like, you know, act like I'm a buyer, and I'm looking over the computer and he's like, okay, you gotta be like three hundred dollars, and I was like, cool, pervingt And I give him the three and he looks at me and he's like, give me my computer back, and I was like, d darn it. So before I got beat up by this great you know guy who you know sell stolen computers, I had to like talk my
way out of there and anything. Luckily I gotten the money back from him, and he didn't want to have the counterfeit bills either. So then I tried to go and spend it at a gas station. Again, I'm like when we goes and go to spend us at another gas station, And eventually I was able to pass them. So wow, yeah, I shouldn't rebably admit that, but the statue of limitations is long gone for you. So yeah, Elizabeth, that's how I do it. I just spend it on other criminals and.
Small interesting place.
Well.
I mean, the thing is, it's like the that when people think about fake bills, I think twenties and hundreds.
Total, yusually hundreds. That's what I had.
And you know, it's the smart move to try and like uh break them up and do them at a like separate like don't do multiple bills at one place, yes, Like I tried, so yeah what at a time at different places?
Yes?
But you know, like so that's it's smart to do that. What's even smarter is to fly under the radar. Do smaller bills like you know, tens get less.
Scrutiny, Oh of course smart. Yeah.
I was given a fake ten once. Yeah, when I was teaching. We had like a faculty event and we were like collecting money so they could have I don't know, they're going to like grill steaks or something. It was stupid, and so I was supposed to give me ten bucks. And when I went to count them out, one was slightly smaller than every other one, and I realized someone handed me a fake ten. So I'm me, what do you think I did?
Took it to the police.
I did because I'm like, I could like take this to Walmart. I was down the road and try and like do it. I was like, you know what, I wonder what happens? What do they do? It's ten bucks? Sure, So I called the non emergency line and I was like, hey, you know whatever, I have a fake ten dollars bill and someone gave.
Me again, bring it on your normal weekly visit.
So I'm in room with five whatever at the college and then like twenty minutes later, there's no crime in this place. I figure two detectives show up, like they didn't have suit jackets on, but they.
Like short sleeve shirts and like.
No pants, no underpants. So they come in and I give them the money and they made me fill out this form for the secret service and I it was out ten bucks.
Yeah, you just lose it.
Yeah, off ex.
I was like, well, I'll just pass that on to someone else, right.
So some why would you pick on an English faculty member?
Yeah, I wouldn't have done that too.
No, but I feel like it might have been like tool and die. Those guys are a little bit shady. Yeah, I love them to death. But anyway, so you know, like you got the tools and to die there not to be played. So if you have like a ten to five of one, they don't use those these days. Don't use the highlighter pens on those.
Yeah, not at all.
You know, that's the problem. And if a store is like really busy, someone's not paying attention, Like if you're just an English instructor trying to get through the day, you know, hearing this boring, then you're you know, likely to get away with passing the of course thought that you should have thought of that. So the move is to make smaller bills. I want to tell you about someone who did just that. A clever fella, an Austrian
immigrant named Emeric Jutner. Oh yeah, it looks like Jutner. Okay, yeah, So Emeric he was born in eighteen seventy five in Austria, came from this working class family. He had, you know, two brothers, sister, normal stuff. And when he was a kid he learned about photo engraving. Oh yes, and so I think that maybe that's what his father did, and
like maybe he was going to apprentice somebody. Yeah, and so he was like going to be you know, brought up to a prenticip But when he was fourteen years old, he got on a steamership and he set sail for the US of A fourteen fourteen New York City.
The hot apple dude. Nineteenth century people would just break out. They're like, I'm thirteen and.
I don't know if his family was with him, but I don't think they were, because a man I pulled up the man of us for the ship he came. He is the only Utner listed as arriving on the vessel trave and that was a ship built in Glasgow, by the way, So it looks like he's this fourteen year old boy, all on his own, headed to a no home. Isn't that crazy?
It is? It's amazing.
So his first job when he gets here is as a picture frame guilder.
Okay, gold on pictures like the air on the robber bands. A lot of lout of frames to guild everything.
When he's not slapping gold foil on frames, he was inventing things, so he was his hand. He drew up plans for a camera and he sent it off to Kodak interesting, and they passed on it. And then he invented a new kind of Venetian blind. I'm not sure what that entailed, but the window shade company he sent it to made light Kodak and they just passed untology.
