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The Last Counterfeiter
The Story of Fake Money, Real Art, and Forging the Impossible $100 Bill
Published by Diversion Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
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Table of Contents
About The Book
The true story of the mastermind counterfeiter who forged millions, replicated the impossible 1996 note, dodged the Secret Service, but couldn't escape the pain of his broken family.
When Art Williams Jr.'s father abandoned the family and his bipolar mother lost her mind, a life of crime in 1970s Chicago quickly claimed him. Parking meter theft led to robbing drug dealers before Art fatefully met a man nicknamed DaVinci who taught him the skill of counterfeiting money.
In the following years, Art printed millions in counterfeit bills, selling them to criminal organizations, meanwhile trying to raise a family on the side. His greatest challenge arose with the Treasury Department's new and most secure hundred-dollar bill ever, the 1996 note. After months spent painstakingly perfecting the new counterfeit bill, he created an indistinguishable copy to bypass the naked eye and security measures alike.
While Art slipped by the Secret Service hunting him, he searched for his long-lost father, a path that ultimately led to his undoing and another prison sentence.
In this new edition, thirteen years later, journalist Jason Kersten details how Art's criminal knowledge caught up with him again as he found himself behind bars with his own son. Yet Art's third prison sentence finally had the desired effect to convince him to start a new life. Upon finishing his sentence, he has reinvented himself, owning art galleries, and using the same techniques that locked him up for six and a half years, now as a successful artist.
When Art Williams Jr.'s father abandoned the family and his bipolar mother lost her mind, a life of crime in 1970s Chicago quickly claimed him. Parking meter theft led to robbing drug dealers before Art fatefully met a man nicknamed DaVinci who taught him the skill of counterfeiting money.
In the following years, Art printed millions in counterfeit bills, selling them to criminal organizations, meanwhile trying to raise a family on the side. His greatest challenge arose with the Treasury Department's new and most secure hundred-dollar bill ever, the 1996 note. After months spent painstakingly perfecting the new counterfeit bill, he created an indistinguishable copy to bypass the naked eye and security measures alike.
While Art slipped by the Secret Service hunting him, he searched for his long-lost father, a path that ultimately led to his undoing and another prison sentence.
In this new edition, thirteen years later, journalist Jason Kersten details how Art's criminal knowledge caught up with him again as he found himself behind bars with his own son. Yet Art's third prison sentence finally had the desired effect to convince him to start a new life. Upon finishing his sentence, he has reinvented himself, owning art galleries, and using the same techniques that locked him up for six and a half years, now as a successful artist.
Product Details
- Publisher: Diversion Books (March 26, 2024)
- Length: 336 pages
- ISBN13: 9781635768411
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Raves and Reviews
[Kersten] ably weaves the minuscule details of currency security with colorful portraits of underworld characters. . . . Illustrating Williams not only as a delinquent genius but a sensitive young man seeking paternal love and aesthetic validation, Kersten configures a rollicking and captivating look into a compelling criminal mind.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
The heart of this wonderful book, which reads like the script for a caper movie, takes us through the whole painstaking process—false starts, dead ends, and cliffhanger setbacks—as Williams improvises his way to becoming an expert counterfeiter. . . . [Kersten's] unsentimental refusal to gloss over the unsavory and depressing details of Williams's life, the private demons that haunt him and his whole dysfunctional family, gives this book its true authenticity of character.
—Washington Post (Best Book of the Year selection)
A gripping testament to the ills of greed and egotism.
—Forbes
An engaging account that mixes the drama of life on the run with the gritty and, at times, poignant reality of characters caught up in a modern underworld of deprivations, drugs, and organized crime.
—Financial Times
Jason Kersten's tale about a Chicago slum-kid-turned-counterfeiter who made millions cracking the Treasury Department's toughest bill ever, the 1996 hundred-dollar note, has all the ingredients of a book you can't put down—intriguing characters, razor-thin escapes, and a writing style that keeps you racing through.
—Bruce Porter, author of the New York Times bestseller Blow: How a Small-Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All
Jason Kersten delves into the arcane world of a master counterfeiter with a fine eye for detail and a novelist's grasp of character. A story about fathers and sons, filled with crime-fueled 'slamming' trips, drug pirates, and obsessive desire, I couldn't put it down. After reading this true tale of money and crime, I'll never be able to look at a C-note the same way again.
—Julia Flynn Siler, author of the New York Times bestseller The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty
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