Counterfeiting Too Easy, Treasury Warns

Widely available computers, printers and copiers have become so sophisticated that U.S. currency and other securities can be counterfeited with remarkable accuracy, the Treasury Department said Friday.

“The introduction of such equipment makes counterfeiting a crime of opportunity for anyone with access,” Carl V. D’Alessandro, assistant director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, told the Senate Banking Committee.

“The potential counterfeiter no longer requires any particular expertise in printing but only the inclination and the electronic devices,” he said.

William J. Ebert, who heads the Secret Service’s counterfeiting division, said the government is even more concerned about advances in such technology.

“Just as the counterfeiting of currency by multicolored copiers has increased greatly over the past few years, so will the use of computer laser scanners as a means to scan, store and subsequently counterfeit currency,” Ebert said.

He said $13.8 million in counterfeit currency was passed in this country last year and $75.2 million was seized before being circulated. Abroad, $103 million in bogus U.S. bills was confiscated.

The two Treasury officials endorsed a bill introduced by Sen. Donald Riegle (D-Mich.), chairman of the committee, to tighten federal controls over technology that can be used for counterfeiting.

The bill would make it a crime to possess any laser-type device that the Treasury Department concludes would help a counterfeiter, and ensure that the duplication of currency by any electronic method is illegal. It would bar private possession of any counterfeit-deterrent device, including watermarks and seals, just as the distinctive paper on which greenbacks are printed is protected now.

Kenneth A. Wasch, executive director of the Software Publishers Assn., whose members develop computer programs, said the bill is so broad that “many heretofore legal activities may now be made illegal.”

He said the prohibition on private possession of certain optical devices could “mean document scanners, desktop computers, a number of software programs, laser printers and other high-tech wonders could be outlawed even though they are in use everywhere.”

Robert J. Leuver, executive director of the American Numismatic Assn., endorsed the bill--in part, he said, because it would necessitate redesigning U.S. currency.

He noted, for example, that the Treasury Department already has announced it will begin incorporating into bills a Mylar thread that can be read only in indirect light.

“This deterrent will particularly thwart counterfeiters who ply their trade outside of the United States,” Leuver said. “However, the current design of the note both obscures the thread or causes it to be overlooked.”

While the currency is being overhauled for security, said Leuver, a former director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, it “ought to be redesigned to reflect the necessity of the 21st-Century America.”