We want, you know, sharp blades as the slats. So in eighteen ninety five you put an ad in the paper, young man eighteen German and English, desire work or position with a chance for advancement by industriousness, Please address Emrick Utner, four oh two Fifth Street.
Young man.
So he's just like he's hustling for work, and he's just like upright citizen nineteen oh two. He's twenty seven years old. He met a woman named Florence Lemine.
Florence Lemine, and they.
Fall in love. It looks like yeah, and they get married and they have kids, and he gets this job as a maintenance man on the Upper East Side of New York.
I'm rooting for these crazy kids, right.
What's cool about his job is that he lived rent free in the basement of the building that he worked in.
Oh, I thought he'd lived rent free in someone's mind.
Well that too in mine. He's you know, decades a century later. So the family moved a few times, but they had this like solid existence and their Upper East Side so they're living in these great posh neighborhoods. He lived in what Elaine Hatfield, she's the author of a book, flim Flam Artist.
Oh great book.
Yeah, she called it genteel Poverty. Oh yeah. So he's like a nice guy. He's super kind, always smiling. Everyone loved him. Everyone's friend, everyone's friend. He was only five foot three, but he's like kind of ripped from all the physical work that he did, like even into his later years. And so basically he's the kind of person who's always been the engine of this country, the United States. Like he's this hard working immigrant, he's community minded, clever,
he's a dreamer, he's scrappy. That's what builds us and keeps us going. So I love him. I'm into it exactly. And so all everything's going chugging along until nineteen thirty seven, and that's when his wife, the love of his life, died and he's sixty two years old.
Yeah, bad time.
His kids they're grown and they're out of the house. Now he's all alone. He has nothing to keep him motivated, and like everything just starts to fall apart for him. It was just him and his dog, and the dog was the only thing that kept the light in his eyes, because you know, it's just like he lost he lost his world.
He now gets in and gives is the dog.
And so he quit his maintenance job and he moved out of the basement place in the Posh neighborhood and then into a tenement in the Upper West Side, and he got a gig as a junk collector.
Okay, like Sanford and Son.
Yeah, totally.
He's got a wagon. He goes around and collects very exactly.
And I don't understand why. I think he was also just tired with the maintenance stuff. Because it was like a lot of work.
Maybe you wanted to get out in the fresh air, and maybe he's a lot of interesting people.
The world is junk for him.
He wants to salvage what he can. He's very metaphorical and he's a poem walking.
And his kids. His kids are trying to help him out, but he wouldn't take their money or their offers.
Proud, he's way too proud Austrian from the old country.
Exactly, and like hard work. The problem was that pulling scrap from like abandoned buildings and selling it to junk dealers is not a viable way to make a living.
Very little, living very small.
And he had savings that he and his wife had accumulated, but he just like winds up burning through that just to live. He's not living fancy, but it's just like he needs, you know, he eats through the savings exactly. So he gone from genteel poverty to the brink of like full destitution. And he didn't really care if he lived on the street, to be honest, but he did want to have that life for his dog. And he didn't name his dog, by the way, fox, this fox terrier.
He once commented, quote, what good would a name do?
The dog?
When I talked to him. He knows I'm talking to him, don't he? And I know who he is without calling him some made up name, don't I. He's very Taoist of like, don't name it.
The dog has no name, and he has no named before the dog for the dog. So it's just these two er souls moving through the world.
Exactly.
I love that.
I think dogs deserve names. Human names will deserve human names. But anyway, so.
You have a lot of fun with your dog.
I do.
So he needed cash, and he didn't really care about the world or its laws.
Oh yeah, he's well passed.
So he got crafty in a shady way. Okay, and that's another American treat. Sure, what keeps us running?
Crafty?
Shady, shady, crafty exactly. So in November of nineteen thirty eight, he got to work. Okay, So he went out and he bought a little portable printing press. He named it Uncle Henry. So he will name a printing press, but not at the dog. That's like you you name everything, yeah, everything.
So the printing press was Uncle Henry. And he took a picture of a clean crisp dollar bill from back, and then he transferred it over to a zinc plate, and from there he put it into an acid bath to etch it into the plate, pulls it out, and then he like finishes by carving all the small details by hand. Yeah, this guy's ridiculous totally. And he carefully pressed a dollar bill.
You imagine how slow his hand moved to etch metal on the fine details right, well, the of a dollar exactly.
