The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. A young smalltime crook with a meticulous eye for artistic detail and an addiction to the thrill of crime crafts millions in high-quality phony bills in KerstenÖs account of counterfeiter Art Williams Jr. Born in 1972 and abandoned by his father to poverty, the gritty gangs of Chicago and a mentally ill mother, Williams slid into an underworld of theft and violence before a bohemian money crafter introduced him to counterfeiting. With swagger, ingenuity and a devoted wife, Williams produced millions of dollarsÖ worth of uncannily accurate bills for 14 years, till the Secret Service caught up with him. As Kersten narrates this story, he ably weaves the minuscule details of currency security with colorful portraits of underworld characters like a Chinese mob leader known as the Horse and tales of giddy shopping sprees fueled by sex, fake bills, even mischievous masquerades as priests. Illustrating Williams not only as a delinquent genius but a sensitive young man seeking paternal love and aesthetic validation, Kersten (who first told WilliamsÖs story in Rolling Stone) configures a rollicking and captivating look into a compelling criminal mind. (June 11)
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From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Liaquat Ahamed Financial criminals, such as corporate chieftains who rip off their shareholders or fraudsters like Bernie Madoff, are generally viewed as despicable because they so often steal from people much poorer than themselves. Not so with counterfeiters. Passing dud notes may not be a completely victimless crime. But true professional forgers are careful not to spend their fake dollars in their own neighborhoods, in part of course out of a very practical concern about being caught by the Secret Service, but also because of a strange sense of honor toward non-thieves -- the assorted bartenders, waiters, limousine drivers, strippers and call girls -- who surround them and service their needs. "The Art of Making Money," by Jason Kersten, tells the story of Art Williams, a maverick counterfeiter from Chicago. From early childhood, Williams seemed destined for misfortune. His father, a small-time crook, abandoned the family when Williams was 11. His mother was subsequently diagnosed with bipolar schizophrenia and, having only the most tenuous grip on reality, was wholly unable to look after her three children. The family ended up on welfare in the projects of Southside Chicago, a land of guns, drugs and gangs. At the age of 13, Williams took his first steps in a life of crime by breaking into parking meters and was soon supporting the family by stealing cars before graduating to robbing local drug dealers. He was introduced to counterfeiting by one of his mother's boyfriends, who took a liking to the kid. The boyfriend soon disappeared, presumed dead at the hands of a disgruntled client, leaving Williams to pursue the secrets of forgery for himself. And that was when the fun began. The heart of this wonderful book, which reads like the script for a caper movie, takes us through the whole painstaking process -- false starts, dead ends and cliffhanger setbacks -- as Williams improvises his way to becoming an expert counterfeiter. Like any good caper movie, the story is crowded with colorful characters, straight from the pages of Elmore Leonard. Williams's clients include a Chinese gangster called the Horse; a party-throwing Russian hoodlum from St. Petersburg; and a Mexican mafioso. His accomplices included his girlfriend, Natalie, one of four nubile sisters whom he bedded at various points; an ex-boxer and shakedown man with attention deficit disorder; a trash-talking cab driver; and a six-foot-tall, 280-pound Lithuanian wrestler who acted as his bodyguard. Williams may have developed the technical skills to become a master at his craft, but he lacked the discipline to make his art into a business. He just could not restrain himself from breaking the cardinal rule of his profession: Do not pass your own fake notes. Instead, he took off with Natalie on a spending spree across the malls of the western United States, laundering their phony money by paying for $10 items with $100 counterfeit bills and taking the change in real dollars. As the reader watches Williams play Robin Hood by dropping off the unneeded items accumulated on this shopping rampage at Salvation Army dumpsters, it is hard to shake the growing sense that his days are numbered. For all Williams's big-heartedness, his ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is frustrating. Williams eventually catches the attention of the Secret Service not because it manages to track him down but because, at a critical moment, he goes partying and is busted for drugs by the local cops, who stumble across his cache of fake dollars. He is finally undone, however, by his deadbeat father, who, like everyone else, becomes infatuated by the promise of limitless free money conjured up by his son's hands. This is a fun book, fast-paced and full of vim, a screenplay in the making. But life is a lot messier than the movies, and, to his credit, Kersten does not flinch from reality. In fact, his unsentimental refusal to gloss over the unsavory and depressing details of Williams's life, the private demons that haunt him and his whole dysfunctional family, gives this book its true authenticity of character.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Gotham (June 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592404464
• ISBN-13: 978-1592404469
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #31,333 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Helen Beresini, July 3, 2009

