> 10 years went by and the search for Mister 880 turned into the largest and most expensive counterfeit investigation in Secret Service history.
The article doesn't explain why the Secret Service made this their biggest case, and it doesn't make much sense to me. If the dollars were accepted by the general population, it would cause an infinitesimal increase in inflation of no consequence to others. And if shopkeepers wised up to the false dollars and rejected them, at worst he was defrauding the public by a few hundred dollars a year. In either eventuality, surely the Secret Service had more notorious counterfeiters to track down?
The state reserves some of the harshest punishments for counterfeiters, since large scale counterfeit operations is one of the few crimes that is an attack on the state itself.
The US secret service was originally created specifically to combat counterfeit money, it's no surprise that they would keep tracking this man for a decade.
This man is unusual because he did the tiniest amount of one the most severely punished crime.
I have two "counterfitting" stories - both of which are humorous even though one involve the Secret Service.
The first was in college. A buddy of mine scribbled a facsimile of a $20 onto a piece of paper with a green marker. Heather handed it to the checkout clerk at the cafeteria who took it and started to hand them back change. He stopped her and said "no, no it's a joke - look at what I just handed you". She was embarrassed but they both laughed together.
The second story which does involve the Secret Service is when my friend had a bunch of presents that he had wrapped and put in his front porch until was going to depart for a party. One of the presents was wrapped in a sheet of uncut dollar bills - which you could buy for that purpose.
A neppy neighbor saw it through the window and called the police who called the FBI who called the Secret Service who came knocking on his door to investigate. They were also embarrassed but I don't think they laughed. My friend told him he understands that they're just doing their job and that it's an important one.
A small leak can sink a ship. The fake dollars weren't knowingly accepted.
If public confidence in the value of money is lost, we're all in big trouble.
The Secret Service was right to pursue the case zealously.
Under ordinary circumstances, a federal counterfeiting arrest would have generated little sympathy. But the story of Emerich Juettner struck the public imagination immediately. Here was an old man surviving in poverty by printing crude one-dollar bills one at a time. He was not violent, greedy, or glamorous.
At trial, Juettner admitted his activities openly. The judge sentenced him to only a year and a day in prison, and he was paroled after 4 months. He was also made to pay a fine of $1. It has been agreed that Juettner’s complete lack of greed was the rationale behind the light sentence. …
Juettner returned to a life of normalcy, and lived out the rest of his days in the suburbs of Long Island, where he died in 1955, at the age of 79.
After his release, Juettner briefly achieved celebrity status. His notoriety became so widespread that Hollywood adapted the story into the 1950 film Mister 880, directed by Edmund Goulding. Eventually, Juettner made more money from the release of Mister 880 than he had made by counterfeiting.
> Juettner began working as a maintenance man and building superintendent in New York's Upper East Side. His job allowed him and his family to live rent free in the basement of the building where he worked.
Since they were silver certificates he could have redeemed them for a 26.73g coin composed of 90% silver and 10% copper. In 2026, the value of the silver has fluctuated between about $46 and $94 (and the value of the copper content has stayed a little over 3 cents).
Would owning his apartment disqualify him from being a folk hero? If he was a renter, does he deserve to be a hero? Just wondering. If he'd gotten rich from printing fake currency and become a right wing dictator would you think the same as if he was just a broke tenant? Why or why not?
I'm talking about the vague implications the parent poster was making - the purposes of which weren't very clear, but which I interpreted as: "A) Money is worth less than it was, (so printing fake money is justified) B) But on the other hand maybe he was part of the propertied class (in which case it wouldn't be)". I was asking whether they had a moral compass.
Fun fact: in parts of East Africa, a $50 bill may be worth about 60-70 $1 dollar bills, due to the $1 bill being easier to counterfeit (and also more likely worn down).
Very interesting. It's probably because fewer people take the time to counterfeit $50s, $10s or $2s than anything else. What about $100 bills? In Argentina, if you have an older $100 bill, no one will take it. And apparently there's a roaring trade in fake $20s in Costa Rica, which I only learned at a casino there recently when I took USD directly out of an ATM and had it inspected by a pit boss in the same establishment. It's ironic, because if I were someone with an interest in counterfeiting, I'd focus on forging Pesos or Colones or something no one looks at before I'd take a stab at USD.
I’ve had USD rejected both for being too new and for being too old in various corners of the earth - different cultures seem to want their currency differently aged.
I gave a bonus tip to a tour guide in one of these countries.
I'd brought USD notes from Europe to spend and as an emergency fund. They were all brand new (sequential numbers) $50 notes, just what my bank gave me.
At the end of the trip, I swapped about $300 of old notes the tour staff had for $300 of new notes. This included a very slightly damaged $100 note which the tour guide said had been a tip, which he was unable to use because of the damage.
