Govt sets up print shop for jobless, gets fake money

Press, 11 July 1980, Page 6

Govt sets up print shop for jobless, gets fake money

NZPA New York New York City officials paid thousands of dollars for a special programme to teach young people how to print — and what it got printed was money. According to Federal officials, a Brooklyn jobtraining centre set up to teach young people printing skills was used by the centre’s director and his cohorts as a headquarters for their counterfeiting operation. The alleged counterfeiters, including Clarence Briggs, director of the print-training programme for the Community Alliance for Youth in Action, were arrested and charged last week after they tried to pass some of

the fake notes at a Brooklyn service station. “The attendant spotted the bills right off, and took down the licence plate of the car,” said Paul Scanlon, special agent in charge of the New York office of the United States Secret Service. The Secret Service is responsible for tracing counterfeiting rackets. He added that it was not “a very good or very professional printing job.” The bills, he said; were “very poor — the paper was too thin, the colour too light, the details were missing — this money looked as if it had been run through a washing machine.” Charles Rose, an assist-

ant United States attorney, said that Briggs and four other people, including a student at the centre, had been arraigned and that he would seek indictments this week. Mr Scanlon said the investigation was continuing and more arrests are expected. Federal authorities have charged that Briggs, aged 38, and three other Brooklyn residents printed about $50,000 in $5, $lO, and $2O bills at the Communitv Alliance for Youth in Action print shop. One of Briggs’s Govern-ment-supported students, Gretta Taylor, aged 19. was arraigned on charges of possession of counterfeit money. The money-making,

authorities said, took place in the print shop, which received city and Federal money to teach printing skills to more than 100 young people who qualified for Comprehensive Employment arrl Training Act grants. A brochure describes the shop as a skills training centre, “conducted not as a school but under actual shop conditions.” Asked about the print programme, Ruth Ross, a spokeswoman for the city employment department, said officials were investigating the operation. She said the department was not certain what would happen to the centre or to the students enrolled there.