Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed, Arthur Williams Jr., a Southside Chicago

street tough turned counterfeiting craftsman, his bills impeccable.

The case agent testified at Art Jr.'s sentencing that they were probably the

best quality he'd ever seen.

He rolls millions off the press, but makes the mistake of turning it into a

family affair.

His dad asked him, so son, what are you doing for a living?

Art says, well, Dad, I make money.

Okay, how do you make money?

I make money.

I'm a counterfeit.

On August 14, 2006,

A 15 -year -old boy approaches a Chicago police car with a wad of cash in his

hand. He tells the officer that it's all counterfeit and that there's a lot more

in his father's apartment upstairs.

So the police go in, they see what appears to be obvious counterfeit and

of counterfeit bills being put together.

They also find the resident of the apartment, Art Williams Jr., and arrest

on suspicion of counterfeiting.

They didn't have the machinery Art used to make the bills.

But they had the bills themselves, and Art could see that, you know, somebody

was going to have to pay for this, and it was going to have to be him.

Williams talks to American Greed from Federal Prison in Big Spring, Texas.

I guess that's where I failed my son, right?

As far as being a good father, I didn't know how to do that. I didn't have a

father in my own life.

What the police don't realize is that most of the money is created by the 15

-year -old.

And that it will not be the last counterfeit he will create.

We didn't have any reason to think he was involved. We thought it was just,

know, unlucky kid with a criminal dad who's got this kid in a bad situation.

Before being betrayed by his son,

Art Williams Jr.

claims to have produced more than $10 million in counterfeit cash, which some

federal agents call the best counterfeit they've ever seen.

His journey has taken him from places as desperate as the seedy underworld of

organized crime to the frozen expanses of rural Alaska.

But his story starts here, on the south side of Chicago, where he and his two

siblings spend their formative years in the projects of a street -tough

neighborhood called Bridgeport.

It is the sad destination of a long -deteriorating childhood, one that one

showed a great deal of promise.

Art was a brilliant little kid. He was a straight -A student in school, which

was remarkable because he came from a very messed -up family.

His father abandons the family when Art Jr.

is nine, and his mother is diagnosed with schizophrenia.

The mounting difficulties move the family from a comfortable life in the

to the tough streets of the projects.

I remember walking through all the projects.

There was graffiti and there were gangbangers hanging out.

I mean, it was like, you know, walking into hell.

Williams begins to adapt one afternoon when he finds his mother in the kitchen

crying. She goes, I just don't know how we're going to make it anymore.

And I went to the fridge and it was empty, you know. And I just got so

not at my mom, but just angry at life.

He storms out of the house in frustration.

I remember hitting the meters.

I mean, I'm walking by each one, and I'm hitting them.

And so I start to hear the chains rattling.

I started inspecting it, and I noticed these two pins.

I remember picking up, and there was this little piece of metal, and I stuck

under the pins, and what do you know, this damn thing turned.

When Williams returns home with an armful of groceries, he's greeted by a

conflicted reaction from his mother.

She was in tears.

that we had food.

But at the same time, she was mad because I was stealing.

She always told me God would provide, you know.

But I said, well, he did, you know. I remember that was the first time that I

felt empowered.

At that point, you see this brilliant little kid start to put on a completely

different sort of armor. He ends up getting into street crimes because the

in the gang show him that, well, why are you knocking over parking meters?

when you can be robbing the cars next to them.

But lives in the streets almost always have bad endings.

And to make matters more urgent, Williams learns that his 14 -year -old

girlfriend is now pregnant with his child.

Williams needs help. And one day, opportunity is presented at a local

shop. One of the guys hanging out is this old -school counterfeiter.

This guy says, you know, look, kid, I can give you a job if you're interested.

In the mid -80s, before scanners and Photoshop, counterfeiting is a legacy

crime. It's intricate details passed from one generation to the next.

The old Italian counterfeiter takes Williams to this nondescript building to

learn what is often called the world's second oldest profession.

Counterfeiters have often described the sensation of seeing the bills come off

the presses as almost sexual in nature.

For Art, this kid who had no money, growing up in these hard circumstances,

suddenly printing their own money, he is immediately addicted.

But after six months, William's new teacher suddenly disappears.

It seems that William's counterfeiting career is over before it starts.

I just reverted back to what I knew, and that was the streets.

But life in the streets has gotten tougher.

And after being shot in the leg, Williams knows it's time for a change.

