8 ms·
When I was in college (99-2000ish, maybe?), one of my roommates was an art major with a graphic design bent, and he had this high end printer and would copy and
by pionar 13y ago
When I was in college (99-2000ish, maybe?), one of my roommates was an art major with a graphic design bent, and he had this high end printer and would copy and print $1 bills and take 20 at a time over to the vending machines around the corner from our apartments once a week or so. After about a month of doing this, the machines disappeared.
Of course, he's the same roommate who later got arrested for wire fraud and grand theft.
- thirdsight 13y agoSimilar. A friend of mine used an epson stylus printer (new on the market then) and a scanner to copy £20 notes. They were inserted into the change machine in the local gambling arcade type place. It was stupid enough to accept a single sided copy. Out popped pound coins. He now works for GCHQ which is funny. Edit: just to add that these change machines were really naff and obviously built by the lowest bidder.
- Zhenya 13y agoNAFF - At first I decided that it stood for 'Not Anything Fucking Fancy' then I googled it and realized its british slang:'https://www.google.com/search?q=naff https://www.google.com/search?q=naff
- alextingle 13y ago"realized" - at first I thought you couldn't spell, but then I googled it and realised that you're an American.
- mysterywhiteboy 13y agoLook it up and you'll _realize_ that "realise" is the non-Oxford English spelling, and the Oxford English spelling is realize. It's the same with many words with the -ize suffix - we seem to have subconsciously accepted -ise to the point that spellcheckers demand it, when in actual fact the OED form of a word typically uses -ize. Most British newspapers use the -ise form. The Oxford University Press use the -ize form. So it isn't as clear cut as you think. I recall reading that the -ise alternatives have some roots in Australian us of the language.
- alextingle 13y agoI am aware of the OUP's stance on -ize. My little dig at the commenter's parochialism would not have been enhanced by a exploration of the nooks & crannies of International English.
- csirac2 13y agoIt turns out "-ise" is a French-ism, which we seem to have integrated in Australian English (blame Macquarie :-)
- Zhenya 13y agoI love how you antagonize me even though you're the one in the wrong.
- dhughes 13y ago> It was stupid enough to accept a single sided copy. DIP switches are set for various options one being accept face up (two-way), other options turn on or off acceptance of certain denomination bills and maintenance features such as calibration. Even now modern acceptors allow this, although four-way acceptance is often preferred by the customer.
- alextingle 13y ago> He now works for GCHQ which is funny. So he just moved on to even more serious crimes.
- thirdsight 13y agoYep. Considering the recent news etc, he is the proverbial laughing stock.
- atmosx 13y agoWell, mission accomplished ^_^
- twistedpair 13y agoGiven the cost of high quality ink and paper, one wonders how much less than $1 those bills cost to make.
- aaronem 13y agoGiven that it was a decade and a half ago, and that even today's vending machine recognizers probably don't do much beyond making sure a few relatively gross features are present, I doubt the cost per counterfeit was all that close to $1.
- minikites 13y ago"The primary method vending machines use to recognize the denomination of paper money is through a magnetic scan; paper currency is printed with magnetic ink, similar to the ink on the MICR line of a check, that makes it easily identifiable to machines with magnetic scanners. In addition, each denomination is marked with different fluorescent properties. Many vending machines and other machines that read paper currency use an ultraviolet light to scan the bill, read the fluorescent response and issue the appropriate credit."
- diogenescynic 13y ago>he had this high end printer and would copy and print $1 bills and take 20 at a time over to the vending machines I'm embarassed to admit that in middle school my friend and I did something similar as his dad ran a printing business out of his garage. It surprised us then that this worked so easily. Luckily we only used them on vending machines and we quit doing it before we got caught. It makes me wonder what more sophisticated criminals can get away with.
- erichurkman 13y ago> It makes me wonder what more sophisticated criminals can get away with. A lot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar
- MrBuddyCasino 13y agoThat was a fascinating read, thanks! Tl;dr: 100$ bills produced in all likelihood by a foreign government (suspects are North Korea, Syria, Iran) or maybe criminal gangs are so well done that they are practically indistinguishable from the original. The numbers printed seem to be pretty low though, and not nearly enough to endanger the economy in any way. Probably its hard to launder the money?
- erichurkman 13y agoRates for the US are around 0.01% of circulating notes. As far as counterfeit currency being a danger to economies, check out Operation Bernhard [1] where Nazi Germany forged British bank notes to flood the economy, with the goal of causing rapid inflation that would be damaging to the government. There's a good movie as well, from 2007, about the operation: Die Fälsche (The Counterfeiters) [2]. Definitely worth a watch. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard [2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0813547/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0813547/
- midas007 13y agoSome how this comment reminded me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._G._Boggs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._G._Boggs This guy made beautifully artistic bills that didn't look official currency and then made purchases with them at their face value: $100, $500, etc.
- gcb0 13y agoThis is the main point. anyone willing to commit the crime will find ways. it is just like TSA at airports. Those systems do nothing to actually prevent the crime. it just fatten someones pockets who then pass a percentage down to the policy makers.
- alan_cx 13y agoI love to see figures on the size of the "being seen to be doing something" market. Im willing to be my entire fortune of 50 great british pence that its bigger than the video games market.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- debacle 13y agoIn what world do you live in where QR codes can't be copied?
- jasonkester 13y agoIn a similar vein, I remember a class trip on a Ferry from Seattle to Vancouver back in the 80s. There was a change machine that would give you four quarters for a dollar so that you could play video games. It seemed smart, as it would give you the same four quarters if you used a Canadian Dollar or an American one. Or maybe not, as one kid found out when he stuck a $5 bill in and got 4 quarters. Being 12, and therefore far more clever than the designers of this machine, the kids then proceeded to cut our a few thousand little rectangular strips of paper, roughly dollar sized, and clean that poor machine out. And being 12, and having Ms PacMan machines as the only way of disposing of that giant sack of quarters, when it became apparent that there was no way to spend them fast enough, it naturally degenerated into a game of "Throw the quarter in the Ocean".
- hatchoo 13y agoWhen I was in the States, some buddies had some Philippine Peso coins which weigh and are roughly the same size as quarters. They used a few if these to operate coin-based laundry machines.
- saalweachter 13y agoThe best part about this is, in small numbers, foreign currency just becomes domestic currency on the basis of similar appearance alone. You get a Canadian penny, you may not even notice, and even if you do, you don't care because the next guy won't either. The laundry/vending machines are an interesting case because there's a decent chance that the the vendors would just be taking bags of coins to the bank where, presumably, the Pesos would be kicked out correctly. Even then, if there were only a small number of pesos, they probably just passed them on at someone else's vending machine, or in other cash person-to-person transactions. It's hilarious to me that, while you can argue about what currencies are backed by, at the end of the day all that matters is that something spends. If something spends like a quarter, it's a quarter.
- geon 13y agoI was visiting Italy as a kid in the mid 90's. My dad would get pay phone token coins in the change, and apparently they were widely used interchangeably with the official coins. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettone