The Art of Making Money (35 page)

Art hung up the phone and pulled over at the corner of Loomis. He expected to break down, but he didn’t. Other than telling his sister the bad news, he would continue with his day as he had planned. But that evening, when he attended the opening of his friend’s restaurant, he didn’t talk much. He didn’t rush over to meet the people he had not seen in years, but waited for them to approach him, and when they did he greeted them politely and contritely. He was on autopilot. He listened to the waves of the party and watched it as if it were a genuinely beautiful miracle of denial. And then when it came time for speeches, he watched his friend’s father climb onto a table to deliver his blessing. The old man was classic Chicago Irish, red-faced and white-haired, a face that could have passed in Bridgeport a hundred and thirty years ago. He held up a glass of whiskey and told the crowd how proud he was of his boy and how lucky he was to see him open up his own place. His eyes were wet blue flames and he toasted his son and thanked him for making this one of the best days of his life.

Art applauded vigorously, his hands like wings beating against a free fall. As soon as the old man stepped off the table, he ran out the front door, laid his back to the wall, and started sobbing.

EPILOGUE

I went to Missouri, then to Minnesota, then up and down
the west. I lectured in many places on the art of detecting
counterfeit money, and did well. Then I shoved a good
many notes, as I traveled—and the officers got upon my
trail again. I knew it. I watched them, while they watched
me. . . . I had no peace for a long time—anywhere.
And I wanted to get out of the business. But I couldn’t
see my way.

—PETE MCCARTNEY, INFAMOUS COUNTERFEITER

 

 

 

 

When I decided to write this book, I had high hopes that Art Williams would be the next Frank Abagnale Jr.—the young criminal genius who had exchanged his life of crime for a lucrative career as a document-security consultant. Despite Art’s long history as a counterfeiter, by the time I met him in the spring of 2005 there were many reasons to believe this was not only possible, but likely.

First there was the extreme price he had paid for his crime: It had cost him the life of his father, who he had dreamed about reconnecting with since the day he had left. That alone, I believed, had been enough to scare him away from ever taking the same road again. Then there was the additional fallout from Alaska. On March 21, 2004, Jim Shanigan failed to return home after spending a day in Anchorage. Three days later his wife reported him missing. His fate would remain uncertain until April 26, 2006, when a surveyor working in some woods in Wasilla came across his skeleton. State coroners were unable to determine the cause of death, but according to several law-enforcement sources who wish to remain anonymous, there were rumors floating around that the Hell’s Angels hadn’t been happy about the fact that Jim and Vicki had testified in a case related to one of their associates.

Anice, despite her stubbornness and bottomless capacity for denial, arguably didn’t deserve the five years she got for her role in the operation. She was no princess and she paid a traitor’s price, but she was so hapless in her own defense that it’s impossible to not wonder if her mental capacity was compromised after all. Claiming phantom illnesses even after her trial, she served out most of her sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, and was released in February of 2006. Only seven months later she was found dead in her apartment in Wasilla, apparently of heart failure. According to Chrissy, right up to the end Anice refused to admit her guilt, even though by then the only judge she faced was in the mirror.

Though Art wasn’t to blame for the choices of his confederates, all of these losses were devastating testimony to the destructive power of his bills and counterfeiting in general. He knew that more than anyone, and there were people who still needed him. Natalie, who joined Art in Chicago after her probation was up, gave birth to their second child, a baby boy, in late 2004, bringing his total brood to four. During the writing of this book, Wensdae lost her long battle to save her leg. Doctors amputated it just below the knee, but due to complications it’s still uncertain whether or not she’ll have to undergo further surgeries. Succinctly, Art had abundant reasons to speak out against the very crime he had perfected.

Not long after the
Rolling Stone
story came out, he was approached by Document Security Systems, Inc., a publicly traded company based in Rochester, New York, that specializes in state-of-the-art protection systems against document theft, counterfeiting, and fraud. When they read about Art’s innovative techniques for replicating the New Note, they offered him a speaking gig at a conference of law enforcement officers that included members of both the FBI and the Secret Service—the kind of men Art had spent much of his life avoiding. Like me, they wanted to know his trade secrets.

Art accepted the offer. He spent days composing a twenty-minute speech and wrangling with his parole officer to obtain permission to leave Illinois, and in February 2006, he finally flew to Rochester for the big reckoning. A few hours before he was supposed to speak, he called me. He was absolutely terrified.

“I don’t know if I can go through with this,” he said. “There’s gonna be a lot of cops there. Feds.”

“You already talked to me,” I told him. “These guys will appreciate what you have to say even more. You’re all in the same business, they’re just on the other side of it.”

“Dude, it’s my stomach. I really feel like I’m about to throw up.”

He actually did throw up, dry heaves about twenty minutes before he was scheduled to take the podium. He had peeked into the conference room and seen dozens of men and women filing in. Some were in uniform, but many of them were dressed sharply and conservatively, carrying themselves with the same confident poise and authority he had long come to dread.

Every instinct told him turn away, but he didn’t. Pale and sweating, he stepped from the side entrance and stood before six hundred law-enforcement professionals. He had his speech typed out in front of him, but as he stared at the words, he found himself unable to begin. Awkward, silent seconds pressed down on the room, and finally he stepped back, took a few deep breaths, and abandoned his prepared speech.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the crowd of cops. “I gotta tell you people that I’m really nervous. You gotta understand. I know I’m supposed to do this speech, but you people need to put yourselves in my shoes for minute. My whole life—a huge amount of it—I’ve spent trying to avoid
you
. I’m looking out at you and do you know what I am seeing? I am literally seeing my worst nightmare.”