At that point, I just said, what am I doing?

You know, what am I doing?

When American Greed returns, Williams' newfound skills have him living the

highlights. But will he be able to stay ahead of the law?

He needs to leave immediately because these other people are going to get him

caught. He smells it.

On the south side of Chicago, Art Williams Jr.

faces his destiny on the streets when a rival gang puts two bullets in his legs.

He survives, but he knows his luck can't last forever.

He realized that it's only a matter of time if he sticks with the streets and

the street crime before he just gets killed.

And so he decides that at that point he's going to set up his own

operation. An old Italian counterfeiter has shown Williams the basics of

counterfeiting. as a master shows his apprentice.

But the master has disappeared, and Williams is now on his own.

Luckily for him, a counterfeiter couldn't be in a better place.

Within, I think, a couple hundred miles radius of Chicago, you have the largest

printing industry in the world.

Not far from Williams' home, in fact, is Chicago's Printer's Row, which has been

a hub of the U .S. printing industry for over a century.

It provides everything he needs.

A printing press, process camera, plate burner, hydraulic cutter, inks, and

miles of paper.

Unfortunately, despite having the equipment, the young apprentice still

the skills.

Art's first bills, they come out like purple.

They're no good.

He gets frustrated, he stops, and he spends a couple weeks, you know, upset

depressed.

But Williams is resilient.

Right about that time, we're talking, I think, the early 90s at this point, the

scanners and printers and computers and the programs start becoming really,

really good. He creates what's called a hybrid bill, where he uses both the

computer technology and the offset technology.

Finally, he gets some pretty good bills.

Williams believes they're good enough to get 30 cents on the dollar if he can

find the right buyers.

money off counterfeiting is to sell it to other criminal groups. Because when

you're dealing with organized crime, when you're printing it, no one's going

report you to the police.

And again, he couldn't be in a better place than Chicago.

It's one of the great capitals of organized crime.

Growing up in Bridgeport, you know, there's guys right up the street.

Before long, Williams is selling to crime organizations, including the

Mexican, and Russian mafias.

Williams estimates that he sells $3 million of counterfeit over the next

years, earning him a profit of approximately a million dollars.

And he knows how to spend it.

When you know you can always print more money, you tend to not care.

He becomes the life of a nonstop party.

But the high life is causing problems with his girlfriend, who takes care of

their son, Arthur Williams III.

He spends more and more time away from home. He starts dabbling in cocaine, and

that's no good for his home life.

And so eventually she starts seeing someone else.

Williams is devastated, but suddenly gets a phone call from a voice that has

rarely been able to offer support in the past, his mother's.

By then she's living in Texas, where she's originally from, and she talks him

into moving down to Texas and getting out of Chicago.

Williams shuts down his counterfeiting shop and gets on a bus to rural Texas to

start a new life.

And a new life it is.

Well, life in Texas is a lot slower than it is in the streets of Chicago.

And Art actually kind of goes straight for a while.

But it doesn't last.

Art sort of, you know, has this little criminal alarm clock in him. And the

alarm's just gone off.

Williams returns to street crimes that he knows from his days on the south side

of Chicago.

He even does a three -year stint at a Texas prison for burglary.

But the crimes don't stay petty for long.

One day, his new girlfriend, Natalie, peaks his singular obsession when she

pulls out a $100 bill at a bookstore.

That's the first time Art sees the new money that had changed in 1996.

When American Greed Returns.

The U .S. government sets its sights on counterfeiters with its most complex

bill yet.

Will Williams be able to beat it?

It goes from the way to make money for art to an almost artistic quest.

It's about being able to create something that nobody else can.

It's rolling off the presses now, the biggest change in the look of U .S.

currency in 66 years.

In 1996, the U .S. Treasury Department begins issuing a new series of bills in

the most concentrated effort in U .S. history to deter counterfeiters.

The first to get a facelift is the $100 bill, the most widely circulated piece

of currency in the world and the most tempting target for counterfeiters.

Three years later, retired counterfeiter Arthur Williams Jr.

holds the new $100 bill in his hands for the first time.

It's like nothing he's ever seen.

The new bill comes with a myriad of security features. The watermark, the

security thread, color -shifting ink, micro -printing.

When Art sees the bill, he's enraptured by it.

He's looking at the watermark and, you know, he's thinking, wow, and he sees

color -shifting ink.

And suddenly, all these old techniques, they start going through his head about

how to defeat each measure.