And so he presses a bill and it looks good to him, Okay, And there he is in his kitchen, he's printing out buck after buck, ensuring his livelihood and that of his unnamed pupp is just doing a dollar at a time. And he knew that he couldn't go pass them all at once, or like in one in one place more than once. So every week he'd spend about like ten bucks or so here and there.
So he figured out the market.
Yeah, he figured out a string of shops to hit. He never passed more than one fake dollar at any given store. Good so newspaper stands and grocers, and like he'd get what he and the dog needed to live.
Give a couple of bucks a church, Yeah, he'd.
Throw he'd throw one into his twenty five dollars rent, and he'd buy subway tickets.
He just lowered the price of everything.
Everything just shaved a little bit, like maybe a bartender here there.
For tips, probably good for tips. They're going to spend it themselves, right.
So the plan took him all over the city, all the burrows, walking to every corner the place to make sure he didn't repeat.
A store brilliant.
And it wasn't just to avoid detection. He didn't want to stiff any businesses more than a dollar. It's not fair. So I'm not going to stiff on more than a buck. And then one day, not too long after he started printing money, he went into this cigar shop on Broadway near one hundred and second, and he passed a faker and the owner was none the wiser. Emmerick stoles off with his stogy. But when the owner went to deposit his take for the day, the bank teller noticed something
the paper. This is why, like my vision is getting so bad, and I don't like the progressive lenses. So I have my reading glasses on my distance classes. There's always one hanging off the front of my I always have and then sunglasses distant. But even so I feel like Emeric needed glasses. Okay, So it's like if I were doing at this point, I'm like, look at this cake I decorated with. Oh yeah, so the paper is super low quality, super cheap. It's like cheap bond paper
from the corner store. The green ink wasn't the right shade. The silver certificate seal was supposed to be blue and it wasn't. The lettering was crooked, and there was like there's a portrait of our country's first president, George Washington. Apparently it was laughable mustache. A Secret Service member said it was quote poorly executed. Washington's right shoulder blends in with the oval background. The left eye is represented by a black spot. The right eye is almond shaped. And
so it's like that Spanish retouched Jesus Fresco. Absolutely a door or if I tried carving plate like I would get frustrated and just stop caring. That's what happens with me. And you know, so the serial numbers on the fakes were blurry and there were typos. Washington was spelled w A H S I N G T O N. How had anyone accepted all these questions of America exactly. So the bank sees the dollar. But this he's been passing these all over look, and the cigar shop had to
eat the cost. So then that the bank sends the bill to the Secret Service. And here's the thing. The Secret Service had already been getting these imagine yeah, yeah, And as time went on, they got thousands, thousands of people accepted this totally garbage bill, and thousands of people because Emeric continued his fraud for ten years, for a decade, sprink everywhere. Yeah, Secret Service for a decade is trying
to track down this crappy counterfeitter New Year. They were finding him New York, to Baltimore, to Atlanta, to Denver, to Seattle. It's like this dollars move message in a bottle because we were there to go and then most though were all like circulating around the Upper West Side.
In his neighborhood was a concentration point.
Yeah. By nineteen forty seven he had passed more than five thousand dollars. That's like ninety one thousand dollars today. Small potatoes to the government, but a lot to Emeric. So let's pause here. When we come back from these ads. I'm going to tell you about the efforts to catch my man, Emeric Emeric Hutener.
I'm loving this guy.
Counterfeitter of the small and lousiest.
Orders, totally Johnny counterfeit seed.
I love him. I don't get I don't love that people got stiffed by him, but it's.
Not a dollar.
I love his MUCKs.
And they got a story to tell people, like they got Thanksgiving what happened Bob? I got one? I got this dollar bill that was blue, So I like him.
The Secret Service did not like him. Yeah, not by a long shot. So it was humiliating for them to chase this guy for ten years as he passed the most ridiculously bad dollar bills, Like they couldn't believe that people kept accepting the bills, and then they couldn't develop any leads on him.
Got another one for you stay.
A Secret Service spokesperson said, quote, what makes it unique isn't the threshold, but the denomination of one dollar. If you're going to go to the lengths of a dollar, why not go for a larger denomination. Why not go for a bigger bang for your buck. It was not as if he was passing hundreds of of thousands of dollars of currency, and agents you know, come to describe them as, quote, the most exasperating counterfeitter of all time and the least greedy.
It loved so great.
