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The Ultimate Counterfeiter Isn’t a Crook — He’s an Artist

153 points by asicboy 14y ago

StevenRayOrr 14y ago
TL;DR version: an after-the-fact account of how a man counterfeited millions all in the pursuit of "art". It makes for a romantic story, if nothing else -- although it certainly is not as sexy as the Leonardo DiCaprio/Tom Hanks Catch Me If You Can version.
- GFischer 14y ago
  The book by Frank Abagnale is a pageturner too. I've always liked reading those "social hacking" books, like Catch Me If You Can, or Kevin Mitnick's story The Art of Deception.
btipling 14y ago
Title is misleading. It's a great story however.
jablan 14y ago
Does anyone else have difficulties reading articles written this way - structured as Hollywood movies, with artificially built-up suspense and all? I feel patronized all the time, trying to get to the "meat" of the article, just finding "next page" link instead.
- deleted 14y ago
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- AYBABTME 14y ago
  I feel the same. I don't care about the biography of the person being investigated, I just want to know the stuff related to the meat of the article. For instance, I don't want to know about this man's passion for Andy Warhol. Or that previous article about a woman who stood up against Citibank: I really didn't care about her love for horses and that she's a cowgirl or whatever. But that's just a pointless rant, and I only share it because you raised the question. The appropriate way to deal with this would be to identify authors who tend to write in this style, and avoid reading them. I don't pretend they're bad, it's just their style doesn't fit my tastes.
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    Eh. I think there's value in making people cognizant of this style by discussing the way it works. It certainly took my a few years before I could pinpoint exactly why I disliked this stuff. Also, there's so many magazine authors out there that keeping track of their individual styles it pretty hopeless for me. The best I can do is remember that Wired is written like this.
- stevejalim 14y ago
  I think a great part of that frustration is down to long-form magazine features being ported to wired.com, where brevity is better suited to the web-page form. Personally, I think almost all of the writing in Wired is excellent - well crafted and edited and laid out within interesting designs. Yes, while there are pretty common 'paint a picture' set-ups and more detail about the actual people involved than you'd get in news (for sure) and non-US feature writing (my view), that's part of the reason I keep buying the US print copy of Wired (even in the UK), and enjoy settling down to read it.
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    I have the exact same revulsion to this style writing when I see it in print. The only upside is that, in print, it's easier for me to skip through the article and get to the actual content.
    - sophacles 14y ago
      See the think you are doing here is being completely and utterly disingenuous. What you are talking about as content is a list of facts of the event. What you are pissed about is a list of facts about the person involved. I like the facts about the person involved, the circumstance and some speculation about their mindset. I like that, if you want facts about the sequence of events, read a crime report. Or even better, don't read the article, you don't have to just because it is there. If you have revulsion, find a medium that works for you, they exist, don't complain.
- SilasX 14y ago
  Agree 100%. I'm saying this all the time. Please, writer, just get to the point! I don't want to learn a zillion details about everything you saw.
  - vacri 14y ago
    Do you complain that movies take too long with the plot when you haven't seen the villain vanquished by the 5-minute mark?
    - SilasX 14y ago
      No. Movies are there primarily to entertain. News stories are there to inform. If I wanted the dramatic, drawn-out version, I'd see the "based on a true story!" version. There are lots of events I could be learning about in a day, and I'd like to be able to get the important stuff out of a new story and go on to the other stuff. In contrast, you can't similarly shorten a movie while sticking to its purpose (usually).
      - apendleton 14y ago
        Who said it was a news story? It's not about an especially current event, and Wired is not a news magazine (for that, see Newsweek, Time, or any number of others); they're a tech/nerd culture periodical. They've has always had a major focus on long-form journalism.
      - sophacles 14y ago
        Then don't read stories from sources that are known to contextualize rather than report the facts. It's like you keep touching a hot stove, and complain how it keeps burning you.
        SilasX 14y ago
        Who said I did? Of course I ignore such stories, or skim past the first 15 paragraphs to get to the meat. If I want a page turner, I'll get a novel. For news stories, I just want the information. Time spent learning about the color of the subjects coat is time I could spend reading another story, learning something useful, or entertaining myself through a medium actually optimized for that.
