
How a $3.85 latte paid for with a fake $100 bill led to counterfeiter's downfall - rockdiesel
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/how-a-3-85-latte-paid-for-with-a-fake-100-bill-lead-to-counterfeit-kingpins-downfall/
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ChuckMcM
Spending my formative years in Las Vegas as a youth I was really impressed how
good the dealers were at catching fake bills. Lots of people seemed to assume
that because of the rapid pace of the gambling such things would get missed. I
was playing poker at Circus Circus and one of the players put down a $100 bill
and said, "chips please" and the dealer looked up and said "Well once we get a
real $100 I'd be happy to." The argument was short, the player looked
affronted and the dealer said simply, "You can insist and we'll detain you for
the police, or you can take your fake money elsewhere." Very surreal. It is
entirely possible the person was a "known" bad bill passer or something but it
really impressed me.

Of course Steve Wozniak having $2 bills made into pads so that he could peel
them off the pad and pay with them always cracked me up. That was the case
where the cashiers always assumed they were fake, but in fact they were legal
bills. Very hilarious.

~~~
sharkweek
I was a bank teller in college and I'd probably see a fake $100 or $20 at
least once a week. It got really, really easy to tell after about 3-4 months
of handling tens of thousands of dollars a day (I deleted it long ago, but I
at one point had a photo of me juggling three $100,000 bricks of $100 dollar
bills, incredibly stupid thing to take a picture of while at work in the
vault, but I was 19 and didn't know any better).

9/10 times the counterfeit bill owner had no idea as they were mostly in cash
deposits from local restaurants and whatnot. But 1/10 you could tell the
person was trying to pull a fast one. I never made a big deal out of it, just
let the customer know it was policy to confiscate, I'd file a report and give
them a receipt letting them know I was sending it to the authorities. They
could take it up with them at that point.

~~~
sneak
It seems way more stupid to admit to abetting counterfeiters by not "mak[ing]
a big deal out of it" than taking a harmless photo in the vault.

~~~
sharkweek
As a bank teller, you're in no place to make that judgement of intent. You
simply confiscate and move on.

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nkurz
Perhaps it's common knowledge, but it may be worth noting that (at least in
the US) a merchant who accepts a counterfeit $100 bill, later notices that it
is counterfeit, and does the "right thing" by reporting it simply eats the
loss. The Secret Service thanks you, confiscates the bill, and leaves a
receipt, but you lose the item you sold and the change you gave.

By contrast, a merchant who accepts a $100 counterfeit bill, does not notice
it is counterfeit, and uses it to purchase something else keeps the profit and
loses nothing. As a result, it is not in the self-interest of the merchant to
look closely at any bills that have already been accepted.

If the goal is to catch counterfeiters, it would seem like there would be a
better way to align the self-interest of the person who innocently accepts the
counterfeit bill and the goals of the law enforcement agency.

~~~
serve_yay
Years ago a friend got a fake $20 from an ATM and reported it to the Secret
Service. I don't remember the details, but he told me the Secret Service
really hassled him for a while. So it's probably best just to throw the fake
bill in the garbage (or burn it to be sure).

~~~
chii
or just forget about it being fake, and use it like normal. It's a drop in the
ocean, and eating the loss doesn't do you any good, reporting it doesn't do
you any good. I know that's selfish, but the way the system has been setup
means this is the best thing to do.

~~~
serve_yay
True, if you can get away with it, then do that I guess. But there is some
risk in passing a fake bill even if you didn't counterfeit it and even if it's
not your fault that you came into its possession.

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JoshTriplett
It always amazes me that counterfeiters still target $100 bills. While that
might be more efficient, it's a lot riskier. $50s and $100s are quite rare
compared to the ubiquitous $20 (thanks to ATMs). Most places of business will
look oddly at anyone paying with a $100, _especially_ for something as small
as a latte; a $20 would rarely get a second glance.

~~~
TheHypnotist
It's incredible to me that as of the previous version of the $100 bill, that
anyone would take the fake bills.

I worked at a bank for about 2 years and the quality of fake $100's I came
across was NEVER any good to fool the bank, however, local businesses did not
scrutinize it beyond the counterfeit marker (which is rarely indicative of the
legitimacy of a bill).

Edit: I should note that every single fake, or suspected fake, would be sent
out to the secret service. In the case where several bills would show up in a
short period from local businesses, local police would be contacted as well
(and of course demand to see the bills, which they never did).

~~~
shanemhansen
Respectfully, it's no surprise that all the fake bills you saw looked fake to
you.

This is similar to the attitude I frequently see from law enforcement about
how all criminals eventually get caught.

Ultimately, it's impossible to know how good your test is for determining X if
you have no ability to cross-check yourself.

~~~
georgemcbay
This idea is often called the "Toupée fallacy", the idea being people often
think all hair toupées look fake because they can always spot them, implicitly
ignoring that they are not accounting for the fact that some could be good
enough that they are unable to spot them.

~~~
TheHypnotist
Well, not entirely, because we also had very expensive machines that ID fakes.
We used this when one was suspicious but weren't sure. I dont know how it
worked, but it had more sensors and a process of ID'ing bills that I still
don't really understand. This is more often then not how we found 20's since
usually they were too numerous to scrutinize manually.