By	Helen Beresini - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This was a great read. The author has a superior command of the written word and uses it to spin a fascinating tale of a troubled family. I particularly enjoyed his portrayal of the many colorful, true-life characters and the balanced way in which he portrays them. I've read it twice and have recommended it to all my friends and co-workers.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Genuine Tragedy of a Counterfeiter, August 5, 2009

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

It is rather amazing that our day-to-day economy is founded on rectangles of printed paper, worthless in themselves, but to which we all communally assign a high value. The difference between the rectangles' actual value and their symbolic value is what counterfeiters exploit, and the counterfeiter's work was considered so dangerous to society that it used to be a capital crime. It is still a danger, and the object of the Federal Reserve Bank is to print dollar bills that cannot be copied, while the object of the counterfeiters is to copy them. This cat-and-mouse game has best been played recently by counterfeiter Art Williams, who successfully conquered the redesigned $100 bill, issued to thwart photocopiers in 1996. Successfully, for a while at least. Williams's story is told in _The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter_ (Gotham Books) by Jason Kersten. Kersten has had plenty of interviews with Williams, and with many of his connections; he did not get cooperation from the Secret Service, which preferred to keep things secret. The Secret Service was formed in 1865 to combat counterfeiters, who were threatening the foundation of the US economy. Only later did it get the job it is better known for, protecting the president. So while there are some details about the work of the counterfeiter and his detection and prosecution, most of the book plays as a biography of a talented, obsessed, and tragic figure.

Williams had an upbringing fit for a career criminal, including a chaotic home and gang membership. A counterfeiting expert took him under his wing, explaining how to use the arc-light burner, make plates, mix inks, obtain paper, and the other matters of hardware, as well as common-sense tips on how to unload the money and keep from getting caught.m Counterfeiters risk capture if they just print money and spend it. It is far safer to print money and sell it for, say, thirty cents on the dollar, to distant contacts who ideally would use it for drug payoffs or for international shipments. It was a lot to learn, and Williams was a gifted student. When Chicago became too hot for safety, he headed to Texas where he was picked up for robbery, and when he got out of prison, the 1996 New Note was in circulation. He took the note as his personal challenge. Among his innovations was experimenting with digital duplication, producing a hybrid bill that used both offset and digital production. Kersten details the bill's security features, and how Williams worked hard to overcome each one. The color-shifting ink, for instance, could be mimicked with paint used on those automobiles that have a different color depending on the angle you are looking at them, and the paint could be applied with a rubber stamp. Even experts did not spot the fakes, and Williams began the labor-intensive full-scale production. Everyone wanted in, because the bills were so good. Williams got rich from the production, and he and friends and family went on sprees. The object in spending a counterfeit $100 bill is not to get $100 worth of goods; it is to get a clerk to take your fake money for a $20 item and give you $80 change in good money. His team would hit a mall, spend the money at different stores, and come away with goods they didn't need, so they took pains to buy things the poor could use and then donated the goods to the Salvation Army. The financial gain from counterfeiting seems to have been less of a motivation than the technical challenges of making passable bills, but Williams was able to enjoy the freedom and travel that resulted.

The travel brought him to the Alaskan doorstep of his estranged father who appreciated Williams's line of work and wanted to get in it, at which point the whole tale descends into fear and chaos and capture. It is ironic that Williams could make money but that no amount of money, real or fake, could bring back the family ties he craved. His wife contemplated at one point, "He was good at anything he set his mind to. If he put half the energy into just a job, he'd probably make good money anyway." This account of Williams life includes much about his technical expertise and success, and might even engender some admiration for his cleverness and tenacity, but it is a simple tragedy of self-imposed ruin. Williams might get out of prison in a few years, and the dollar bills might have holographic imagery by that time; my guess is he won't be able to keep from trying to make copies.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written account of a talented, yet troubled man's life story., August 2, 2009

By	C A Studog "Stories matter man" (Minnesota, USA) - See all my reviews

Jason Kersten does a marvelous job of telling the true story of how Art Williams became one of the most successful conterfeiters in modern times. The narrative flows beautifully to bring readers into the difficult and troubled life of Art as he was growing up and how he got into conterfeiting. There's no sense of hyperbole nor of minimizing Art's strengths and/or his flaws. Art's story itself also is inherently compelling because of his great humanity and how his attempt to connect with his estranged father led to his discovery and apprehension by the secret service. I found this book to be one of the most memorable and high-quality books that I have ever read.