The Best Worst Counterfeiter in American History

On this episode of Our American Stories, Emerich Juettner was an upstanding citizen... for most of his life. Regular contributor Bill Bryk shares his unusual and unforgettable story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
Ouramerican Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites. We
love telling you quirky stories from our history here on
the show. And this one comes to you from Bill Brake,

(00:33):
a friend from New Hampshire. It's a story of the
best worst counterfeiter in American history.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Emeric Jutner, also known as Edward Mueller, who lived near
Broadway and West ninety sixth Street in Manhattan, eluded the
counterfeiting laws from nineteen thirty eight to nineteen forty eight,
longer than any other maker of the queer in American history.
The first sixty three years of Jutner's life were upright

(01:06):
and respectable. Short, blue eyed, white haired, mustachioed, and blessed
with winning, if toothless grin. Jutna had learned the rudiments
of photo engraving in his native Austria. After emigrating to
America at thirteen, he worked as a building superintendent while
tinkering with numerous unsuccessful inventions with his children grown. The

(01:31):
newly widowed Jutna retired in nineteen thirty seven to the
Upper West Side, where he lived with his mongrel terrier.
He worked as a junk man, picking up discarded appliances
and old tires from vacant lots with a push cart,
but he wasn't making enough to live on and soon
found himself nearing destitution. So, using his ancient engraving skills,

(01:54):
he photographed a dollar bill and recorded the images on
sensitized zinc plays, which he then etched in an acid
bath with a little retouching and a small hand press.
He was ready to make more money by well making
more money. The US Secret Service, which has chased counterfeiters

(02:15):
since eighteen sixty five protecting presidents became part of their
mission only in nineteen oh one, first noticed Jutner's activity
when a phony one dollar silver certificate turned up at
a cigar store on Broadway near one hundred second Street.
Even as the agency opened a new case file numbered

(02:36):
eighty eighty, agents felt everything about the bill was unusual.
No one in recent times had considered singles worth the
trouble to counterfeit. More importantly, the bill was obviously laughably bad.
While US currency was printed on seventy five percent cotton

(02:56):
and twenty five percent linen stock, with red and blue
fibers of various lengths embedded in the paper, Jutner had
used cheap bond paper from some corner store. The numbers
were fuzzy, many of the letters were misshaped or illegible.
Washington's portrait was, as the Secret Service itself reported, poorly executed.

(03:16):
Washington's right shoulder blends with the oval background. The left
eye is represented by a black spot. The right eye
is almond shaped. But the bogus singles kept turning up.
Those that could be traced have been passed to the
subway and elevated lines and newspaper vendors, bartenders, and other
small businesses that handled hundreds, if not thousands, of one

(03:39):
dollar bills daily. Jutner carefully passed his fakes only at
busy times, such as rush hour on the subway. A
five cent fare paid with a phony dollar yielded a
ninety five cent profit, and as the Secret Service later learned,
Jutner never spent a stake in the same store twice

(04:00):
and passed only one or two bills a day. By
December nineteen thirty nine, File eight eighty contained some six
hundred counterfeits. The bills grew worse with time. While touching
up the plates, Jutner misspelled the President's name as wah
Sington wah Chingtun. Nonetheless, he kept passing bogus singles throughout

(04:27):
World War II, despite successive Treasury publicity campaigns. Apparently, many
of those who found themselves holding a Jutner counterfeit kept
it as a souvenir instead of turning it over to
the government. By nineteen forty seven, the Secret Service held
over five thousand of Jutner's phony singles. Yet, despite what

(04:50):
New Yorker writer asked, Saint Clair McElway called a man
hunt that exceeded in intensity and scope any other man
hunt in the Chronicle of Counterfeiting, Despite thousands of interviews
and hundreds of thousands of flyers, the agency didn't have
a clue to his identity. A few weeks before Christmas

(05:11):
nineteen forty seven, Jutner's apartment caught fire. New York's bravest
in extinguishing the blaze piled the old man's junk in
an alley where a sudden snowstorm buried it the homeless
old man dating Queen's with his daughter. While his apartment
was being repaired. On January thirteenth, nineteen forty eight, several

(05:35):
neighborhood youths noticed some thirty strange looking one dollar bills
lying about the alley. Unlike countless businessmen who had accepted
Jutner's signals, the kids instantly realized the bills were bogus.
One of their parents took some to the West one
hundredth Street station house, where detectives identified them as counterfeit.

(05:55):
The Secret Service quickly identified the tenant whose singed furnishings
had been dumped in the alley, and arrested Jutner when
he returned to his apartment a few days later. Jutner
had succeeded because he passed no more bogus singles than
necessary for his survival, only knocking off a few bills
whenever he needed food or help paying his twenty five

(06:18):
dollars monthly rent. Blandly admitting everything, Jutner was sentenced to
a year and a day and fined one dollar. He
was released after four months to live with his daughter
and her family. After McElway profiled him in the New Yorker.
Twentieth Century Fox filmed Mister eight eighty with Edmund gwen

(06:39):
renowned as Chris Kringle in Miracle on thirty fourth Street
in the title role. Jutner made more money from the
film than he had as a counterfeiter.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
And great job on that, Robbie. And thanks to Bill Brake,
our friend from New Hampshire, for delivering this story. And
my goodness, one dollar at a time, not twenties, not
hundreds dollars at a time. This man had of anything,
great discipline and what a great story. And we love
telling well sort of funny stories. I mean, our whole
team was laughing at this one. It was quite amusing.

(07:13):
Bill Braike, thanks so much again, our friend from New
Hampshire and Emeric Juttner's story the best worst counterfeiter in
American history. Here on our American Stories Folks, if you
love the great American stories we tell and love America
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(07:35):
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