Old family story: Back in the 1920's and 1930's, one of my cousins (a bit removed) was a poacher in rural northern Michigan. Everyone from the County Sheriff on down knew that she was a poacher. Everyone also knew that she was a widow with several children, living in (even for the place and time) grim poverty, and the she was poaching to feed her children.
As kids, we were told more details - both to know about our extended family, and to support various lessons about poverty and charity and pre-WWII rural communities.
But one of the more subtle lessons was that "the law" and society's actual rules are, at best, overlapping circles on a Venn diagram. No matter what lawmakers, those invested in the legal system, and those telling simplistic stories to children might say.
Is it possible that he might have spent almost $1 in materials and labor and allocated capital expenses on equipment ... to create each of these counterfeits.
Attempting this today would probably surely cost that much in today's dollars?
EDIT: on a second thought ..this almost feels like "proof of work" for currency :)
The U.S. government spends approximately 4.1 cents [1] to produce each $1 bill. It would probably be more expensive to counterfeit it because of the volume, but I doubt it would be more than $1.
> The 70-year-old retiree who became America’s worst counterfeiter. [link]
He evaded capture for 10 years, making him one of the best. Also got less than a slap on his wrist and ended up making legal money on the whole ordeal.
These days it is much more effective to pay employees to swap payment terminals (or just employees doing it themselves), changing where the money ends up, and banks don't really know what to do about it.
It feels like an increasingly common belief in the tech world, that "whoever dies with the most toys, wins." By such an account, this old man's cleverness, labor, and risk exposure must seem like the greatest squandering. So why should it attract our attention so, and without any apparent contradiction?
Perhaps our culture just contains multitudes like any other. Or perhaps, in addition, even the antithesis of a culture possesses an otherworldly charm to those who know nothing but that culture.
If you want to know more, there is a much better and very entertainingly written series of articles about this, from a 1949 issue of the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1949/08/27/old-eight-eigh...
> 10 years went by and the search for Mister 880 turned into the largest and most expensive counterfeit investigation in Secret Service history.
The article doesn't explain why the Secret Service made this their biggest case, and it doesn't make much sense to me. If the dollars were accepted by the general population, it would cause an infinitesimal increase in inflation of no consequence to others. And if shopkeepers wised up to the false dollars and rejected them, at worst he was defrauding the public by a few hundred dollars a year. In either eventuality, surely the Secret Service had more notorious counterfeiters to track down?
The state reserves some of the harshest punishments for counterfeiters, since large scale counterfeit operations is one of the few crimes that is an attack on the state itself.
The US secret service was originally created specifically to combat counterfeit money, it's no surprise that they would keep tracking this man for a decade.
This man is unusual because he did the tiniest amount of one the most severely punished crime.
I have two "counterfitting" stories - both of which are humorous even though one involve the Secret Service.
The first was in college. A buddy of mine scribbled a facsimile of a $20 onto a piece of paper with a green marker. Heather handed it to the checkout clerk at the cafeteria who took it and started to hand them back change. He stopped her and said "no, no it's a joke - look at what I just handed you". She was embarrassed but they both laughed together.
The second story which does involve the Secret Service is when my friend had a bunch of presents that he had wrapped and put in his front porch until was going to depart for a party. One of the presents was wrapped in a sheet of uncut dollar bills - which you could buy for that purpose.
A neppy neighbor saw it through the window and called the police who called the FBI who called the Secret Service who came knocking on his door to investigate. They were also embarrassed but I don't think they laughed. My friend told him he understands that they're just doing their job and that it's an important one.
Also a fascinating read: The Nazi counterfeiting operation, intended to devalue the Pound and crash the British economy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard
Maybe it's just that any investigation that takes 10 years is by definition one of the more expensive ones.
A small leak can sink a ship. The fake dollars weren't knowingly accepted. If public confidence in the value of money is lost, we're all in big trouble. The Secret Service was right to pursue the case zealously.
Literally the single paragraph you omitted:
(Thank you!)
One dollar in 1943 is worth about $19 today's dollars.
He started in 1938 and was arrested in 1948:
Enough to buy some supplies, but how did he pay the rent? Perhaps he owned his apartment.https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1948?amount=1
> Juettner began working as a maintenance man and building superintendent in New York's Upper East Side. His job allowed him and his family to live rent free in the basement of the building where he worked.
Yes, but he was forced to counterfeit when that job ended.
If $1 is $19 I am suprised more people didnt check that their $1 notes are legit back then. Story makes it sound like $1 was chump change.
Since they were silver certificates he could have redeemed them for a 26.73g coin composed of 90% silver and 10% copper. In 2026, the value of the silver has fluctuated between about $46 and $94 (and the value of the copper content has stayed a little over 3 cents).
Those stopped being redeemable for silver in 1968, so their value is no longer defined by the metal prices of 2026.
If you swap them in stores, maybe. But taking counterfeit bills to the national bank is just stupid, even if very well made.