So you could try and walk in with a great toupee but I'm gonna suck it off
with my expensive vacuum anyway.

~~~
skj
This is only a counterargument if you actually put all of the bills through
this machine, eventually. Did you do that, perhaps as a final sorting measure?

Otherwise, the ones that were too good to arouse your suspicion were swept
through.

~~~
TheHypnotist
Well, eventually all of our money would be sold to this machine. So, yes. Our
drawers were only allowed to have some small sum, and usually no large bills.

------
pakled_engineer
There is no need to wear Frankengloves you can just coat your finger tips with
transparent, second skin brand type liquid adhesive bandages so you get the
same protection without having creepy looking rubber hands when trying to
defraud a coffee shop with monopoly money.

I also liked the US attorney quote "the internet is a dangerous place because
it's an open forum.."

~~~
mikeyouse
Actual, much less objectionable quote;

    
    
        The Internet is a dangerous place for law-abiding citizens,
        but because it’s open it’s a forum where criminals can get
        at people and steal their identities or pass counterfeit
        currency.
    

The internet has clearly made ID theft and wide distribution of counterfeit
money easier..

~~~
pakled_engineer
Identity is usually stolen out of garbage cans and mail boxes, or by cronies
working at banks and restaurants at least the kind of ID theft where taking
out loans and other financial fraud that isn't just ripped database dumps of
credit cards. They recently busted a network here that would pay drug addicts
to break into mail boxes then use stolen property assessments for loans and
false tax returns.

The attorney is correct that the internet just makes it easier for anybody to
become criminal with easier access to tools like counterfeit currency when
before they had to know somebody in the underground, but even then it wasn't
all that difficult. I remember in the mid 1990s my highschool pot dealer used
to also sell bricks of counterfeit $10 bills. Before that a kid in my
elementary school had an older brother who would mint tokens and he would sell
them to us at school to use at arcades and vending machines when the dollar
coin was released in 1987. I don't think the internet has really changed
anything these kinds of criminal networks always existed.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Identity is often stolen from vulnerable systems as well. Like that huge
Target data breach. Those stolen card details end up for sale on carder
websites for around a $1 each.

------
Zikes
> At the time, Clock claimed to Ars that he was a Colombian man living in
> Peru—but he seemed to be able to speak near-flawless English.

The quote immediately following this statement feels very much like ESL to me.
No contractions, word order different from a casual native speaker's
("sometimes will" as opposed to "will sometimes").

------
tomarr
Possible parallel reconstruction?

~~~
driverdan
Unlikely. The guy was stupid enough to ship the packages with his fingerprints
on the contents. That shows a high level of carelessness.

When I used to sell fake IDs and counterfeit credit cards online I always wore
gloves and wiped everything down to be safe. You have to be especially careful
with tape since it can pull a perfect print very easily.

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sago
Does anyone know what the requirements are, and how one would go about making
or buying intentionally counterfeit money?

Money that one has no intention of trying to pass off, for stage, filmmaking
or live-roleplaying, or similar.

I seem to remember that there are established ways that prop depts mark fake
notes as fake so they can be clear they aren't intended to be spent, but does
anyone know what the exact legal requirements are?

Is it as simple as just having single-sided notes and not showing the back?

~~~
driverdan
Priceonomics wrote a good article a while back about prop money:
[http://priceonomics.com/the-business-of-fake-hollywood-
money...](http://priceonomics.com/the-business-of-fake-hollywood-money/)

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bunkydoo
Its idiots like these guys that ruin grey markets and the deepweb for
everyone...

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brownbat
I wonder if we'll hit "post-cash" and see all this disappear in our lifetimes:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/cashless_society/2012...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/cashless_society/2012/02/david_wolman_s_the_end_of_money_reviewed_.html)

~~~
_0ffh
I certainly hope not! A cashless society is the wet dream of those who would
turn the world into a panopticon!

It'd add every teensiest financial transaction you ever make to the list of
information about you that every major government/company/crime syndicate will
have easy access to. No thanks!

(Note that stuff like bitcoin is a form of cash money.)

~~~
brownbat
Ok, yeah, I meant post-tangible currency, but that's just a mouthful.

I was using the English vernacular version of "cash" to refer to stuff you can
touch, not the specialized bookkeeping meaning (which could even include
diamonds or some artwork in certain situations).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash)

I will admit though that the price I set for "knowing everything about my
transactions" is roughly around 1% cash back, so as a volunteer to the
panopticon, I can't raise too much outrage either way.

~~~
_0ffh
I hear you, but certainly can't interpret the linked article in that way. It
explicitly mentions the ability to track all transactions as an (if not the)
desired effect.

About extended meanings of the term "cash", any serious prepper will have some
amount of cheap spirits and maybe cigarettes stockpiled. In the end, these are
a kind of consumable emergency cash.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_money](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_money)

------
denwer
Some information about the counterfeit bills can be found in a article by
Brian Krebs that appeared last year. Related Hacker News Thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8203885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8203885)

------
gumby
Note: even though the Internet & Tor were central to the crime, ordinary
police work, including an ordinary warrant, solved it.

No fancy spying or warrantless wiretapping needed. (At least the way they
describe it).

