When there is no money, it really threatens family connections and puts pressure on them in ways that people who grow up middle-class or upper-class cannot even conceive. Williams' first crime was robbing parking meters to get food. Anytime someone had money in his family there were people asking about it. It's almost a reductive quote, but without money people become animalistic. And once Williams perfected his counterfeit bill, it changed his relationship with all his family and friends. Suddenly they're vying to see who can go on a spending spree with him.

Now it's mostly kids with ink-jet scanners trying to pass bills off at McDonald's, with a lot of these cases tried in local courts. Guys like Art [Williams], who could defeat all the security measures are increasingly rare.

A guy like Bernie Madoff doesn't interest me. He's just a sort of raw, unbridled greed, and a mirror for greed in others. Guys like him are a dime a dozen. Art was never trying to get rich off his enterprise. He did it for his own sake, and was always aware that he wanted to get off of it. He had a code. He did not spend his money at mom-and-pop stores, he spent it at large chain stores and tried to keep it all [as] benign as possible.