GERMANY: Excellent Imitations

How much money does a successful counterfeiting gang make? The machinery is heavy and expensive. A fairly numerous staff of passers must be paid. Also the amount of patience, time and care required— which might otherwise be spent in making money honestly—is great. But counterfeiters have their triumphs, however brief. Last week the Treasury at Washington and officials of the German and Swiss police came to a rueful conclusion. They think that a counterfeiting gang as yet uncaught has successfully placed in Central Europe at least $100,000 worth of spurious U. S. banknotes. They fear that the success and scope of the fraud may prove to be many times greater, perhaps ten times.

Exhibit A is a series of perfect simulations of the U. S. Federal Reserve Bank $100 note of 1914, bearing the portrait of Benjamin Franklin. Last November the old and reputable Berlin banking firm of Sass & Martini, established in 1842, sent over a packet containing $6,000 of these bills in the course of ordinary business with the Deutsche Bank. That impeccable institution passed them on to the National City Bank of New York. Since the Federal Reserve some time ago decided to withdraw the 1914 series of $100 notes from circulation, the National City passed on the $6,000 packet for cancellation and the issuance of new money in place of that withdrawn. Many of the notes were dog-eared, had seemingly circulated abroad for many a year. Experts of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve called them "excellent imitations."

Back from bank to bank the counterfeit trail was followed. It led last week to an order bidding German and Swiss police to arrest on sight one Franz Fischer, prominent a decade ago in the German Communist Party, but of recent years a personage of nebulous though prosperous obscurity. "Franz Fischer has fled from his flat," read a succinct Berlin police communiqué. But a somewhat loquacious official said, without allowing himself to be named in quotation: "He was probably only a fence. The gang must have a big print shop somewhere, with a large staff of experts, or they could never produce such perfect quantity results. They have turned out so much that they must have relations with some big paper mill, probably through bribery of employes. Their profits must be enormous. We think they are operating in one of the Austrian succession states"—(Czechoslovakia, Poland, Rumania, Jugoslavia).

Warned by Berlin, bankers in many a city scanned all their $100 notes. Soon Havana wailed she has a $75,000 collection of the "excellent imitations."