A true-to-life history of a fake

Publisher Gotham Books describes Jason Kersten's new biography of master counterfeiter Art Williams as a true story about a talented crook "who blew through millions of dollars, outwitted government agents, and lost it all when he went searching for something his fake money couldn't buy"-- family.

This quick-paced tale has obvious parallels to the story of Frank Abagnale Jr., a con man, forger and impostor-turned-FBI consultant who was portrayed by actor Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie "Catch Me if You Can."

But Williams bears a closer likeness to Jean Genet, the celebrated French thief and author who was championed by Jean-Paul Sartre as the quintessential existentialist, a free spirit who created his own morality through his decisions and deeds.

Kersten catches Williams in a philosophical moment as he recounts an extended spending spree across the Midwest to pass his counterfeit bills and turn them into legal tender: "I think we were what humans were meant to be," Williams says, "completely free, almost like it was in the Garden of Eden. God wants us to play. I do not believe that people were meant to live the way they do. Slavery still exists, now we're just slaves to the dollar."

"The Art of Making Money" is an engrossing, complex work of investigative reporting and storytelling. On the surface it tells an interesting and entertaining tale. But it also insinuates itself into your thoughts, forcing you to ponder the relative effects of nature and nurture in stimulating criminal behaviors.

Kersten paints a sympathetic portrait of Williams, a bright young man whose father abuses his sister and abandons the family, leaving him and two young siblings in the hands of a mother suffering from bipolar schizophrenia. Williams learns quickly that he must fend for the family.

But the family continues to suffer losses. His mother takes up with a benevolent Italian counterfeiter, a master craftsman who teaches Williams the trade, only to abruptly disappear. His sister becomes a model, yet succumbs to drugs and depression, which leads her to attempt suicide by jumping out a fourth-floor window, breaking her back and leaving one leg a useless mass below the knee. His little brother quickly ends up in prison.

And although Williams showed great promise in school, he devolves into a thug who roams South Side Chicago with one scam after another.

Kersten grew up in California and now lives in New York, but he nails Chicago's neighborhoods and their inhabitants like a native. He populates the book with hardscrabble characters from the Outfit, Chicago's Italian Mafia; from On Leong, Chinatown's secret society, and from the Latin Kings, a brutal Hispanic gang.

It's no wonder that Williams also joins a gang, Satan's Disciples, to survive. But because of his training as a counterfeiter at age 16, Williams reaches higher, becoming a master craftsman himself. He eventually figures out how to beat the high-tech revisions to U.S. currency, producing counterfeit bills that dazzle anyone who holds them. For a while, he lives the good life.

But Williams is undone, in the end, by his desire to reunite with his father, whose wife betrays Williams to U.S. Secret Service agents hot on his trail. His efforts to create something that passes for a genuine family life ultimately fail, as well.

Dan Browning, a business editor at the Star Tribune, is at 612-673-4493.