Back in 1890, a 13-year-old boy named Emerich Juettner (pictured) boarded a ship in Austria and set off through choppy seas for the promise of a better life in America. He settled in New York City and soon found work as a picture frame gilder. His true passion, however, was the art of invention. He spent late nights tinkering with everything from a new type of camera (rejected by Kodak) to specially engineered window blinds (rejected by a window company). By 1918, he was happily married with 2 children and employed as a maintenance man at an Upper West Side apartment complex, and for several decades enjoyed a modest and uneventful life. In 1937, his wife unexpectedly passed away and Juettner, then 61, found himself alone and too old to work in maintenance. That left him in financial peril, so he came up with an idea. In his youth he had acquired an elementary knowledge of metal engraving, and during his time as an aspiring camera inventor, he had dabbled in photography. Before long, Juettner was busy replicating the look and feel of U.S. currency by transferring images of a $1 bill to a pair of zinc plates. On a small hand-driven printing press in his kitchen, Juettner began minting fake $1 bills. First off, no self-respecting counterfeiter would take the time and trouble to replicate $1 bills, but that worked in Juettner’s favor. He used the fake bills just enough to survive, never passing off more than $15 a week. He also never spent money in the same place twice. His “hits” spanned subway stations, dime stores, and taverns all over Manhattan. By 1947, the Secret Service had documented some $7,000 of the distinctive fake $1 bills, saying they were the worst counterfeit bills they had ever seen. In fact, one one set of bills Juettner had misspelled Washington's name. Yet, they were unable to nab the perpetrator. Finally, on a chilly afternoon in January 1948, agents busted into Juettner's brownstone, and instead of finding a criminal mastermind, they were greeted by a jovial 73-year-old. When confronted with the crime, Juettner confessed, “Of course I admit it. They were only $1 bills. I never gave more than one of them to any one person, so nobody ever lost more than $1.” On Sept. 3, 1948, Juettner went before the U.S. District Court, where he faced 10 years in prison on 3 counts of counterfeiting. He wound up being sentenced to 1 year and 1 day, with eligibility for parole after 4 months………and for good measure, he was made to pay a fine of $1. He was paroled after 4 months and returned to a life of normalcy, where he lived out the remainder of his days before passing away at the age of 79 in 1955.