I love him so the Secret Service they opened case file eight eighty. Emeric, like his dog, didn't have a name with them, so they called him mister eight eighty. And the Treasury Department they started issuing these circulars to all the merchants, warning them about the bills. Yeah, and he just keeps cranking them out all throughout the war years, cranking them. People kept accepting them. Secret Service gets more and more annoyed as each new bad bill is sent
to them. But like some people didn't send them in there. They thought they were hilarious, and they'd post them by the on the wall, by the red doors, imagine, oh yeah, completely. And so then what was terrible for Emeric was great for the government, which was on December fourth, nineteen forty seven, his apartment building caught on fire.
Okay he had to December fourth, nineteen forty seven.
Yeah, he was at work and firefighters are battling the blaze. They moved their way into Emricks unit, and it's full of scrap metal that he collected for sales.
Oh, it's not like a closed line of dollar bills drying.
Clos all this junk. And the firefighters they busted out a window and started tossing everything out into the vacant lot next door in order to clear the way so they could gain access to the burning walls. Oh okay, And so it's snowing outside as the fire rages. It's blanketing all of Emrick's earthly possessions that now lay in
this like jumbled, charred pile in the dirt. The freezing temperatures did nothing to help the firefighters, and the building's pretty much destroyed and c loses everything.
Ah.
So he goes to stay with his daughter and queens as he like regroups, he tries to find a place to live, you know, put his meager life back together. Zaren, Yeah, Oh my goodness, I want you to picture it. You're a twelve year old boy named Johnny Hawthorne who lives in New York's Upper West Side. You live at two hundred West ninety sixth Street with your family. You have a group of boys with whom you run around a ragtag bunch, but you're a good kid. It's January thirteenth,
nineteen forty eight. You and your pals playing down the street from your building in an empty lot, next to the burned out shelf of two oh four West ninety six steet. You're kicking cans and throwing rocks into the burned out husk of a building. The snow that last month had coated the ground has mostly melted away. Your mom made you bundle up before you went out, but you've stuck your mittens in your back pocket, and you're getting a little sweaty under your coat and wool sweater.
You and the boys are whipping it up and running around the lot when you spot a pile of junk. This is a gold mine for you. A pile of treasure, burned up, discarded stuff. This is amazing for a twelve year old boy. In this you and your buddies you pick through the rubble. You toss most of it aside, flinging the metal away with glee. It feels so good to throw stuff o old twisted pieces of metal and like dented empty cans, a smashed up bird cage sheet,
or two of old corrugated iron car tire. But then you spot something. Two metal plates with images on the front and back of a dollar bill on them, and a pile of about thirty dollars. Immediately you know the bills are bogus, so do your friends look stage money. One of the meals you and your friend Dicky Beeeler called DIBs on the plates. They look super cool. The other three boys divide the cash evenly among themselves. They put the bills into wads of play gangster, pulling the
cash in their pockets and pretending to smoke cigarettes. You poke around in the pile for a while, but you don't find anything more of interest. The zinc plate is heavy in your coat pocket. It's getting late, and you need to go home, as to your friends. Just then your dad gives a loud wh to you from down the block. Gotta run. You and the boys all scattered to your respective apartments. Well, what remains of Emeric Utner's life sits strewn around the lot, languishing in the slush
and the mud. So Zarah. A couple days later, one of the other boys was hosting a poker game in this basement. Love I love that he and the other kids, they're playing with the fake cat I know. So the boys dad happens upon them. He's first wondering like, how did you get all that money? And he looks at the bills and he sees that they're all bad fakes. So the dad takes the money and he goes down
to the police station. Right the cops knew right away that these were some mister eight eighty bills, so they call the Secret Service. They're glad to swoop in, and they interrogate the boys like where did you find these? In the abandoned lot on West ninety six? Like what else was there? A bunch of junk? Did you see any metal plates? Like ones for printing paper? They're like yeah, sure,
Johnny Hawthorne and Dicky Beler took him. So the Secret Service is like, dickiye okay, Dicky Beeler, let's find this kid. Sounds like a rascal, so he's got he's got a name like that, he's gotta be cool. They find Dicky Beler, they ask him where the plates were. He's like, I don't have him. He's like, I traded him to Johnny Hawthorne for a baseball So apparently Johnny wanted the full set and he didn't want to play Catcher anymore. So the agents they go looking for Johnny Hawthorne. They find
him on the school playground. They collared. They asked him about the plates, shooting craps, like I don't have them. Can you imagine the Secret Service walks onto a playground where shooting crab exactly, He's like, what do you want during the quarters? So he's like, I don't have the plates. I gave him to Bobby Boyle in exchange for a Japanese bayonet. They're like, where does Bobby Boyle live. He's like, I don't know the address, but I'll walk you over there.
