The Daily Dispatch: December 30, 1865., [Electronic resource]

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Debased gold coin.

--The fact that debased gold is on the market to a considerable amount has been discovered. Its withdrawal as circulation has given time to experts in counterfeiting to manufacture large quantities of filled coin, which are now found in circulation. The payment of customs duties in gold, in consequence of the scarcity of demand notes, keeps the false coin in company with the genuine, and the counterfeits are so well made that none but experts can detect them. Many of the banks in New York, and some in this city, have received and paid this false issue — brokers take and sell it, and it is sent to the custom-house to pay duties, without criminal knowledge or intent. The proportion of the filled coin now in use is not large, as compared with the genuine currency; but it is nevertheless true that few of the men handling it know whether the coin is genuine or not, and the uninitiated cannot possibly detect the work of the tamperers. At the New York custom-house almost every day the filled pieces are sent in for payment of duties. The discovery of these pieces is followed immediately by cutting them in halves with a chisel, when they are returned to their owners. The use of gold certificates, thus limiting the handling of the coin, will materially narrow the field of operations in the bogus article.--Baltimore Sun.