- yock 14y ago
  No. Long-form journalism is about keeping the reader engaged in a story they didn't know they wanted to hear. You wouldn't write fiction with a strict focus on the sequence of events, why should this be any different? While you're feeling patronized I find that I enjoy the engagement. Frankly, your way sounds boring.
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    I'm glad to know that at least someone enjoys this style, because I am with jablan; I hate it. To me, it suggests that the author doesn't expect me to find the content interesting, and that instead this content has to be packaged with (predictable) human-interest intrigue just to get me to read it. To me, it's very analogous to trying to teach students math with colorful, picture-laden textbooks: it might be necessary for students who will never learn much math in order to just get them to pass the grade, but insofar as it works such students are not getting deep appreciation for the concepts.
    - yock 14y ago
      But, this isn't math! It's a story, with characters and a plot. The intrigue is baked-in because it makes for an enjoyable read. Sure, the details are interesting, but there's nothing wrong with telling an interesting story with interesting details in an interesting way. "First this happened and then this happened and then this happened..." is not how you tell a story, regardless of whether or not the story happens to be factual.
      - jessriedel 14y ago
        If I want an artistic short story in magazine form, I'll read the New Yorker. But this is Wired, and the material facts of this story are the only interesting part. I guess it's possible that a gifted author could wrap these fact with a human-interest element in a way that is worthwhile while still communicating an essential idea ("The Last Question" by Asimov comes to mind). But, by experience, this just isn't within the abilities of most magazine writers. And it doesn't need to be, because the material facts are plenty interesting on their own. Edit: I can't reply to vacri, so I'll follow up to his comment here. Vacri: human interest pieces have been around for decades. Furthermore, the newspaper format of most journalism (one sentence paragraphs, most important facts at the top regardless of sensible narrative order, negligible artistic flourishes) were set a century ago. I'm pretty young (26), but I've read newspapers from before the internet and they did plenty of bad human-interest stories. I'm pretty skeptical that the internet had much of an impact in this respect. Maybe you have a more specific source, or I misunderstand your claim? Edit 2, reply to fiatpandas: I think the distinction between an AP-style newspaper article and a human-interest short story is a false dichotomy. Instead, there is a middle option of a fact-focused piece designed to clearly communicate the essential ideas without relying on artistic/narrative devices to keep the reader's attention. (See my reply to jablan http://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=4203567 http://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=4203567) Wired can choose whatever style it wants, (and I certainly have no doubt they've done this plenty in the past) but my claim is that the human-interest style is almost always poorly executed. If the facts are interesting enough, then it's unnecessary, and if they aren't, then it's a waste.
rdl 14y ago
I am amazed that paper banknotes have remained even vaguely counterfeit-resistant for so long. It seems like a very difficult problem, given modern technology; the capital costs of an intaglio press and great plates are high, but some kind of CNC milling should be able to produce equivalents at some point. The NK superbills are still as far as I know the best quality.
- samstave 14y ago
  Crazy to think about NK as one of the most backward vile 3rd world despots, but so capable in certain areas. I would think that EVERY tech innovation/resource/capability is really a proxy service of China, Russia, Iran, etc... There is no way they would have the tools to do what hey do on a range of fronts if they were not used as a proxy by these other nations.
- GFischer 14y ago
  The superdollar article on Wikipedia is very interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar
kqr2 14y ago
I would also recommend the book The Art of Making Money : The Story Of A Master Counterfeiter by Jason Kerstan. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105226799 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1052267... http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Making-Money-Counterfeiter/dp/B00403NGA4/ http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Making-Money-Counterfeiter/dp/...
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jbarham 14y ago
Considering that the central banks have conjured trillions of dollars and euros out of thin air, this story this seems sadly quaint...
- kennywinker 14y ago
  Penultimate counterfeiter doesn't sound as good.
- GigabyteCoin 14y ago
  ...seriously? On HN? Nobody is printing money out of thin air. When they print more money, they value of the $20 that is in your pocket decreases slightly, but the value of your house increases substantially. Everybody knows it's not wise to store 100% of your worth in cash.
