Counterfeiters already at work on new bills

ST. LOUIS -- Only a month after the rollout of retooled $20 bills meant to thwart savvy counterfeiters, authorities say a Missouri woman has joined the growing list of the opportunistic trying to cash in with knockoff versions of the newly colorized currency.

Federal grand jurors in St. Louis on Friday accused Margretta Saffold, 33, of passing four fakes of the new $20 bill on Oct. 16 -- exactly a week after the revamped notes were introduced nationally.

Saffold's case brings to at least nine the number of people arrested nationwide -- in Alabama, California, Tennessee, Utah and now Missouri -- in cases involving bogus versions of the most-counterfeited bill domestically, Secret Service spokeswoman Jean Mitchell said.

Saffold's case marks the U.S. government's first indictment -- alleging one felony count of passing counterfeit currency -- relating to the revamped $20 bill in a nation where nearly 200 bogus versions already have surfaced, Mitchell said.

The Secret Service, since March part of the new Department of Homeland Security after more than a century with the Treasury Department, expects more arrests to follow. One reason: Counterfeiters may be hoping to have an easier time with harried cashiers during the crush of the nearing holiday shopping season.

When it comes to bogus versions of the bill, "we somewhat anticipated this," Mitchell said of arrests coming so soon after the introduction of the new $20 bill, supposedly harder to reproduce.

In a world where commercially available digital equipment has made counterfeiting easier, cheaper and often harder to detect, "People are taking opportunities to challenge the system, and that's why we were created," Mitchell said.

The government had counterfeiters in mind when it designed the new $20 bills that did more than make the head of Andrew Jackson -- the nation's seventh president -- appear slightly larger, along with the removal of the border once around his portrait.

The new look was designed to frustrate counterfeiters who over the years have migrated from using offset printing to readily available, increasingly sophisticated color copiers, computer scanners, color ink-jet printers and publishing-grade software.

Thomas Canavit, special agent in charge of St. Louis' Secret Service office, declined to discuss specifics about Saffold, who faces up to 20 years behind bars and $250,000 in fines if convicted.

"Those bills were obviously passable," though they clearly were of lesser quality when compared by trained eyes to true versions of the currency, Canavit said. "Unfortunately, too often people don't give it the scrutiny it deserves."

On the Net

Secret Service: www.ustreas.gov/usss

Bureau of Engraving and Printing: www.bep.treas.gov