In addition to being the most secure bill in U .S. history, it is also the

publicized, thanks to the government's Know Your Money campaign.

The important thing about the publicity campaign was that people became aware of

the money that they were actually spending in their hand. The watermark on

real hundred is large and fuzzy.

On a fake...

The image is smaller and sharper.

People suddenly knew about the watermark. They knew about the security

People are paying attention to their money. And if you're a counterfeiter,

that's not something you want people to do.

Unless you are an extraordinary counterfeiter.

By making the bill so difficult to replicate, the U .S. Treasury has just

eliminated a great deal of Williams' competition.

He knew that whoever could counterfeit this new $100 bill convincingly stood to

make a great deal of money.

The potential payoff is too much to resist.

He sets up shop in his girlfriend Natalie's apartment and begins to unlock

1996 new note.

Once Art starts getting into reverse engineering this bill, he really falls

love with the process.

It goes from a way to make money for Art to an almost artistic quest.

It's about being able to create something that nobody else can.

In other words, Williams is an artist, and the 1996 $100 note is to be his

Mona Lisa.

The first thing he goes after isn't even really part of the bill. It's the pen,

because this anti -counterfeiting pen was everywhere at that point.

It's the pen we've seen cashiers mark bills with all across the country.

On real U .S. currency, the pen will mark yellow, but most fake currency will

mark black.

It all comes down to the paper.

Williams assigns Natalie the task of finding the right paper to trick the

But she's having trouble, and Williams is getting frustrated.

Finally, one day, she blows up at him, and she says, Look, I've tried

everything. You want me to try this? And she goes around the house, and you want

me to try that? Marking everything in paper with the counterfeiting pen.

And then she marks a phone book, and they both look at it, and the ink stays

yellow. Having found the right paper, Williams sets out to tackle the next

challenge, the color -shifting ink.

If you look at the bill, it's on the denomination mark on the lower right

corner. As the angle of the bill changes, the color of the ink changes

black to green.

Hart has never dealt with an ink like that. He's just using basic inks, and he

doesn't know where this stuff has come from.

And then one day he's walking across a parking lot, and he sees a car.

And he notices the color of the car is changing as he walks past it.

And he says whatever they're using in that car could work for this.

He begins calling auto body shops and discovers something remarkable.

The same company that provides the U .S. Treasury with one of their most prized

security features sells the same technology publicly.

Can't get the exact same color, but you can get a shift.

And as far as he's concerned, the shift is all that matters. They're just

looking for the shift. They're not necessarily looking at the color of the

shift. It's an important distinction.

With counterfeiting, you're not creating real money.

You're creating an expectation of what real money is.

And as far as the public is concerned, if you meet all those expectations, it

real money to them.

That distinction is maybe clearest in how Williams recreates the micro

-printing. He cannot replicate the detail of real currency, but to the

eye, it appears that the micro -printing is there, which is enough for your

typical cashier.

Only under magnification can you see the lower resolution of the fake.

But these issues are almost trivial compared with the final hurdle, the

watermark. The watermark can be visible to the right of the portrait.

And if you hold it up to a light, you're seeing a ghostly, sort of shadowy image

of Benjamin Franklin.

The challenge of the watermark is that it's actually built into the paper.

So unless Williams makes his own paper, it is impossible to genuinely replicate.

The answer eventually comes to him in a dream he has. He sees two pieces of

paper with a fake watermark in the middle of them, and they come together

sandwich.

Williams cuts out a portrait of Benjamin Franklin from ultra -thin tracing paper

and puts it between the front and back of the bill.

And the interesting thing about that is he can also put in a security strip if

he's doing it that way.

And where one piece of phone book paper is too thin, two pieces is absolutely

perfect. Art in Natalie's Mona Lisa is complete.

You can hear just the ominous respect in their voice about what it was like

to see that bill and know that it would pass all those tests.

It was a powerful thing that they had come up with.

In the fall of 1999, they head back to Chicago to look up some old clients from

the shadowy world of organized crime.

As soon as his old cohorts see that bill, the bank is open. It's time to do

real business with this money.

But by now, selling the money is not the only way these alchemists can turn

counterfeit cash into gold.

Once Art came up with the 96 note, It was just too enticing for him to just

it to people. He started spending it. But the way he would spend it was pretty

fun. He calls it slamming. He would get a bunch of trusted friends and family

members, and he would take them on a road trip.

And they would hit the big super malls across the Midwest.

