Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: Is signing a $1.00 bill illegal?

Perhaps you should treat this as a question of FEDERAL LAW rather than state law---

Article 331, Title 18 of the U.S. Code prohibits defacement of currency only if it is performed with ... deceptive intent, or the depicted face value of the currency is altered in a significant way.... [text below]

Section 331. Mutilation, diminution, and falsification of coins

Whoever fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs,

diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined

at the mints of the United States, or any foreign coins which are

by law made current or are in actual use or circulation as money

within the United States; or

Whoever fraudulently possesses, passes, utters, publishes, or

sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or brings into

the United States, any such coin, knowing the same to be altered,

defaced, mutilated, impaired, diminished, falsified, scaled, or

lightened -

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five

years, or both.

Hope this at least takes you to a more specific result. My understanding is that defacing period is at least actionable as a crime.

Re: Is signing a $1.00 bill illegal?

The statute Mr. Simms cites deals only with coins, not paper money. Defacement of paper money is governed by 18 U.S.C. � 333, which makes it a crime to alter money with the intent to make it unfit to be reissued. I don't know whether autographing a bill would have this effect; even if it would, that probably would not be the intent of the signer.

But even if the bill is signed with the intent to make it unfit for reissuance, only the person who signed it would have violated the law. As the recipient of the bill, you would be in the clear. You could theoretically be in trouble if you urged the other person to sign it, but if your intent was to keep the signed bill as a collectible rather than to put it back into circulation I don't think you would get into any trouble.

Here is the pertinent statute:

� 333. Mutilation of national bank obligations

Whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.