- apendleton 14y ago
  All money is "conjured" to some extent. Cash has no intrinsic value (you can't eat it or use it to build a house); it only has value because we as a society accept that it does, and accept that governments have the power to print it. Counterfeiting as described in the article is a violation of that social contract. Perhaps you think that all money is counterfeit because banks print it, or something, and that we should instead operate on an economy built around trading shells or bison, but even if that's the case, societal expectations clearly differentiate between what banks do and what this guy did, so if "counterfeiting" is the wrong word to describe the latter and not the former, feel free to suggest a more precise term.
kennywinker 14y ago
Good at making counterfeits, bad at making counterfeiting work. Saw a trashy Discovery channel doc on counterfeiters. They printed using laser printers, and had a good process for aging the money. That was all that was needed... people just don't look that closely at money most of the time. They got away with it for years, even though they were pretty foolish (spent their own fakes, used the same spot every time to print money, etc.) I can't tell if all that means there are probably smart people getting away with it constantly because they don't slip up in these dumb ways?
- zitterbewegung 14y ago
  I used to work at my dad's currency exchange. You know why they get away with it? Telling fakes from real requires WEEKS of training. We would get information from the US Mint, Treasury and the Secret Service. The capital investment required probably will outrun the training cost for most retailers.
- throwaway_lop2 14y ago
  Totally. A friend in I tried this (not in the US) using bills approximately $20 in value. We had a mediocre Epson printer and just did the approach of scan+print. We'd then handle the bills and throw them with dirt. Nothing fancy; just two kids playing around to get some extra beer money and also just to see if we could pull it off. Out of the 10 times we tried using the fakes, we only were noticed once. It's very, very easy to do if you aren't trying to make a living at it. I would imagine these days, it's even easier to pull off, _because_ of the high-tech protections. If you can replicate a single high-profile piece (like a hologram or something), then folks will probably just assume it's good. Most people don't know the tens of different protections, and anything flashy and difficult looking would work. They don't know the details - hell, I'd bet a bill with a holographic mark could be counterfeited using one of the holograms Microsoft uses on their products.
  - dr42 14y ago
    This sounds very fishy. Imaging and scaning software, along with printer drivers have built in currency detectors to prevent this.
its_so_on 14y ago
If you read this article and have a halfway decent model of the world in your head, you will realize that police entrapment was the proximate cause of this real, talented artist low on his money becoming a counterfeiter: i.e. they made him do it, and he wouldn't have done it without them, and a judge released him early on probation for this reason (from the article). But the damage was done. Still without any money, this genuine artist (who had "refused to do two Warhol copies, including forged signatures", always signing his own name instead on homage pieces) now had a criminal skill that had no other applications. The fact is most people here have had a time in their life when they had unhoned skills (e.g. software/hardware hacking) that, if they only landed the right internship, would become very valuable. When the police are the proximate cause to creating this "lucky" internship (lucky in that the guy had 0 experience with it, or even interest for that matter) to create skills that have only a criminal market [1], something is very wrong. It would be great if Freakonomics covered entrapment some time, as it's very insidious - on the surface it seeems that if you do it you "would have done it anyway", but this example shows pretty obviously that this isn't true in any form whatsoever. [1] EDIT: or not even a criminal market, as the case may be: "The problem was, Kuhl and his partners couldn’t make a deal with anyone. It wasn’t for lack of trying—a sale brokered by a criminal-minded former cop fell through, and another transaction with a supposed buyer in Majorca fizzled. That was when Becker and his colleagues decided to help things along by providing an attractive buyer themselves."
- mmcconnell1618 14y ago
  I disagree. In the article Kuhl had a legitimate buyer who backed out. The bills where printed and Kuhl needed a buyer. The police decided to become the buyer but the counterfeit bills had already been created and the artist would have found a buyer eventually.
  - its_so_on 14y ago