And they would go into a store, they'd buy something worth like $10, and they'd

get $90 back in real change.

Art's sister Wednesday is a part of it from the beginning.

You go in, you pick something out, you go up to the cash register and you talk

and you smile and you hand her the bill.

She can mark it, it would mark.

She can look and see the strip and put it in and give you your change.

But it isn't just take the money and run.

Yes, they keep the money.

But they served their penance by dropping off the ill -gotten merchandise

nearest Salvation Army.

Diapers, clothes, baby clothes, shoes, stuff like that.

We're giving people, I mean, we're not really like bad criminals.

This became a high in and of itself to Art, because Art suddenly gets to be

Robin Hood.

Suddenly he is fighting the big money system, because he would only really hit

the big chain stores.

I don't know if I should feel guilty for that.

Guilty for...

Taking money from a big department store?

I don't know. Maybe, I mean, yeah, maybe I was in the wrong. Maybe we were in

the wrong.

But I don't really feel guilty if I should.

I don't know if that's bad.

Is that bad?

Over the next two years, Williams estimates that he prints $4 to $5

counterfeit currency.

And it appears law enforcement is nowhere near catching him.

Until he offers them a reason to come to his door at the House of Blues Hotel in

Chicago.

A security guard at the hotel heard Art and one of his friends talking about

getting some cocaine to party with that night.

And at that point, he tells a couple of Chicago police officers who are outside.

The police don't have a right to search a room based on hearsay. So the security

guard fabricates a noise complaint that allows them to knock on Williams' door.

They just kind of barge their way in.

and sitting on a coffee table in there is some marijuana.

It prompts a more intensive search, and one of the officers finds a stack of

bills. And he looks really closely at it, and the one thing he doesn't see on

those bills are the little red and blue silk hairs.

The red and blue silk fibers have been in U .S. currency for decades, and

Williams usually replicates them easily. This time he was either lazy or he

simply forgot.

A few hours later, Secret Service shows up, and they had known about him.

They didn't know who he was or where he was, but they knew about his bills, and

they had been looking for him.

The Secret Service not only protects the president, it also protects the United

States' financial integrity.

And now they have one of its most prolific corruptors sitting right in

them.

When American Greed Returns.

Is Williams about to face his reckoning?

I mean, when you got two cops coming into the room with guns pointed at your

face, you know, it doesn't look good, right?

On February 20th, 2001, master counterfeiter Arthur Williams Jr.

sits in a Chicago interrogation room with the United States Secret Service.

He's been caught with approximately $60 ,000 in counterfeit at the House of

Blues Hotel.

And the Secret Service wants to know where it came from.

He confessed. He was almost looking for approval from the only people who really

could appreciate what he did, which were the Secret Service.

While Williams thinks he's caught, his lawyer isn't so sure.

He goes to the hotel room to review the arrest and find something interesting.

The police officer would later claim that when she had opened the door a

he could see pot on the table.

And that turned out to be impossible because the table was positioned out of

view of the door.

It's an illegal search.

And in the eyes of the law, it's like the $60 ,000 of fake cash never existed.

Williams walks out a free man.

But at the same time, it's kind of over for him, he thinks, because they know

who he is. If he starts printing this bill again, they'll be right back on

Once again, it appears Williams' career as a counterfeiter is over.

I felt more imprisoned than I ever did in my whole life as I walked out that

door. It just felt like so many eyes were on me, and I couldn't hide nowhere.

And it was miserable.

Within a few days, he's back in Texas with Natalie, where he spends most of

days in a funk, lying around and watching TV.

Until one day, he finds a new sense of purpose, provided by none other than

Sylvester Stallone.

He sees this movie Over the Top with Sylvester Stallone, playing this trucker

who hasn't seen his son in many years.

And Art becomes very nostalgic.

And he decides he wants to know what the hell happened to his father who had

left all those years ago.

William's relationship with his father is complicated, to say the least.

This is my mom and my brother and me and Jason.

This is when my dad was in jail.

It appears Art Jr.

has inherited his criminal genes from his father. When the kids are very

Arthur Sr.

serves two years in jail for auto theft.

and the problems at home immediately intensify upon his release.

When my dad got out of prison, it was just terrible.

They were fighting all the time, and my dad started drinking, and he started

getting violent.

The family soon disintegrates.

Art Sr.

moves out, and within a couple of years, he kidnaps the three children to start

a family with a new woman and her two children.

I didn't say, this is your new mother.

