About this item
Art Williams was a precocious student with a bright future, but his dreams shattered when his father abandoned the family and his bipolar mother lost her wits. Living in one of Chicago’s worst housing projects, Williams was breaking open parking meters at age twelve and by his mid-teens he was robbing drug dealers. His quest for both a father figure and stable income would merge at the age of sixteen, when a criminal master nicknamed “Da Vinci” taught him the centuries-old art of counterfeiting. Following a stint in prison, Williams returned to society to find that the Treasury Department had issued the most secure hundred-dollar bill ever created: the 1996 New Note. He spent months trying to circumvent its security features before arriving at a bill so perfect that even law enforcement had difficulty distinguishing it from the real thing.
About the Author
Jason Kersten is the author of the best-selling book, The Art of the Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter, as well as the 2003 New York Times Notable Book, Journal of the Dead: A Story of Friendship and Murder in the New Mexico Desert. Between books, he often writes for national magazines such as Rolling Stone, Men's Journal, and Reader's Digest. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