So he walks the agents to Bobby Boyle's place. Bobby is like, I had the plates, but I traded them. He's like, Johnny Canning gave me a bag of marbles for him, and so it takes someone they had. They're like, out there, does anyone know where Johnny Canning is? They find him out playing, and so like the Secret Services looking for these preteens, these.
Little boys, this black market of green boys, and.
So for the marbles. So they find Johnny Canning. He's out playing. He's all stoked to show the agents's plates. Yeah, And he's like, oh my god, the plates, yeah, let me show you. And so they go into his room and they're covered in green paint and he tried to print his own money, but he tried. He tried to print it on Kleenex, Like God bless. He's like, this isn't normal paper for a bill. What do I have that's not normal?
I'm not going to one of my comic books. What else I got?
So the agents they take the plates and they recognized the shoddy image immediately.
These are the.
Mister eight eighties. And so they descend on the burned out building.
Put them together. I bring money.
So they all the secret servers they go to the building. That's all, and they can tell by the placement of the pile which window had produced all the junk. So they go in. They find twenty five more dollars in fake bills. They found tubes of printing ink and the photographic negatives of Federal Reserve notes, and they're all tucked away and like spared from the flames. And in the basement of the building they find an old trunk that
contained an additional plate for dollar bills. Those photographic negatives they found they were for ten and twenty dollar bills that had never been used. Wow, he just wanted to see if he could do it. So he's just sticking the singles.
Maybe from my retirement. Yeah.
And then obviously, okay, they know the apartment that they're in. Landlord who lives here, He gives the name and right, and he's like, oh yeah, Emeric and he's staying this daughter over in Queen's All right, let's go. We've been running all over this place.
Anyway, Maybe Johnny Hawthorne could say.
Exactly to give you. So they go out, they pick him up, and he immediately.
Confessed seventy two.
I bet yeah, and so. Saint Clair Mcolway, a New Yorker columnist who interviewed the agents, wrote, quote, when the secret servicemen at last laid eyes on mister eight eighty, they found it hard to believe what their eyes told them.
What did their eyes tell me?
The happy looking, little old septagenarian admitted everything and showed no signs of remorse. He had a provoking habit of answering serious questions with absent minded and irrelevant loquaciousness. In the course of his rambling, replies. He would pause, look at his inquisitors brightly and gaily, then grin at them toothlessly.
Hi, William Mac could kill this.
Oh my god, I love him so much.
Grinning toothlessly agents, It's like, all right, you.
Know what I don't I never get to talk to anybody. Oh, let's chat, let's talk about business. Yeah, so they ask him, how long have you been making these guys been catching me? He's like, oh, nine or ten years, A long time. Of course, I admit it. They were only one dollar bills. I never gave more than one of them to one person. And they're like, you know, so while he was one of the most successful counterfeiters in American history, Like, you wouldn't know it because, like I said, is rents twenty
five dollars a month. Okay, he only wore used clothes and he never spent more than fifteen dollars a week.
I kind of guy.
Yeah, he's not living large, he's just living so break times. Eron, let's go print some bills.
You know I'm on it.
Well, The joyous sounds of advertising fill the air, the sweet, sweet sounds. You'll be able to taste it flowing through the air.
That's what the counterfeit money's for, for.
Some meal kits. Upon our return, we're going to check in with Emeric and see what the law has in store for him. Emeric scrappy fella.
I'm into him.
Oh he's a proud man, a shoddy counterfeitterde.
Toothless grin and like holy fruit.
They love him. He's like a little sprite. So after ten years of passing really bad fake bills, gets busted by the Secret Service. They don't play. Was he upset about it?
I'm guessing no, No, not really.
So at this point he had no wife, no dog, his kids are grown and happy. Wasn't motivated by his job. He's in his seventies, Like, what did he care if he got arrested?
So what?
That's what he says. So he's he's pretty unbothered by the whole thing. In fact, he asked the arresting agents on the Sunday that he got arrested if he go to work the next day. He's like, that is junk. Ain't gonna pick itself. Then let me back out on the story.
Which work are you talking about? Yeah?
Right, So he didn't come completely clean, though, he told assistant US Attorney Thomas Murphy, who was in charge of the criminal division, that the engraving plates were left in the apartment by a previous tenant. Like sure, buddy, Okay.
