The Nation: Pushbutton Counterfeiters

Counterfeiting is no longer the privileged scam of the master engraver. A new generation of duplicating machines, capable of copying in living color, threatens to open the field to anyone able to push a button. Technology, laments Richard Thornburgh, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, “has brought counterfeiting ability down to the rankest amateur.”

About a dozen incidents have come to Thornburgh’s attention. A Los Angeles woman, fired by her employer, made a dozen copies of her last paycheck and cashed them all; an East Coast bank was taken for a total of $25,000 when someone cashed copies of a check at 13 different branches; a Washington, D.C., man drove away with a $10,000 Cadillac bought with a copy of a cashier’s check.

The Justice Department has urged Xerox, whose 6500 copier is the principal accomplice of the pushbutton counterfeiters, to find a way to make their machines less perfect as partners in crime. But the company is hesitant. “After all,” says a spokesman, “you don’t hold GM responsible just because a Chevrolet is used as the getaway car in a bank robbery.”