A retiree who became America’s worst counterfeiter | Hacker News Reader

A retiree who became America’s worst counterfeiter

thehustle.co

165 pointsrmason17 comments

> After some investigative work, they determined the plates were in the hands of one John Canning, an industrious 10-year-old who’d acquired them through the trade of a Japonese bayonet.

Oh man, to be a 10 year old in the 1940s. I traded pogs and pieces of wood. :/

Did he get parole after 4 months, or spend the whole 1 year and 1 month in prison?

Could he persuade the judge that he had... made a change?

I can't believe you could only get a 1 year jail sentence for printing false money in today's world...

In the wrong state, a bag of weed, bootleg DVD's, or taking creepy photos can give you years in prison...

I wonder if he actually helped the Secret Service by giving them a fairly benign, yet real world scenario on which to hone their methods and train their people.

I wonder how many storekeepers looked at the bill, then looked at him, then just accepted it and sent him on his way?

tldr; he never gave more than $1 to anyone... also the last paragraphs.

Years before his death, a reporter at the New York Daily News asked Juettner if he’d ever considered returning to a life of counterfeiting, the craft to which he’d so unskillfully devoted more than a decade.

“No,” he responded. “There wasn’t enough money in it.”

Catch me if I can

"...boarded a ship in Austria ..."

Austria-Hungary, perhaps?

Triest was a Austrian port back then.

Europe in 1890:

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_European_histo...

So Austria had a sea coast along the Adriatic Sea (back of the "Boot of Italy") where now we have Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia Herzegovina [,and part of Montenegro?].

After WW1 Austria lost its ports on the Mediterranean, those went to Yugoslawia, it lost the industrial areas and coal mines, those went to Czechoslowakia and Poland and it lost its agricultural areas, those went to Hungary. Any questions why the administrative hydrocephalus in Vienna wasn't commercially viable any more, and why the Anschluß was considered a good idea by so many Austrians?

The same thing confuses people watching "The Sound of Music" -- how could Captain von Trapp be an Austrian naval officer? But although the musical isn't completely historically accurate, that part is true -- he was a U-boat captain in the Austrian navy in WWI when it wasn't a landlocked country.

Austria, as a part of Austria-Hungary, was a much larger country before WWI than it is now.

The borders of Austria-Hungary included the entirety of the modern countries of Austria, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina. In addition, it contained hunks of the countries surrounding it. The belt of land in modern Poland and Ukraine along the axis from Katowice to Ternopil were all in Austria, while the region of modern Romania northwest of the mountain range was all in Hungary. Serbia north of Belgrade and Sabac (along the Danube-Sava river boundary) was Hungarian. The triangular region in northern Italy of Sudtirol was Austrian, as was the region around Trieste.

Internally, modern Czechia, Slovenia, the southern coast of Croatia (Dalmatia, specifically), the peninsular coast of Croatia, and most of the aforementioned territories were Austrian. Modern Slovakia, Hungary, the rest of Croatia, and the extra portions of Serbia and Romania were all part of Hungary. Bosnia was in neither Austria nor Hungary.

I like Trent’s comment I wonder if he is a silicon valley entrepreneur

For me, it covered with a screen asking me to subscribe. I was unable to X out. (Chrome on Ubuntu.)

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