The Art of Making Money
The Story of a Master Counterfeiter

There were two things Art Williams never had enough of growing up poor on Chicago’s South Side: his father, who left the family when he was 11, and money. His quest for both would merge at the age of 16, when his mom’s boyfriend—a master counterfeiter—instructed him in the age-old criminal craft. Art would go on to become one of the most skilled counterfeiters of the last 25 years, creating a near-perfect replica of the most secure US bill ever made: the 1996 New Note. The success brought him a lifestyle he had only dreamed about as a child, but he risked everything in an attempt to reconnect with the father who had left him long ago.
In the tradition of propulsive true-crime narratives like Bruce Porter’s Blow and Frank Abagnale Jr’s Catch Me if You Can, The Art of Making Money takes the reader on a wild, fascinating ride through the rarefied world of a master criminal. At the same time it is an emotionally compelling look at the relationships between crime and family, and the destructiveness of greed. Williams's interior journey—that of a damaged man searching for an idyllic family that never really existed—will be familiar to many.