A dam break of laughter filled the room. From that moment on he had them. Soon he was rolling along, leading the crowd through his tutelage with da Vinci, his early life as counterfeiter, and eventually his campaign against the New Note. He focused mainly on the technical and business aspects, avoiding the personal details. By the time the question-and-answer session was finished, his twenty-minute speech had run to an hour. He exited the podium to applause and smiles, then snuck out a back entrance to the hotel and cried.

Art called me the next day with the play-by-play. I wasn’t surprised by the warm reception he had received, nor was I a week later when Document Security Systems offered him a high-paying job as a speaker and consultant. He began calling me every day, telling me about ideas he was sharing with DSS and things he was learning from them, plans to move to Rochester. With each piece of good news, I saw another line of this epilogue writing itself.

Then suddenly his calls became fewer and farther between, and often he’d take a week to respond to mine. Every time we did speak, the news worsened; he couldn’t work for DSS because his parole officer had refused to let him leave the state; he and Natalie had had a falling out, and she had taken the kids back to Texas. The most positive development in his life was a rekindling of his relationship with his oldest son, Art III—or the “Kid,” as Art called him. The Kid had in fact moved in with Art, and showed extremely promising talent as a budding rap artist. When the subject of how he was supporting everybody came up, he told me he was working as a foreman for a contractor friend.

Six months after his speech, on August 14, 2007, he was arrested for counterfeiting.

It’s unclear when he became active again. Because the statute of limitations has yet to expire, Art refuses to discuss the circumstances of his latest operation in detail. It certainly wouldn’t have been out of character for him to have been printing even when we met and he told me (not to mention six hundred cops) that he was retired. That’s what everyone, including himself, wanted to believe, and telling his story was an attempt to force his life as a criminal onto the page and into the past. He knew more than anyone the value of paper and ink; if it was written that he was retired, perhaps it would become true. The problem was that he was telling himself the same old story: that he would do just one more print run to get him and his family safely across the waters.

Art did tell me how he was caught. He came home one day to find a pile of counterfeit bills drying on his kitchen table. They had been made not by him, but by his sixteen-year-old son, who had read my article in
Rolling Stone
. Art went ballistic, and during the ensuing fight his son grabbed a pile of bills off the table and ran out into the street—just as a Chicago PD cruiser was passing by. According to the Secret Service, his son declared to the officer that the bills were counterfeit and that his father had made them—an act that the boy will probably regret for the rest of his life.

Within half an hour, Secret Service agents were searching Art’s apartment, where they turned up both bills and equipment. Most of the bills were twenties of inferior quality that had been made by the Kid, but there were also high-quality hundreds that the Service knew could only have been made by Art himself. Ultimately, Art pleaded guilty to manufacturing over eighty-nine thousand dollars and was sentenced to eighty-seven months. He is currently incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institute in Manchester, Kentucky, where he spends most of his time reading, writing, and keeping to himself. He and Natalie have made up, and she eagerly awaits his release, which should happen sometime in August of 2013. Manchester is too far from Dallas for Natalie to make the drive to visit, and they’re hoping he’ll soon be transferred to Texas.

By the time he is released, the next-generation hundred-dollar bill will be in circulation. It will be more technologically advanced than anything Americans have ever seen, featuring holographic images generated by “microlenses” wedded into the paper’s matrix. Counterfeiters will find it the most daunting obstacle to their profession in history. Many will try to master it and the overwhelming majority will fail. But as Art Williams says, “There is always a way.”

This is the story of Art Williams, his family, and many of his friends, as he told it and as I interpreted it. If Art hadn’t summoned the courage to share his secrets with me, it couldn’t have happened. It was an immensely emotional process for him, and I thank both him and Natalie for opening the door to some very difficult parts of their lives and having the courage to share it with strangers.

The man who introduced me to Art Williams and his story was Paul Pompian, who became my great friend and mentor. He did his best to transmit to me his priceless understanding of and passion for the wondrous connections, histories, characters, and miracles of his native Chicago. I’d never even been to Chicago before writing this book; if I got anything right about this magnificent city, it’s because of him.

Scott Waxman, my book agent, once told me that representing writers had been his childhood dream. As a kid, that’s gotta be even harder to explain than wanting to
be
a writer. All I ever wanted to do was write and find a believer like him. Scott found me, and he continues to be an inspiration.

Jim Kaminsky, my friend and editor through the years at various magazines, was the first to publish my writings about Art Williams in
Rolling Stone
. Jim is the most dedicated, discerning, passionate, and talented magazine editor I’ve had the privilege to work with. Both of my books have been a direct result of our partnership.

Moira Meltzer-Cohen was the first person to read this book. Her insights and encouragement helped me through the hardest part, which is finishing.

Always last, always most, I’d like to thank my family and good friends, who endured the usual litany of angst, complaints about obscure narrative and reporting stuff, unfairly long episodes of burrowing and insensitivity, and the resulting cluelessness I typically display when I emerge. Out of them, no one deserves my gratitude more than Judy Dutton. The only genuine currency in this world is true love, and she’s my mint.