“Nothing positive,” Larry said. “Are you people accomplishing anything?”
“We're just getting underway. There's something off-trail about this deal, Woolford. It doesn't fit into routine.”
Larry Woolford said, “I wouldn't think so if the stuff is so good not even a bank clerk can tell the difference.”
“That's not what I'm talking about now. Let me give you a run down on standard counterfeiting.” The Secret [pg 011] Service agent pushed back in his swivel chair, lit a cigarette, and propped his feet onto the edge of a partly open desk drawer. “Briefly, it goes like this. Some smart lad gets himself a set of plates and a platen press and—”
Larry interrupted, “Where does he get the plates?”
“That doesn't matter now,” Steve said. “Various ways. Maybe he makes them himself, sometimes he buys them from a crooked engraver. But I'm talking about pushing green goods once it's printed. Anyway, our friend runs off, say, a million dollars worth of fives. But he doesn't try to pass them himself. He wholesales them around netting, say, fifty thousand dollars. In other words, he sells twenty dollars in counterfeit for one good dollar.”
Larry pursed his lips. “Quite a discount.”
“Um-m-m. But that's safest from his angle. The half dozen or so distributors he sold it to don't try to pass it either. They also are playing it carefully. They peddle it, at say ten to one, to the next rung down the ladder.”
“And these are the fellows that pass it, eh?”
“Not even then, usually. These small timers take it and pass it on at five to one to the suckers in the trade, who take the biggest risks. Most of these are professional pushers of the queer, as the term goes. Some, however, are comparative amateurs. Sailors for instance, who buy with the idea of passing it in some foreign port where seamen's money flows fast.”