THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 14, 1995 TAG: 9503140281
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JANET RAE-DUPREE, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
DATELINE: SAN JOSE, CALIF. LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
Personal computers were still rare when scientist Annette Jaffe awed a computer graphics industry gathering with the clarity of color ink-jet printing.
Within days, Secret Service agents were at her San Jose lab. Could she duplicate a $50 bill? A $100 bill?
She did. It took 20 minutes. ``That made them very nervous.'' Rightly so.
Today, 15 years later, color printers and copiers have spawned a new breed of criminal - the casual counterfeiter.
In response, two Silicon Valley scientists - Jaffe and holography expert Glenn Sincerbox - have joined nine other volunteer researchers to outwit the newly minted crooks making mad money off their technology. It's a three-year, $600,000 effort that's going to change the look of nearly every bill in the American money supply.
Roughly $30 million in fake notes were turned out from computers and copiers in 1994, a figure that has been doubling every year since 1989. Compared to old-fashioned counterfeiting on expensive printing presses, the high-tech counterfeiter is still dealing in small change; about $100 million a year is produced on presses.
But if the Federal Reserve doesn't take steps to stop the casual counterfeiter, experts fear the new wave of counterfeiting could be a billion dollar industry by 2000.
And some of that could end up in your unsuspecting hands. Based on recommendations by Jaffe, Sincerbox and others, the feds already have slipped two new tricks in your bills: a thin polyester security thread and microscopic printing that's impossible to copy.
However, both additions are so subtle that few consumers notice them, defeating the goal of creating an easy-to-spot fake. So, starting around this time next year with the $100 bill, a major redesign will include anti- counterfeiting measures that will be hard to miss.
Ben Franklin's portrait will be larger, set off-center and shadowed by a hazy watermark to the right. Parts of the bill will be printed in color-shifting ink that looks green from one angle, gold from another and possibly red from a third point of view. Tiny iridescent shreds of colorful paper may be pressed into each bill, and special fibers visible only to machines will help sort currency and spot the phony stuff.
If, despite all that, casual counterfeiters try to copy or scan the new bill anyway, hidden moire-generating lines will make the replica come out with blotchy spots, as if Ben suddenly had a nasty case of chicken pox.
And if counterfeiters hack their way around all those new features, the scientists are working on a smorgasbord of additional high-tech ways to thwart even the most determined crook.
``We figured out early on that we weren't going to stop all of the really determined professionals,'' said Sincerbox, who works at IBM's Almaden Research Center, where he and Jaffe first became counterfeiters' foes. (Jaffe has since moved on to Apple Computers). ``But we have all sorts of ways to discourage the casual counterfeiter.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color graphic
KEYWORDS: COUNTERFEIT MONEY by CNB