Would owning his apartment disqualify him from being a folk hero? If he was a renter, does he deserve to be a hero? Just wondering. If he'd gotten rich from printing fake currency and become a right wing dictator would you think the same as if he was just a broke tenant? Why or why not?
The hell are you talking about?
I'm talking about the vague implications the parent poster was making - the purposes of which weren't very clear, but which I interpreted as: "A) Money is worth less than it was, (so printing fake money is justified) B) But on the other hand maybe he was part of the propertied class (in which case it wouldn't be)". I was asking whether they had a moral compass.
I think you're reading way too much into that comment. Sometimes questions are just questions out of curiosity, not accusations of the opposite.
Fun fact: in parts of East Africa, a $50 bill may be worth about 60-70 $1 dollar bills, due to the $1 bill being easier to counterfeit (and also more likely worn down).
Very interesting. It's probably because fewer people take the time to counterfeit $50s, $10s or $2s than anything else. What about $100 bills? In Argentina, if you have an older $100 bill, no one will take it. And apparently there's a roaring trade in fake $20s in Costa Rica, which I only learned at a casino there recently when I took USD directly out of an ATM and had it inspected by a pit boss in the same establishment. It's ironic, because if I were someone with an interest in counterfeiting, I'd focus on forging Pesos or Colones or something no one looks at before I'd take a stab at USD.
I’ve had USD rejected both for being too new and for being too old in various corners of the earth - different cultures seem to want their currency differently aged.
I gave a bonus tip to a tour guide in one of these countries.
I'd brought USD notes from Europe to spend and as an emergency fund. They were all brand new (sequential numbers) $50 notes, just what my bank gave me.
At the end of the trip, I swapped about $300 of old notes the tour staff had for $300 of new notes. This included a very slightly damaged $100 note which the tour guide said had been a tip, which he was unable to use because of the damage.
And the only places you can change a €500 note are outside of Europe.
In parts of the USA (well, amazon.com), you can buy bills of $10,000,000,000 from Africa for very little.
example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01L3536O2
In parts of the US (well, eBay.com) you can by bills of 50 trillion from Europe for very little.
In other words, Africa is a big place. Just say "Zimbabwe".
Immersed yourself there or…?
That guy East Africas
Old family story: Back in the 1920's and 1930's, one of my cousins (a bit removed) was a poacher in rural northern Michigan. Everyone from the County Sheriff on down knew that she was a poacher. Everyone also knew that she was a widow with several children, living in (even for the place and time) grim poverty, and the she was poaching to feed her children.
As kids, we were told more details - both to know about our extended family, and to support various lessons about poverty and charity and pre-WWII rural communities.
But one of the more subtle lessons was that "the law" and society's actual rules are, at best, overlapping circles on a Venn diagram. No matter what lawmakers, those invested in the legal system, and those telling simplistic stories to children might say.
> Eventually, Juettner made more money from the release of Mister 880 than he had made by counterfeiting
I'm guessing this was before the law where you couldn't benefit from crimes?
First enacted 1977 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_Sam_law
>He was also made to pay a fine of $1
I wonder if the cashier checked the bill closely when he paid it.
If he wrote a check the office would’ve had a bet pool on whether it would be returned
Maybe it was a test.
The lack of greed is wonderful. It makes me think of how many endeavours would have succeeded if the founders and advisors weren't greedy.
At least this story shows that the lack of greed didn't improve quality.
It reminds me of Bojarski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceslaw_Bojarski
The 2025 movie is worth watching https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35495035/
Is it possible that he might have spent almost $1 in materials and labor and allocated capital expenses on equipment ... to create each of these counterfeits.
Attempting this today would probably surely cost that much in today's dollars?
EDIT: on a second thought ..this almost feels like "proof of work" for currency :)
The U.S. government spends approximately 4.1 cents [1] to produce each $1 bill. It would probably be more expensive to counterfeit it because of the volume, but I doubt it would be more than $1.
[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12771.htm
> He was also made to pay a fine of $1.
I see what they did there.
> References:
> The 70-year-old retiree who became America’s worst counterfeiter. [link]
He evaded capture for 10 years, making him one of the best. Also got less than a slap on his wrist and ended up making legal money on the whole ordeal.
These days it is much more effective to pay employees to swap payment terminals (or just employees doing it themselves), changing where the money ends up, and banks don't really know what to do about it.
It feels like an increasingly common belief in the tech world, that "whoever dies with the most toys, wins." By such an account, this old man's cleverness, labor, and risk exposure must seem like the greatest squandering. So why should it attract our attention so, and without any apparent contradiction?
Perhaps our culture just contains multitudes like any other. Or perhaps, in addition, even the antithesis of a culture possesses an otherworldly charm to those who know nothing but that culture.
Or perhaps, you're posting AI generated comments and should bugger off!