I found them there. They're so heavy to move.
It was there. I was like that when I got there. He didn't have a record. All I could find of him in the paper was before all this arrest was from the twenties. He was in a little bit of a car accident because he went too fast for conditions and tried to pass another car before sliding out and hitting someone else. So it's like the twenties, so they're probably going like fifteen miles an hour. Yeah, basically, So
he gets this time though he has no record. He gets charged with possession of nine plates for use in making counterfeit bills. Good for him secret service. In their interviews with his neighbors and like nearby shop, every single one of them only had good things to say about him, really, every single one. They all called him pop. Yeah, either like he would help anyone in need, he fixed things, he would lend a hand, smiled joe. He was generally just like a good guy to be around.
A good community member.
And so Because of this, the agents asked for leniency in his sentencing. Good, so the judge John Clancy, he really liked Emeric. He thought he was sweet, and Clancy had a sense of humor. So he sentenced Emeric to one year and one day in prison and like he was facing fifteen to thirty oh his charge. He also imposed a fine of one dollar whatever. He doesn't real Yeah, he says it, and the whole courtroom cracks horse. Yeah, it was just great. So Emeric, he's eligible for parole
after four months and he gets it. Oh. No, he's super cooperative, he's not greedy, aggressive, and he was up in years. That all played a factor while he inside. He was so charming and sweet that the warden and some of the other inmates all chipped in and put together money for him when he left. Oh, like his birthday birthday. Yes, So Emeric takes his kids up on their offer to help at last, and he goes to live with his daughter and her family. Secret Service happy
to put the whole mess behind them. This is what Secret Service Chief James Maloney said, quote the capture of this man relieves the Secret Service of a terrific headache.
Yeah, because they were calling me Jim Phony, maloney, maloney, and I got tired of it.
I've had enough. Nineteen forty nine, The New Yorker columnist wrote a profile of Emeric, and it was first published in The New Yorker later appeared in the book True Tales from the Annals of Crime and Rascality. Rascality so good and so the writer captivated by Emeric. Everyone everyone gets. The next year, that article the interview was made into a movie called Mister eight eighty Have you anything? Oh,
I'm about to tell you? So. It was billed as a quote gentle romantic comedy about a secret Service agent trying to catch a cold case counterfeiter and the United Nations translator, What yeah, Emeric? Is it is? It doesn't have enough star power like secret Service, Like we could dress him up an dreaper. So where's the thing? That's okay? So it's directed by Edmund Golding and it starred Bert Lancaster, what yeah, Dorothy maguire wow, and Edmund Gwen as Emeric
And they call him Skipper Miller in the movie. Okay, So Gwen, he played Santa in Miracle on thirty fourth Street. You know him? And so for Mister eight eighty. He won a Golden Globe for that role. He was nominated for an Academy Award really for his role in Mister e eighty.
Woh, I got a classic to check.
Yes, exactly. And what's crazy and ridiculous? Thank you for asking.
I didn't know where, Okay, go on, Oh we're getting there.
Is that he made ten times more on the rights to his life story than he did cranking out fake bills.
Oh my god, isn't that incredible?
And someone asked him if he would ever return to his counterfeiting ways, and he told them no because quote, there wasn't enough money in.
It, so he was literally printing money.
Yeah. He was the first and to date only person convicted of counterfeiting one dollar bills. He passed away in January of nineteen fifty five at the age of seventy nine. Ashes are interred in Queens. So Zarin, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
You know what I've learned my time with counterfeiting, not that I never have gotten into counterfeiting. I've tried, as I told you, passing some counterfeit bills I was given by Bank of America. But I would say.
From Bank of America. That reminded me, but yeah, go ahead.
The whole art of being a counterfeiter, I actually did think about it, not that as a career, but just like i'd amuse myself because it's a non violent crime. You can pick that you're passing them too. It seems fun. There's like an element of art to it. But like, and so I keep up now whenever I see stories. And the big thing now is you take the old like twenties and the and the fives, and you bleach them out and then you print on like one hundred
dollars bill onto an actual bill right the paper. Yeah. But then now because of the bar that they have, you know, they like hologram strips. Yeah, so now you can't do with any of these new bills. It's got to be old bills. It's got to be places that you're going to be passing. So you got to be like, you know, driving out to Utah to a small gas station and hoping to pass old bills. But they're not going to care. So you really couldn't do it in
most cities. So it's become something that is almost more of an international crime. So people do this and then go and like give those money to people in China, like we're coming to America, go here's the bills for you to go, and they don't know. So that's how So it's interesting to see watch your counterfeiting is moving because the bills are still valuable to somebody, but just now you can't pass them here. But where can you pass?
