
Counterfeit U.S. Cash Floods Crime Forums - denwer
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/08/counterfeit-u-s-cash-floods-crime-forums/
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bequanna
>'MrMouse says his single-ply bills do not have magnetic ink, and so they
won’t pass machines designed to look for the presence of this feature.'

Clever tip for detecting counterfeits, found in comments:

>'A good strong, neodynmium cylindrical magnet stuck to the side of something
is a great way to check US currency. Just hold a bill by the corner and dangle
it close to the magnet. The bill will show a slight, but very observable
attraction. Easy and fast.'

~~~
Justsignedup
nevertheless, I can hit my local CVS and pay with my $100. They will just
check the security strip. Easy peasy.

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iancarroll
I think the point was that these bills have said security strip.

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maaku
Which was the GP's point as well.

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dsl
Note that Krebs hasn't verified that any orders have been received (fake
"reviews" in underground forums are very common). Lots of people have claimed
to sell fake currency in these marketplaces and are almost always a scam. This
looks like one too.

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iancarroll
> (fake "reviews" in underground forums are very common)

Do you have any references for that? Besides the top layer of these sites, I
was under the impression that if you go down your "vouchers" go down with you.

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dsl
10+ years of being involved in fighting cybercrime. He is mostly advertising
on low end forums that don't have the established social networks that would
punish false reviews.

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larrys
My question was "is buying counterfeit money but not using it a crime".
According to this, it's not:

[http://www.secretservice.gov/money_law.shtml](http://www.secretservice.gov/money_law.shtml)

"Possession of counterfeit United States obligations with fraudulent intent is
a violation"

Specifically, at least on that page, it would not appear to be a crime to buy
counterfeit money as long as a) you didn't use it and b) you didn't try to
sell it.

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amalcon
I'd be careful. I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice, but that page
only refers to _posession_. I seem to recall things existing that are legal to
have, but illegal to purchase.

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larrys
I have no intention of buying the money I was just curious specifically about
the law surrounding the issue. If I did intend to buy it (for whatever reason)
I certainly would check further. I just found the language on the page
interesting I didn't expect it to discuss the issue in that way.

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grecy
I lived in Ecuador for 5 months, which uses the US Dollar.

A couple of local guys that worked for me had a lot of fun testing my
abilities to detect fake bills, which are plentiful in Ecuador. Even when they
gave me two bills and told me one was real and one was fake, I couldn't
discern any difference after 5 months of them showing me all the tricks of the
trade.

The copies are extremely good, and I suspect not many people in the US are
going to spend the time to check if a $10 or $20 is fake.

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justin66
> The copies are extremely good, and I suspect not many people in the US are
> going to spend the time to check if a $10 or $20 is fake.

Many places will at least use the marker test on a $20.

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crazypyro
From the article, the seller claims that the bills will pass the pen test, so
that wouldn't help.

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Crito
The pens are worthless in general. Real bills can "fail", fake bills easily
pass if they care to. The Secret Service will tell you to not rely on them if
you call them up and ask about them.

A friend of mine had a $10 bill checked and confiscated at a corner store a
few years ago. The bill was genuine, but a few decades old and over those past
decades it accumulated enough starch on it to trip the pen. He had to call the
local SS field office and get them to talk the corner store into giving him
back his bill (the SS looked up the serial number, said that it wasn't a
serial number known to be used on counterfeits, told them that the pens were
shit, and told them to give the bill back).

I say the pens are worthless because, although they can detect counterfeits
that somebody ran through their ink-jet at home, those sort of counterfeits
won't fool a standard "look and feel" check anyway. In fact, they may give you
a false sense of confidence and distract you from the more robust "look and
feel" check.

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ghshephard
"over those past decades it accumulated enough starch on it to trip the pen"

I can't believe that's a very common case. The pens are there to deter people
from playing games with their color printers, and do a pretty good job of
that.

Well, at least they do a good job of making people buy starch free paper.

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dragonwriter
> The pens are there to deter people from playing games with their color
> printers, and do a pretty good job of that.

The circuitry in color printers and copiers that specifically prevents
reproducing certain patterns used in bills probably does a better job of that.

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lazyeye
Related..I thought maybe you could claim it as prop money for the movies but
no dice.

"As it turns out, the Feds have strict laws about the production of fake
currency. According to the Counterfeit Detection Act of 1992, a reproduced
bill must be: a.) either less than 75% or more than 150% the size of a real
bill, b.) one-sided, and c.) made with only one color (so as to discourage the
reproduction of identifying factors). "

[http://priceonomics.com/the-business-of-fake-hollywood-
money...](http://priceonomics.com/the-business-of-fake-hollywood-money/)

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lostlogin
This post reminded me of this.
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Diaries](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Diaries)

The Robert Harris account is excellent and there is a great quote from the
forger along the lines of "A document isn't real or fake, it's efficient of
inefficient". I highly recommend reading the book.

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Justsignedup
The primary question: How the hell do you get this to your door? If I was to
order it to a physical box, I face major felony charges as the government has
a website to hack, and I am not confident in some random dude's ability to
secure his website with every known security hole patched.

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fiatmoney
Typically you ship to some drop address (e.g., a house you know is empty, or
somewhere where they'll leave the package somewhere easy to surveil and pick
up). There was a DC-area mayor who had drugs shipped to him in this kind of
scheme (he was uninvolved) and had his house shot up by a SWAT team as a
result.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor'...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor's_residence_drug_raid)

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kourt
_who had drugs shipped to him...(he was uninvolved)_

"had drugs shipped" is a little ambiguous: someone shipped drugs using the
mayor's house as the destination; Mayor Calvo had no knowledge or involvement
in this. Despite his lack of involvement, the SWAT teams shot both of his
Labrador retrievers, including one that was fleeing.

Photo of the mayor and the deceased: [http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/photo/2009/09...](http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/photo/2009/09/19/PH2009091902247.html)

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sjtrny
A lot of this concern would be removed if the US switched to polymer notes.
Visiting the US last year I was surprised to see people immediately suspicious
of $50 notes that I gave them. I've never seen that happen in Australia, even
with $100 note.

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barrkel
You're attributing one thing - suspicion of a particular denomination - to
something which it may not be related to. It may simply be due to how common a
particular denomination is used in the cash economy.

In the Eurozone, €50 notes are very frequently used - it would be unusual to
be specifically suspicious of that denomination - while €100 notes are far
more rare.

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sjtrny
You could be correct although I saw many other people paying for things with
$50 notes too. I didn't think they were rare. Maybe it is store policy to do
the counterfeit checks on $50/100 notes?

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UrMomReadsHN
I can count on one hand how many times I've had a 50 in my wallet. We normally
use 20s in the US. When I worked in retail policy was to check anything larger
than a 20.

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ableal
It's funny that no one is checking serial numbers. Nowadays it would not be
too hard to look up in a database if the number was issued, is in use
elsewhere, or belongs to a destroyed note.

Privacy, cost and protocol issues left as an exercise.

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mschuster91
Why not make the serial numbers also a EC digital signature?!

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jbermudes
Wouldn't it still be susceptible to replay attacks?

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wmf
Paper-based PUFs, anyone?

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ck2
Do all bills have magnetic ink?

I cannot seem to find a list.

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fredgrott
One dollars do not as of yet

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Guvante
No one has found a way to make convincing one dollar bills for less than a
dollar.

Heck washing dollar bills is a way to get base paper for higher denominations.
(one of the incentives for moving away from consistently colored currency)

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teh_klev
Which was the premise of the first Jack Reacher novel.

