—Nickels—
I’ve often wondered why counterfeiters can’t make their counterfeits identical to real money. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a good thing that they mess up. And I’m against counterfeiting. Dead against it. It-is-not-for-me.
My late brother and I once got into trouble for using a copy machine to copy dollar bills.
We were kids, and technology was pretty new to us.
So were Vending Machines that took dollar bills.
And when I say we were kids, I was around thirteen or fourteen.
In those days, you could copy a dollar bill, walk over to the vending machine, put the copied dollar into the machine, and get your drink.
I cannot emphasize enough how wrong it is to do that.
Fortunately for my brother and me, we were caught before the month was up, thus derailing our life of crime.
Francis Leroy Henning is a guy that counterfeited money.
You may have heard of him.
In ’39, he got in trouble counterfeiting bills.
He obviously didn’t stay in jail too long, if at all, because, by ’53, he got caught again. This time with a new scheme. — Counterfeit Nickels.
Don’t laugh. A nickel went a long way in 1953. A loaf of bread only cost about Fifteen Cents back then.
It’s estimated that Henning made up to half a million counterfeit nickels.
He put different years on the nickels as well. —1939, ’44, ’46, ’47, and ’53 were the years he used.
It was the ’44 nickels that would be the ones that led to his arrest.
The Secret Service arrested him.
Here is the interesting part: Some of his coins are thought to still be in circulation. And, they’re collectible. Yep. Collector’s items.
I’m betting it’s illegal to collect counterfeit, though. I might be wrong.
His story is an interesting one, though.
If you ever get the chance, look him up online and read about him.— Francis Leroy Henning.
One other interesting fact: The profit he had hoped for was not as big as planned. It ended up costing Henning about 3.5 cents to produce each coin.
Oh, and if you ever run across one of his nickels, I don’t want to know.
I promised I would never have anything to do with counterfeiting again.
