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Little more than a year ago, a federal judge in Dallas gave the U.S. Secret Service the go-ahead to seize religious pamphlets from the Denton-based Great News Network ministry. Mind you, the Secret Service had nothing against the content of the tracts, just the cover — a mock million-dollar bill, with Grover Cleveland’s head swiped from the $1,000 bill. And, sure, the thing looked phony, more or less, but that didn’t stop some schmuck in North Carolina from trying to deposit one of the pamphlets — which is how the feds got involved in the first place.
Only, once the tracts were swiped — some 8,000 of them, by most estimates — the things got real, real popular. And now at least one of the tracts appears to be back in the news: Looks like some genius in Pittsburgh went to a supermarket on Saturday night and tried to get change for his million. And when the manager confiscated the bill, the man got belligerent — though it’s nothing some time in the Allegheny County Jail won’t cure. And, yeah, police figure the “bill” traces back to the Great News Network, which is great news! Or not. –Robert Wilonsky
