Hard times lead to the rise of crime. Sometimes the police can’t reveal the identity of a fraudster for years, and in the end, a perfect accident helps them in this. The events of this story unfolded during the Great Depression, which began in the United States in 1929. This is a period of severe economic turmoil, when thousands of Americans were left without the usual earnings.
The crisis has affected literally every family, unemployment has become widespread. Emeric Juttner, an elderly cleaner from New York, could not keep his already not very profitable job. The man could not even get money for food, so he decided to go down a slippery slope. Emerich began to study specific literature in order to understand how to become a counterfeiter! 
It seemed to the American that this was not a very difficult task, which, with due perseverance, could be mastered fairly quickly. Emerich prepared well, read a lot of books, and then decided to act. An American has equipped a real workshop for the production of counterfeit dollars right in the kitchen of his New York apartment.
The enterprising man had some savings, which he spent on the purchase of equipment. The American purchased printing and engraving machines, and not the most expensive ones, after which he began to forge dollars! He felt that printing money himself was a more reliable way to get it than trying to make money during a crisis.
The American’s plan was quite simple – he made counterfeit banknotes of a small denomination. Emerich started printing one-dollar money! The counterfeiter’s calculation was simple: large bills are always checked, but small dollars are very rarely carefully examined for forgery. 
At the same time, even if the seller discovers counterfeit money, he is unlikely to want to contact the police for such a trifle. And it really worked! Over time, the market was flooded with counterfeit dollars, so the American authorities had to find out about it. And so it happened. The secret service of the Ministry of Finance very soon got the first fake Emeric dollar.
The employees of the organization could not believe their eyes! After all, no self-respecting counterfeiter would waste time and resources on creating such small bills! But that wasn’t the only thing that surprised them. The fake dollar was just of disgusting quality! It was impossible to believe that someone could decide to buy something for such obviously fake money! 
The dollar was printed on the cheapest paper, there was no protection on it, and there was also a mistake in the word Washington. But the most interesting thing is that the president on the bill was completely different from himself. Specialists took up the case, began to investigate the crime. Soon they had 40 more fake dollar bills on their hands. And yes, they were all of terrible quality!
After a very short period of time, there were almost 600 bills! They were disgusting, they didn’t look like real money at all, but the culprit still hadn’t been caught! The police could not find the person who made such terrible counterfeit bills! It was unheard of! But Emerich acted very carefully. 
This favourably distinguished him from other counterfeiters, who became very numerous during the Great Depression. The American did not make large denominations, did not spend money in the same place. The main principle of Emerich was conspiracy. He paid almost no attention to the quality of the fakes, but strictly made sure not to spend money in the same places.
At the same time, the American did not make purchases for more than $ 15 a week. If we take this into account, Emerich spent no more than $ 60 a month, now they are equal to about 800-a hundred dollars in purchasing power, so it was still a good salary increase. In the office of the investigator who conducted the case, there was a map full of red flags. 
So the places where fakes were found were marked. The police distributed leaflets describing counterfeit banknotes, warned that the fraudster was offering fake one-dollar bills, but it was all useless! The criminal was searched for 10 years, but the case has not moved from the dead point!
But in the end, the counterfeiter was still found, but completely by accident. During the fire, a money printing machine was thrown out of the house, which was severely damaged by fire. The owner of the equipment turned out to be Emerich, who was immediately arrested. At that time, the counterfeiter was a very old man, but this did not save the enterprising American from prison. 
However, Emerich was released on parole 4 months after his arrest. Juttner was a criminal, but he behaved very carefully, did not show greed, tried not to deceive sellers by more than a dollar and acted out of vital necessity, sometimes just not to starve.
All this was taken into account by the court. Interestingly, the scammer’s life story interested the filmmakers so much that they made a full-fledged film based on it. The money received for Emeric’s participation in the project turned out to be more than those that he had printed on his machine all the time.