Call her mother.

We didn't know what was going on. We were really young. You know, I was five.

Art was six. Jason was still a baby.

He takes the new family on the road, but it's hardly a family vacation.

Art Senior is simply an old -time scam artist.

They roll across the country writing bad checks and moving on to the next town

before the checks hit the banks.

The irony of the lifestyle is not lost on Williams.

He was hanging paper, and then I grew up, and I started hanging paper, just a

different paper, but it was still paper, you know?

It's a nightmarish existence.

But even amongst that, you still love your dad, right? It's amazing, because

you're feeling this pain, and all you want to do is please, still.

Then, after two years on the road, moving from town to town and motel to

Art Sr.

suddenly returns the children to their mother in Chicago.

And he left, and that was it.

I've never seen him again.

More than 15 years later, as he watches a Sylvester Stallone movie from a couch

in Denton, Texas, that longing to connect with his father is still there.

Natalie subscribes to an Internet people finder service and in 20 minutes has an

address. It's a post office box in a remote town called Chickaloon, Alaska.

Williams writes a letter.

And within a month, this street kid from the south side of Chicago is on his way

to one of the most remote places in America.

The first night there, Arthur Jr.

and Arthur Sr.

settled in for the conversation they both know is coming.

He's hoping for an answer is the first thing he wants. He wants to know why his

dad left all those years ago.

The excuses he got from his father were, you know, pretty lame.

Oh, your mother made it hard for me.

Oh, I tried finding you over the years.

Art didn't believe any of it.

And he kind of just swallowed that because he wanted to see where this was

to go.

And we were bonding, and I just felt like, you know, I wanted to stay there.

didn't want to go back to Chicago. I didn't want to go back to Texas.

And, you know, when I seen what he was doing, he was growing weed.

And, you know, he was still doing things that were contrary to the law.

And that's when I figured, hey, I'll show him what I've been doing, you know.

His dad eventually asked him, so, son, what are you doing for a living? What do

you do with your life?

And Art finally says, well, Dad, I make money.

Okay, how do you make money?

I make money.

I'm a counterfeiter.

Art Jr.

and his family were not alone on their trip to Alaska.

They brought $50 ,000 in counterfeit bills from an old stash.

Whenever Art would show someone the $100 bill that he had perfected, they would

just get this glow about them, and you could see the dollar signs in their eye.

The money itself was so good that it would corrupt people.

And Art makes the mistake of showing his father one of his bills, and of course

his father sees it and he gets the glow.

It's exactly the reaction Art is hoping for.

He wanted his father to be proud of him.

And that's exactly what he felt.

But his dad was looking into his own interests at that point.

It's not long before Arthur Sr.

asks his son if he can make more.

He knows that it's a very dangerous thing to get involved in a criminal

enterprise with his father.

But his father keeps pushing him and pushing him. In reality, Williams wants

do it.

It was an addiction.

But Alaska is no place to get the equipment needed for a proper

operation.

There's only one place that will do. The center of the U .S. printing industry,

Chicago, Illinois.

When American Greed returns, a distorted American rite of passage, the family

road trip.

Will it save a broken family or tear it apart completely?

I realized that this was wrong.

It wasn't what I was looking for.

In the summer of 2001, the newly minted counterfeiting team of Arthur Williams

Jr. and Arthur Williams Sr.

is driving to Chicago to get supplies for their operation back in Alaska.

They'll need money to pay for the equipment once they get there.

Fortunately, over the years, Art Jr.

has developed the perfect system for raising cash.

He calls it slamming.

Buying inexpensive goods with counterfeit $100 bills and getting real

changed.

When Art Jr.

introduces the concept to his father, it seemed right up the old criminal's

alley.

His dad comes up with this thing about hitting gas stations.

Because his dad, being the old grifter that he is, he used to hit gas stations

himself. And they're hitting every gas station between Seattle and Chicago.

And they're having quite a good time.

Once they get to Chicago, Art Jr.

buys all the supplies they need for their counterfeiting lair and ships them

back to Alaska.

But before they head back themselves, they decide to pick up one more

I was shocked to see my dad. I was actually happy. I don't know why. I was

different place in my life.

The next day, all three are taking a family road trip, slamming counterfeit

money all along the way.

Everything is going well.

until feelings of abandonment and abuse well to the surface when Wednesday buys

her father a card on Father's Day.

I gave it to him when we were sitting in the truck stop.

