James D'Amelio

James D'Amelio was the United States Secret Service agent who announced the arrests in December 1974 of Raymond Hoersch, later R.C. Horsch, and Charles Griffith on counterfeiting charges, and the seizure of 180,000 dollars in counterfeit ten-dollar notes.¹²

The 1974 Case

"U.S. Secret Service Agent James D'Amelio identified the suspects as Raymond Hoersch, 31, of Chalfont and Charles Griffith, 39, of Wallingford," the Associated Press reported. D'Amelio said that Hatboro police had detained Hoersch on December 10, 1974, after the Hatboro Card Shop on Old York Road reported that he had passed a suspicious ten-dollar bill, and that Secret Service agents with a search warrant found 630 dollars in counterfeit notes in Hoersch's car. The agents seized printing equipment in a building on Taylor Street in Doylestown, where they arrested Griffith. Accounts of the face value of the notes seized ranged from 180,000 dollars to more than one million dollars.¹²

Identity

A tribute published by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund describes a James R. D'Amelio, born in 1933 in Malden, Massachusetts, who joined the Secret Service in 1959, served among other posts as special agent in charge of its Pittsburgh and Philadelphia field offices, received the service's Valor Award in 1973, and retired in September 1985 to work on card security for MasterCard. The tribute does not give the dates of his Philadelphia posting.³