    The reason I added that EDIT is because I actually hadn't read that far down yet - I was just referring to his first counterfeiting gig when I first posted the comment: inline search the article for "Kuhl’s counterfeiting career had begun a decade earlier" and read from there. Of course you have no basis for your claim that he would have eventually found a buyer. This is a "manufactured criminal" and the police certainly got fed up with waiting for an actual market for his work to materialize. Entrapment is so insidious because when you turn a good guy, maybe there's no market for "good guy's evil works" anyway. (Who knows why, maybe he looks like an informant/plant/mole because he's a real artist and normal, genuine, good guy, who only got into 1 single crime - and no corresponding culture or connections, no other crimes, nothing - through an entrapment operation.) Please read the article more carefully and you'll see exactly what I mean.
losethos 14y ago
God says... 27:2 And they stood before Moses, and before Eleazar the priest, and before the princes and all the congregation, by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying, 27:3 Our father died in the wilderness, and he was not in the company of them that gathered themselves together against the LORD in the company of Korah; but died in his own sin, and had no sons. 27:4 Why should the name of our father be done away from among his family, because he hath no son? Give unto us therefore a possession among the brethren of our father. 27:5 And Moses brought their cause before the LORD.
Jun8 14y ago
Never ever do this, esp in the US, even as a joke. I know of cases in my college where students counterfeited $20 bills as a drunk joke: what they found out is that irrespective of the amount federal agents and the goddam CIA got involved and they got persecuted to the maximum degree. My prof was called as an expert witness in the case.
- btilly 14y ago
  I read an article about it a long time ago. The minimum penalties are draconian. An example from the 80s was a kid who had been making photocopies of $1 bills and feeding them into a change machine for free candy. The minimum penalty at the time was something like $100,000. Today they are higher. You don't want to mess with them. Governments take money seriously. For example everyone knows that Isaac Newton was a great scientist. Few know that he became Master of the Mint, and was responsible for enforcing the traditional penalty for undermining the currency - execution by drawing and quartering. (By all accounts he was very zealous in this task.)
  - dr42 14y ago
    Few know? That's part of every grammar school boys education. Or was, in my day. Newton sending a couple of dozen men off to Tyburn to be hanged, drawn and quartered was quite memorable.
    - btilly 14y ago
      I live in the United States and grew up in Canada. It certainly is not in the curriculum here, and has been a surprise to everyone I've mentioned it to around here. If you grew up somewhere else, it may be common knowledge there.
      - dr42 14y ago
        That's because world history in America is much the same as the world series - fully encompassing of the whole world, with countries as far afield as.... Canada :) I should have mentioned I grew up and went to school in England, and learning the ins and outs of luminaries like Sir Issac Newton was part of history class. To be fair, we only touched on American history, and obviously seen from the other side of the coin. We kicked out the religious pilgrims so we could get back to partying and starting the industrial revolution.
vacri 14y ago
In Australia, we've had polymer notes for 20 years, and counterfeiting is a thing of the past, to the point where I was puzzled as to why someone in the US was marking my $50 note during a purchase while visiting. Paper notes feel nice, but polymer lasts longer and are effectively counterfeit-proof. Prior to this, we had a woeful $100 note, which was black and white with a bit of subtle colour. Pretty, but a dumb idea for currency. It was not unknown for folks to photocopy one, scrunch it up, and wander into a convenience store in the early hours when the staffer was tired...
- jstclair 14y ago
  US currency isn't printed on paper.
  - MartinCron 14y ago
    That's not entirely correct. The paper that US Currency is printed on is a linen-cotton blend, but it's still considered a "paper", even though it doesn't come from trees. There was a fascinating article about this on Planet Money a few weeks back, including an interview with the head of Crane's, the company that provides the source paper to the US Mint.
  - vacri 14y ago
    Our old $100 note wasn't either. It was the colour scheme that was the problem. Nevertheless, if it's still common to use a pen to determine fake notes, your technology is miles behind.
BlackNapoleon 14y ago
This sounds like a path to getting hired by the FBI/CIA after you serve your jail time. We need to be employing these sorts of lifehackers.
johnohara 14y ago
Back in 1993, an interesting documentary titled "Money Man" was made about currency artist J.S.G. Boggs. I don't know if it's still available. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104909/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104909/ Here is a short YouTube clip from the film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEtKSqzpj0Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEtKSqzpj0Q Searching images for "jsg boggs art" returns some of his work.