We get less and less cash based we're mostly cash.
That's the other thing is that so much and so few people use cash.
You gotta find, like you're saying, you go out in the middle of nowhere where they don't have, but they don't you know, they get more cash.
Than it's not weird to pass cash. And then also anybody who's coming to America, it's easier to give them cash because they don't know necessarily what you know, they're not thinking about it the same all of it.
Yeah, yeah, because some currencies in other countries you pick it up and it feels fake exactly. Yeah. My brother I just totally remember that my brother had a fake ten and we were in the Burger King drive through and they wouldn't take it.
Oh they caught it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've ever worked. I worked a lot of jobs where I had to like take money like that as a cash register, and I used to be able to you can spot them, I used to. I caught a number of thigs those Oh yeah, a ton. When I was in a Chinese restaurant in La I worked there was right on the like Santa Monica. It is near basically near an intersections. I made an intersection. There's a lot of crime that happened, like small type crime perse grabbing and like three people and then getting in a
car and driving away. But back in the day before people were doing that. So you also have people passing bills. So I would be sitting there. And the thing is that you actually have to hire We've actually talked about this people to pass your bills, because otherwise you will you can't. You can't be the person who's making You're gonna have green ink on your fingers. But other people, you know they're going to act suspicious. You needed people
who don't know they're passing bills. That's the only way to do it. Otherwise, you generally look at the bill more than anybody else who's giving you money, and so it makes it obvious. They're like, oh, I hope it's right. Honestly, and so I learned the verses. If you want to pass money, you got a whole eye contact real hard. The person won't look at the money.
But I remember you and I were in a shop once and you went to pay and you handed the bill to the cashier and said, it's don't worry, it's good. I made it this morning.
Oh yeah, yeah, I tease people at that.
And she just stared at some people don't think it's funny.
I think it's And I was like, also, I like doing it because you know, I serve, so sometimes I'd have wet money in my pockets and so I pull it out and it's wet, and I'm like, oh, no, worry about that. I made them. I didn't dry it. I made that this morning. Like they almost like look at it, like is it really? Like they ball it up trying to squeeze the mank out. People are dumb, Elizabeth.
I'm telling that's my ridiculous takeaway. But thank you for asking, Oh what does.
Youre ridiculous take away? How about you?
One? I love Emeric and I love criminals that like his. The way he heard people was so minor total a dollar bill, but like his whole story and his like.
And how much he was giving in exchange. I mean who he was. He was a good community. Yeah, exactly, somebody passing counterfeit.
Bill love him, love love.
Would you ever pass the counterfeit ability? Think you can?
I could get away with it. Yeah?
Do you think care?
Yeah?
I can get you one.
Everyone everyone thinks I'm trustworthy.
Yeah, that's what I mean. You're an ideal past.
People tell me things? Yeah, yeah, you know what else I love?
What else? Do you love? Talk?
Oh?
Yeah, O god, I.
Went Hey, Elizabeth and Zarin, this is Lucy. Thank you so much for bringing doctor John Brinkley to the Ridiculous Crime universe. If you want to learn more about him, there is a book called Charlotttan by Pope Rock. And one other ridiculous fact that you could include or that you could learn is I Brinkley had a little league team called Brinkley's Goats. So I find that very ridiculous. And uh yeah, wait.
This amazing Brinkley is the gift that keeps on giving, Like every detail Brinkley's Goats. Oh that's amazing. And that's all that's all for today. You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous I'm on both Twitter and Instagram. You can email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. But, as I always say, most importantly, please leave a talkback on the iHeart app. You can if the app is free. You get to say cool stuff and you know everyone gets to hear it. How
great is that reach out? Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Dave Dalla Bill y'all Kusten, starring Atalis Rutger as Judith. Research is by Marble Trader Marisa Brown and child poker prodigy Andrea Song Sharpened Hear. The theme song is by Junkman Thomas Lee, an amused barkeep with a bad dollar bill taped to his register. Travis Dutton post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred guest Haron, makeup by Sparkleshot and
mister Andre. Executive producers are Secret Service Plate Cataloger Ben Bollen and Secret Service Interrogator Juvenile Division Noel Brown.
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