And then all of a sudden I just got mad and said, you don't deserve it, and got

up and walked out.

That's the way I felt. Why am I giving you a card?

Everything that this card represents does not represent you.

Art Jr.

is starting to feel it too.

It just didn't feel right.

At first it seemed cool, you know, like, hey, this is it, man, me and my sister

and my dad on the road, we're having fun.

But then Wednesday she broke down real hard, and I realized that this was

There's that little boy, that little 11 -year -old kid in art that still wanted

to be a legitimate citizen and not a criminal, and he sort of expects his

to want to reinforce that.

There's a part of him that wants his dad to say, no, son, you have to stop.

But he doesn't see any of that in his father. His father wants to do this.

His father wants to do it so badly, in fact, that when they return to Alaska,

tells his wife and niece all about it. And then tells two more friends, Jim and

Vicki Shanigan.

When our junior hears his father has spilled the secret, he's enraged.

Confirms all the bad feelings he has about the entire enterprise.

That makes the decision simple for him. He needs to leave Alaska immediately.

because these other people are going to get him caught. He smells it.

He tells his father he's leaving, but he has less time than he thinks.

Art Sr.

and Denise have already given the Shanigans counterfeit money to start

It's a huge mistake.

They were going back to the same places, the same stores where they had passed

counterfeit money before, and going and passing it again.

These people are all making all the biggest amateur mistakes you could make.

The end is only a matter of time.

The Anchorage Police Department apprehended a couple of individuals, Jim

Shanigan and Vicki Shanigan, at the Fifth Avenue Mall here in Anchorage.

They're taken into questioning by the Secret Service.

They tell the government everything they need to get a search warrant for Art

Senior's house.

The agents found not only all the accoutrements of the counterfeiting

computer, a scanner, a printer, paper.

discarded remains of counterfeit currency. They also found a number of

in the residence.

As a convicted felon, Art Sr.

is not allowed to have firearms in his possession.

He's immediately arrested.

In the meantime, authorities move to search the apartment where Art Jr.

and Natalie have been staying in Anchorage.

But by the time they get there, Art and Natalie are gone.

As it turns out, the day before the search warrant was executed,

Natalie was passing counterfeit currency over at the Fifth Avenue Mall here in

Anchorage, the place where the Shanigans had been discovered four days earlier.

When she passes a counterfeit note at a camera store, an alert cashier

immediately recognizes it.

What he decided to do was to call another store employee over, hand that

employee a digital camera.

and ask him to take a picture of him with Natalie Williams.

Under the auspices of telling her to take a look at how good this camera is,

something like that.

Natalie flees the mall.

I suspect she had a pretty good idea of why this guy was asking the

other employee to take a picture of her.

She and Art Jr.

left Alaska that night.

They fly back to Texas.

But unfortunately for Williams, federal authorities are pressuring Art Sr.

to tell them where he is.

In, you know, probably the saddest event in his life, Art's father eventually

turns him in. So the Secret Service is waiting there in Texas when Art shows up

at Natalie's mother's.

As it turns out, however, the government has relatively little hard evidence on

Art Jr.

himself. until his ego again gets the better of him.

Ironically, when Art Jr.

was arrested in the Dallas -Fort Worth area, he admitted he had manufactured

counterfeit currency. Warren, in fact, was quite boastful.

On February 25, 2002, Art Jr.

is sentenced to 36 months in prison after pleading guilty to one count of

manufacturing counterfeit currency.

Art Sr.

also pleads guilty to manufacturing counterfeit currency.

But with his gun charge and parole violation, is sentenced to almost six

The two will never see each other again.

When American Greed returns, Art Williams Jr.

is reunited with his son in Chicago.

His last father -son reunion ended in disaster.

Will this one be any different?

You know, where I thought that I was...

the one sacrificing, I was actually sacrificing him.

February 25th, 2004.

It's a date that is etched in Art Williams Jr.'s memory.

After serving a 36 -month sentence for manufacturing counterfeit currency, he

finally released to his hometown of Chicago.

But that is not what Williams remembers most from this day.

He gets a phone call from his stepsister in Alaska informing him that the

night before his father had died of a heart attack in his prison cell.

It left him with a tremendous feeling of guilt that he...

introduced all this to his father's life, and now his father died in prison.

So the one thing that he wanted, which was to reconnect with his father, was

impossible.

Nevertheless, Williams must move on with his life.

He finds new joy and new pressures in reconnecting with his son, Arthur

III.