153 points by asicboy 14y ago

TL;DR version: an after-the-fact account of how a man counterfeited millions all in the pursuit of "art". It makes for a romantic story, if nothing else -- although it certainly is not as sexy as the Leonardo DiCaprio/Tom Hanks Catch Me If You Can version.

GFischer 14y ago
The book by Frank Abagnale is a pageturner too. I've always liked reading those "social hacking" books, like Catch Me If You Can, or Kevin Mitnick's story The Art of Deception.

btipling 14y ago

Title is misleading. It's a great story however.

jablan 14y ago

Does anyone else have difficulties reading articles written this way - structured as Hollywood movies, with artificially built-up suspense and all? I feel patronized all the time, trying to get to the "meat" of the article, just finding "next page" link instead.

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AYBABTME 14y ago
I feel the same. I don't care about the biography of the person being investigated, I just want to know the stuff related to the meat of the article. For instance, I don't want to know about this man's passion for Andy Warhol. Or that previous article about a woman who stood up against Citibank: I really didn't care about her love for horses and that she's a cowgirl or whatever. But that's just a pointless rant, and I only share it because you raised the question. The appropriate way to deal with this would be to identify authors who tend to write in this style, and avoid reading them. I don't pretend they're bad, it's just their style doesn't fit my tastes.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  Eh. I think there's value in making people cognizant of this style by discussing the way it works. It certainly took my a few years before I could pinpoint exactly why I disliked this stuff. Also, there's so many magazine authors out there that keeping track of their individual styles it pretty hopeless for me. The best I can do is remember that Wired is written like this.
stevejalim 14y ago
I think a great part of that frustration is down to long-form magazine features being ported to wired.com, where brevity is better suited to the web-page form. Personally, I think almost all of the writing in Wired is excellent - well crafted and edited and laid out within interesting designs. Yes, while there are pretty common 'paint a picture' set-ups and more detail about the actual people involved than you'd get in news (for sure) and non-US feature writing (my view), that's part of the reason I keep buying the US print copy of Wired (even in the UK), and enjoy settling down to read it.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  I have the exact same revulsion to this style writing when I see it in print. The only upside is that, in print, it's easier for me to skip through the article and get to the actual content.
  - sophacles 14y ago
    See the think you are doing here is being completely and utterly disingenuous. What you are talking about as content is a list of facts of the event. What you are pissed about is a list of facts about the person involved. I like the facts about the person involved, the circumstance and some speculation about their mindset. I like that, if you want facts about the sequence of events, read a crime report. Or even better, don't read the article, you don't have to just because it is there. If you have revulsion, find a medium that works for you, they exist, don't complain.
SilasX 14y ago
Agree 100%. I'm saying this all the time. Please, writer, just get to the point! I don't want to learn a zillion details about everything you saw.
- vacri 14y ago
  Do you complain that movies take too long with the plot when you haven't seen the villain vanquished by the 5-minute mark?
  - SilasX 14y ago
    No. Movies are there primarily to entertain. News stories are there to inform. If I wanted the dramatic, drawn-out version, I'd see the "based on a true story!" version. There are lots of events I could be learning about in a day, and I'd like to be able to get the important stuff out of a new story and go on to the other stuff. In contrast, you can't similarly shorten a movie while sticking to its purpose (usually).
    - apendleton 14y ago
