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By: rorschach
Date: 10/27/98 7:19:11 PM
# Replies: 8
October 26, 1998, 10:17 p.m.
Airman sentenced for counterfeiting
Houstonian gets 5 years for using S. Korean bill to test scanner
By JOHN MAKEIG Copyright 1998 Houston Chronicle
To test out his computer's new scanner, Houstonian Dale Huff made a copy of a 10,000-won Korean banknote in his barracks room at Kunsan Air Base near Pusan, South Korea.
"I guess I wanted to see how well it would reproduce. I wanted to see how accurate it was," Huff said by telephone. "I tore it up and threw it into the trash. I didn't try to use it or anything."
That was in March, and now Huff, 24, a senior airman who graduated in 1993 from Cy-Fair High School and enlisted, hoping for an Air Force career, has been sentenced to five years in prison for the Korean offense of counterfeiting.
What evidently happened is that Huff's discarded copy of the currency, worth about $7 in U.S. currency, was found in a trash bin along with other items containing his name. A Korean garbageman found it and turned it over to the Korean National Police, who then notified Air Force authorities.
Since Huff's name had been found and his fingerprints were on the copied currency, he was arrested and brought before a Korean judge on Oct. 2.
"He asked if I printed it," Huff said, "and I said I did."
Asking not to be identified, U.S. Air Force officials who watched the trial agreed that the Korean prosecutor argued Huff had tried to damage the Korean economy by counterfeiting. Huff's Korean attorney contended his American client obviously was not counterfeiting or he would have used better paper and not thrown it in the trash.
Huff said it didn't matter that he never attempted to pass the copy off as the real thing. That the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's followers attended every court session and added the counterfeiting case to their litany of protests outside Kunsan Air Base did seem to matter a lot to authorities.
Huff said he sat through the Oct. 22 sentencing proceeding with a Korean interpreter at his side. He said he was not being given a word-by-word account of what was being said in court.
But once the judge finished talking, the interpreter informed Huff he had been sentenced to five years in prison.
"I guess it could have been worse," Huff said. "The medium sentence was life and the maximum sentence was death. I got the minimum."
Convicted and sentenced, Huff was sent Friday to a military holding facility to await the outcome of his initial appeal. If the conviction is affirmed, he will stay there as his second appeal wends its way through the Korean judicial system.
If his case again is affirmed in a few months, Huff said, he will be kicked out of the Air Force -- likely with a "general" discharge instead of a bad conduct discharge -- and off he goes to prison.
"I hear the conditions are pretty bad," he said. "From what I've heard, you're handcuffed in a cell with five other guys and there's a hole in the floor for you to do your thing."
Exercise periods and showers are available to prisoners once a week.
Meanwhile, Huff's mother, Deborah Benestante of Cypress, and aunt, Camella Schard of Spring, have spent a week calling Korea, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere looking for someone to help.
Were they to do the same thing with American currency, they believe, the Secret Service or someone might get aggravated with them, but no one would send them to prison if they did not pretend the copy was real and try to use it as money.
"It's totally an injustice," Benestante said.
Schard added, "We're not stopping at anything."
Monday they sent handwritten letters and e-mail messages to President Clinton, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and numerous U.S. news outlets.
Schard was mystified at how copying a currency note and throwing it away could be worth a five-year stint in a foreign prison.
"There has to be more to this story than we've seen," she said.
Response #1
By: Seventh of Seven
Date: 10/27/98 8:44:49 PM
i think the real moral of this story is: make friends with your local moonies. you never know when they'll come in handy.
Response #2
By: Ralf
Date: 10/28/98 8:09:34 AM
Hey! Has anyone seen the new US $20 bill? It's really neat looking!
And it's 8-1/2 x 11"!
Response #3
By: Gowan McGland
Date: 10/28/98 9:54:05 AM
I thought that Air Bases were considered our turf. So, the "crime" was committed on American soil not on Korean, and the Korean authorities would have to ask permission to come get the guy.
It should have been stopped right there.
Just another shining example of how loved we are everywhere around the world.
Response #4
By: Homer The Brave
Date: 10/29/98 11:18:24 PM
I got one of the new 20s and I thought someone was trying to hand me Canadian money. HELVETICA numbers? What is this, Bauhaus Europe?
Response #5
By: rorschach
Date: 10/31/98 12:42:21 PM
ah! but can you read the microprint around the portrait? if not somebody handed you a bogus one.... thats going to be a real problem for a while til people learn what to look for on the new money
Response #6
By: Homer The Brave
Date: 11/2/98 6:23:20 PM
Also, hold the new bills up to a light and you can see the shadowy ghost of Alan Greenspan.
Response #7
By: Seventh of Seven
Date: 11/2/98 9:02:10 PM
homer making jokes about alan greenspan--not something i would've ever predicted.
Response #8
By: Da Sissop
Date: 11/3/98 6:40:31 AM
"Hold the bill to the light, Carol Ann!"