Money and Its Crimes: Forgers, Schemers, and Conmen

Undergraduate

For as long as it has existed, people spending, producing, earning, legislating, or saving money have been confronted with its potential for deception. We look at the evolution of money through different forms (credit systems; coins, paper money) in the pre-modern era and then move forward from the 19th century, when arguably the wider availability of paper money, now firmly established financial markets, central banking, joint stock companies, and the principle of limited liability ushered in distinctly new and modern ways of understanding and encountering money. This new landscape of money also opened the doors to new criminal enterprises: Forgers who used the advent of paper money as an opportunity to produce counterfeit bills; conmen who lured gullible fellow citizens into their get-rich-quick schemes; dubious entrepreneurs who praised endless opportunities in the emerging markets of that time and age, in Latin America and the colonial world; and men like Charles Ponzi, after whom the notorious pyramid investment fraud is named, among other examples. How did societies historically view those engaging in such criminal activity, and what kind of laws, safeguards, and investigative tools were put in place to protect people from money crimes? How did understandings of what constituted such crimes, and what, accordingly, should be made illegal, change over time? How do we view what is now often referred to as “white collar crime” today, and what does the future of money crimes look like in the age of cryptocurrencies? Over the course of the semester, we combine different historical perspectives on these topics and questions. WR , HU T 9:25am-11:20am