      Who said it was a news story? It's not about an especially current event, and Wired is not a news magazine (for that, see Newsweek, Time, or any number of others); they're a tech/nerd culture periodical. They've has always had a major focus on long-form journalism.
    - sophacles 14y ago
      Then don't read stories from sources that are known to contextualize rather than report the facts. It's like you keep touching a hot stove, and complain how it keeps burning you.
      - SilasX 14y ago
        Who said I did? Of course I ignore such stories, or skim past the first 15 paragraphs to get to the meat. If I want a page turner, I'll get a novel. For news stories, I just want the information. Time spent learning about the color of the subjects coat is time I could spend reading another story, learning something useful, or entertaining myself through a medium actually optimized for that.
yock 14y ago
No. Long-form journalism is about keeping the reader engaged in a story they didn't know they wanted to hear. You wouldn't write fiction with a strict focus on the sequence of events, why should this be any different? While you're feeling patronized I find that I enjoy the engagement. Frankly, your way sounds boring.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  I'm glad to know that at least someone enjoys this style, because I am with jablan; I hate it. To me, it suggests that the author doesn't expect me to find the content interesting, and that instead this content has to be packaged with (predictable) human-interest intrigue just to get me to read it. To me, it's very analogous to trying to teach students math with colorful, picture-laden textbooks: it might be necessary for students who will never learn much math in order to just get them to pass the grade, but insofar as it works such students are not getting deep appreciation for the concepts.
  - yock 14y ago
    But, this isn't math! It's a story, with characters and a plot. The intrigue is baked-in because it makes for an enjoyable read. Sure, the details are interesting, but there's nothing wrong with telling an interesting story with interesting details in an interesting way. "First this happened and then this happened and then this happened..." is not how you tell a story, regardless of whether or not the story happens to be factual.
    - jessriedel 14y ago
      If I want an artistic short story in magazine form, I'll read the New Yorker. But this is Wired, and the material facts of this story are the only interesting part. I guess it's possible that a gifted author could wrap these fact with a human-interest element in a way that is worthwhile while still communicating an essential idea ("The Last Question" by Asimov comes to mind). But, by experience, this just isn't within the abilities of most magazine writers. And it doesn't need to be, because the material facts are plenty interesting on their own. Edit: I can't reply to vacri, so I'll follow up to his comment here. Vacri: human interest pieces have been around for decades. Furthermore, the newspaper format of most journalism (one sentence paragraphs, most important facts at the top regardless of sensible narrative order, negligible artistic flourishes) were set a century ago. I'm pretty young (26), but I've read newspapers from before the internet and they did plenty of bad human-interest stories. I'm pretty skeptical that the internet had much of an impact in this respect. Maybe you have a more specific source, or I misunderstand your claim? Edit 2, reply to fiatpandas: I think the distinction between an AP-style newspaper article and a human-interest short story is a false dichotomy. Instead, there is a middle option of a fact-focused piece designed to clearly communicate the essential ideas without relying on artistic/narrative devices to keep the reader's attention. (See my reply to jablan http://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=4203567 http://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=4203567) Wired can choose whatever style it wants, (and I certainly have no doubt they've done this plenty in the past) but my claim is that the human-interest style is almost always poorly executed. If the facts are interesting enough, then it's unnecessary, and if they aren't, then it's a waste.