Little art, and the kid could use a father.

He was a teenager.

You know what teenagers are like. They're experimenting with things,

smoking pot.

His son is still there in Bridgeport, and the streets are still tough.

He had had it a little better than Art did.

But Art still wanted to get him out of there.

It appears he may even have a chance.

His son turns out to be a very talented young rap artist.

I had a friend that had a studio.

I asked my friend, hey, can I bring my kid down?

They took him for the day, and they said, hey, man, this kid's good.

He's got some serious potential.

I was like, well, what do I got to do? And so they started telling me, and it

was just racking up. I mean, it was a lot of money. I had no clue of what the

people go through to make music.

And Williams soon finds that making money legitimately is not as easy as it

sounds.

When I first was released, I really had every intention on doing the right

thing. I mean, I guess all criminals say that.

But I really wanted to try to make a difference in my life. And it just

like everything I tried failed.

Then, in July of 2005, Jason Kirsten publishes an article on Williams in

Stone magazine as a precursor to his book.

Unfortunately, the notoriety only increases the demand for William's

his temptation to produce it.

Shortly after the magazine article came out, he became harder to get a hold of.

And any time you're dealing with a criminal, that's a bad sign.

I started doing what I had to do to give my kid his dream.

And I just naturally kind of drifted back to what I knew best.

William starts financing his son's career.

But his own career has unintended influences on the young rap prodigy.

long before Little Art begins counterfeiting behind his father's back.

And on a certain level, I kind of blame myself for that.

You know, here's his son, and he's like an aspiring musician.

And here's an article about his dad in Rolling Stone magazine about being a

successful, clever counterfeiter.

And I can't even imagine what this 15 -year -old kid must have thought.

In retrospect, it should have been clear from Little Art's song, Mr.

Counterfeit.

Art Jr.

misses it, too, until the truth is laid out right in front of him.

Art comes home one day and he finds these bills that his son had been

And they get in a huge fight.

over it.

The kid grabs a pile of this money he had been making along with a couple of

bills that he had stolen from his dad and runs out into the street and flags

down a Chicago PD cruiser.

Even though Art Jr. now claims some of the bills found in the apartment are his

son's, he takes the rap for all of it.

I don't know if he just figured the gig was up at that point or what, but the

plea process was pretty simple.

Williams pleads guilty to one count of making counterfeit currency and is

eventually linked to more than $200 ,000 in counterfeit bills found in the area,

significantly less than the nearly $10 million Williams now claims to have

produced. His bills even win the acclaim of the Secret Service.

The case agent testified at Art Jr.'s sentencing that they were probably the

best quality he'd ever seen.

But Williams no longer seems so proud.

I was kind of surprised when after the fact I read like the Rolling Stone

article to see what sort of bravado he had back then because he always seemed

very beaten down when he was in court.

He is sentenced to 87 months in prison.

Sadly, this is not where the story ends.

A year and a half later, the Secret Service finds an informant who claims to

able to buy counterfeit bills from a local manufacturer.

They figure out that the guy he's talking about is Arthur Williams III.

The Secret Service sets up a sting, and on June 29, 2009, Arthur Williams III is

arrested for counterfeiting. He pleads guilty, but before sentencing, writes a

letter to the judge.

In it, he claims responsibility for his actions, but says that they arose from a

childhood lacking in guidance.

I read his letter.

You know, it hurt me because I, you know, I had always thought I was a

good father. I just wanted to give him a dream, you know.

Am I supposed to be mad at my kid?

Well, I can't because that's what he sees, right? I mean, you know, where I

thought that I was the one sacrificing, I was actually sacrificing him.

On November 10, 2010, 20 -year -old Arthur Williams III is sentenced to 63

months in prison.

In the spring of 2011, the U .S. Treasury is scheduled to release its

$100 note.

As always, it is created with the intent of being the most difficult bill to

counterfeit ever made.

The more complex we can make a note, the higher the hurdle is for those

counterfeiters to try to duplicate. And we're very proud of this note because

it's going to be very difficult.

Arthur Williams Jr.

is scheduled to be released in January 2015.

And just like in 1996, whoever can duplicate the new bill stands to make a

deal of money.

Will Williams resist his siren's call?

Counterfeiters have a higher recidivism rate than heroin addicts.

The temptation is going to be there that he's going to have to look at it and

he's going to wonder about it.

I want to see him come out of prison and take the straight and narrow road. Now

that's going to be completely up to him.