rdl 14y ago

I am amazed that paper banknotes have remained even vaguely counterfeit-resistant for so long. It seems like a very difficult problem, given modern technology; the capital costs of an intaglio press and great plates are high, but some kind of CNC milling should be able to produce equivalents at some point. The NK superbills are still as far as I know the best quality.

samstave 14y ago
Crazy to think about NK as one of the most backward vile 3rd world despots, but so capable in certain areas. I would think that EVERY tech innovation/resource/capability is really a proxy service of China, Russia, Iran, etc... There is no way they would have the tools to do what hey do on a range of fronts if they were not used as a proxy by these other nations.
GFischer 14y ago
The superdollar article on Wikipedia is very interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar

kqr2 14y ago

I would also recommend the book The Art of Making Money : The Story Of A Master Counterfeiter by Jason Kerstan. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105226799 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1052267... http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Making-Money-Counterfeiter/dp/B00403NGA4/ http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Making-Money-Counterfeiter/dp/...

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jbarham 14y ago

Considering that the central banks have conjured trillions of dollars and euros out of thin air, this story this seems sadly quaint...

kennywinker 14y ago
Penultimate counterfeiter doesn't sound as good.
GigabyteCoin 14y ago
...seriously? On HN? Nobody is printing money out of thin air. When they print more money, they value of the $20 that is in your pocket decreases slightly, but the value of your house increases substantially. Everybody knows it's not wise to store 100% of your worth in cash.
apendleton 14y ago
All money is "conjured" to some extent. Cash has no intrinsic value (you can't eat it or use it to build a house); it only has value because we as a society accept that it does, and accept that governments have the power to print it. Counterfeiting as described in the article is a violation of that social contract. Perhaps you think that all money is counterfeit because banks print it, or something, and that we should instead operate on an economy built around trading shells or bison, but even if that's the case, societal expectations clearly differentiate between what banks do and what this guy did, so if "counterfeiting" is the wrong word to describe the latter and not the former, feel free to suggest a more precise term.

kennywinker 14y ago

Good at making counterfeits, bad at making counterfeiting work. Saw a trashy Discovery channel doc on counterfeiters. They printed using laser printers, and had a good process for aging the money. That was all that was needed... people just don't look that closely at money most of the time. They got away with it for years, even though they were pretty foolish (spent their own fakes, used the same spot every time to print money, etc.) I can't tell if all that means there are probably smart people getting away with it constantly because they don't slip up in these dumb ways?

zitterbewegung 14y ago
I used to work at my dad's currency exchange. You know why they get away with it? Telling fakes from real requires WEEKS of training. We would get information from the US Mint, Treasury and the Secret Service. The capital investment required probably will outrun the training cost for most retailers.
throwaway_lop2 14y ago
Totally. A friend in I tried this (not in the US) using bills approximately $20 in value. We had a mediocre Epson printer and just did the approach of scan+print. We'd then handle the bills and throw them with dirt. Nothing fancy; just two kids playing around to get some extra beer money and also just to see if we could pull it off. Out of the 10 times we tried using the fakes, we only were noticed once. It's very, very easy to do if you aren't trying to make a living at it. I would imagine these days, it's even easier to pull off, _because_ of the high-tech protections. If you can replicate a single high-profile piece (like a hologram or something), then folks will probably just assume it's good. Most people don't know the tens of different protections, and anything flashy and difficult looking would work. They don't know the details - hell, I'd bet a bill with a holographic mark could be counterfeited using one of the holograms Microsoft uses on their products.
- dr42 14y ago
  This sounds very fishy. Imaging and scaning software, along with printer drivers have built in currency detectors to prevent this.

its_so_on 14y ago

If you read this article and have a halfway decent model of the world in your head, you will realize that police entrapment was the proximate cause of this real, talented artist low on his money becoming a counterfeiter: i.e. they made him do it, and he wouldn't have done it without them, and a judge released him early on probation for this reason (from the article). But the damage was done. Still without any money, this genuine artist (who had "refused to do two Warhol copies, including forged signatures", always signing his own name instead on homage pieces) now had a criminal skill that had no other applications. The fact is most people here have had a time in their life when they had unhoned skills (e.g. software/hardware hacking) that, if they only landed the right internship, would become very valuable. When the police are the proximate cause to creating this "lucky" internship (lucky in that the guy had 0 experience with it, or even interest for that matter) to create skills that have only a criminal market [1], something is very wrong. It would be great if Freakonomics covered entrapment some time, as it's very insidious - on the surface it seeems that if you do it you "would have done it anyway", but this example shows pretty obviously that this isn't true in any form whatsoever. [1] EDIT: or not even a criminal market, as the case may be: "The problem was, Kuhl and his partners couldn’t make a deal with anyone. It wasn’t for lack of trying—a sale brokered by a criminal-minded former cop fell through, and another transaction with a supposed buyer in Majorca fizzled. That was when Becker and his colleagues decided to help things along by providing an attractive buyer themselves."

mmcconnell1618 14y ago
I disagree. In the article Kuhl had a legitimate buyer who backed out. The bills where printed and Kuhl needed a buyer. The police decided to become the buyer but the counterfeit bills had already been created and the artist would have found a buyer eventually.
- its_so_on 14y ago
  The reason I added that EDIT is because I actually hadn't read that far down yet - I was just referring to his first counterfeiting gig when I first posted the comment: inline search the article for "Kuhl’s counterfeiting career had begun a decade earlier" and read from there. Of course you have no basis for your claim that he would have eventually found a buyer. This is a "manufactured criminal" and the police certainly got fed up with waiting for an actual market for his work to materialize. Entrapment is so insidious because when you turn a good guy, maybe there's no market for "good guy's evil works" anyway. (Who knows why, maybe he looks like an informant/plant/mole because he's a real artist and normal, genuine, good guy, who only got into 1 single crime - and no corresponding culture or connections, no other crimes, nothing - through an entrapment operation.) Please read the article more carefully and you'll see exactly what I mean.

losethos 14y ago

God says... 27:2 And they stood before Moses, and before Eleazar the priest, and before the princes and all the congregation, by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying, 27:3 Our father died in the wilderness, and he was not in the company of them that gathered themselves together against the LORD in the company of Korah; but died in his own sin, and had no sons. 27:4 Why should the name of our father be done away from among his family, because he hath no son? Give unto us therefore a possession among the brethren of our father. 27:5 And Moses brought their cause before the LORD.

Jun8 14y ago

Never ever do this, esp in the US, even as a joke. I know of cases in my college where students counterfeited $20 bills as a drunk joke: what they found out is that irrespective of the amount federal agents and the goddam CIA got involved and they got persecuted to the maximum degree. My prof was called as an expert witness in the case.

btilly 14y ago
I read an article about it a long time ago. The minimum penalties are draconian. An example from the 80s was a kid who had been making photocopies of $1 bills and feeding them into a change machine for free candy. The minimum penalty at the time was something like $100,000. Today they are higher. You don't want to mess with them. Governments take money seriously. For example everyone knows that Isaac Newton was a great scientist. Few know that he became Master of the Mint, and was responsible for enforcing the traditional penalty for undermining the currency - execution by drawing and quartering. (By all accounts he was very zealous in this task.)
- dr42 14y ago
  Few know? That's part of every grammar school boys education. Or was, in my day. Newton sending a couple of dozen men off to Tyburn to be hanged, drawn and quartered was quite memorable.
  - btilly 14y ago
    I live in the United States and grew up in Canada. It certainly is not in the curriculum here, and has been a surprise to everyone I've mentioned it to around here. If you grew up somewhere else, it may be common knowledge there.
    - dr42 14y ago
      That's because world history in America is much the same as the world series - fully encompassing of the whole world, with countries as far afield as.... Canada :) I should have mentioned I grew up and went to school in England, and learning the ins and outs of luminaries like Sir Issac Newton was part of history class. To be fair, we only touched on American history, and obviously seen from the other side of the coin. We kicked out the religious pilgrims so we could get back to partying and starting the industrial revolution.

vacri 14y ago

In Australia, we've had polymer notes for 20 years, and counterfeiting is a thing of the past, to the point where I was puzzled as to why someone in the US was marking my $50 note during a purchase while visiting. Paper notes feel nice, but polymer lasts longer and are effectively counterfeit-proof. Prior to this, we had a woeful $100 note, which was black and white with a bit of subtle colour. Pretty, but a dumb idea for currency. It was not unknown for folks to photocopy one, scrunch it up, and wander into a convenience store in the early hours when the staffer was tired...

jstclair 14y ago
US currency isn't printed on paper.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  That's not entirely correct. The paper that US Currency is printed on is a linen-cotton blend, but it's still considered a "paper", even though it doesn't come from trees. There was a fascinating article about this on Planet Money a few weeks back, including an interview with the head of Crane's, the company that provides the source paper to the US Mint.
- vacri 14y ago
  Our old $100 note wasn't either. It was the colour scheme that was the problem. Nevertheless, if it's still common to use a pen to determine fake notes, your technology is miles behind.

BlackNapoleon 14y ago

This sounds like a path to getting hired by the FBI/CIA after you serve your jail time. We need to be employing these sorts of lifehackers.

johnohara 14y ago

Back in 1993, an interesting documentary titled "Money Man" was made about currency artist J.S.G. Boggs. I don't know if it's still available. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104909/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104909/ Here is a short YouTube clip from the film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEtKSqzpj0Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEtKSqzpj0Q Searching images for "jsg boggs art" returns some of his work.