[disclaimer: Do not take this post seriously. I am not a counterfeiter. I have never broken the law in my life [except for minor traffic infractions]. This article is for vendors to be aware of the next wave of desktop counterfeiting and to safeguard themselves from it. I am not responsible for any illegal or immoral activities on anyone else's behalf.]

materials:
* a high-resolution (2400X2400 minimum) printer-scanner-copier with good color and contrast balance
* 25% rag paper (but ordinary printer paper can be used)
* a clean and intact bill of any denomination ($20 and under, as a personal policy)
* a sheet of 'slightly thick' paper
* a sheet of black construction paper
* an iron
* clear tape (non-shiny surface; this is critical)
* a ruler
* a razor blade
* baby powder
* a few well-circulated $1 bills
* ~30 minutes to prepare, 2 hours to condition

So you're sitting around wondering where to get some more cash for some herb because all you have is a $20 bill and you want a half-ounce of the danks? Here's an INCREDIBLY EASY method to make your money multiply with minimal effort:

1) find a bill that is crisp, with squared corners and little to no 'grime' from being in circulation. the new $20 is a good candidate for this, but if you can find a crisp/clean bill pre-1992 (can't remember the year specifically, research this yourself) it will be lacking a watermark and holographic ink and thus will be a good candidate

2) slightly dampen the bill and iron it flat, making sure to smooth out any wrinkles. don't press down with the iron too hard while moving it or the bill can 'warp' and be harder to copy. the bill should feel like a brand-new crisp bill.

3) find a piece of semi-thick paper (construction paper will do) and center the bill on it, making sure it is at least parallel to the paper horizontally; rotation matters, centering it does not. mark the corners around the bill with 'L' shapes and use a ruler+razor to cut out a bill-sized rectangle in the thick paper. this is your placeholder. discard the cut-out portion and keep the sheet. this guarantees that the fronts and backs will match up perfectly.

4) put the bill inside the rectangular hole, and with a small amount of tape at each corner on the opposite side of your first copy, secure it. there should be no gaps between the edge of the bill and the placeholder. if there are, it's okay, just be sure to align the same edges up between prints.

5) mark one side of your placeholder sheet 'F' and one 'B'. put the bill+placeholder in your scanner bed and put the sheet of black construction paper on top of this. the construction paper will keep the bill from becoming 'transparent' and patterns from the other side ending up on your print. put the scanner on the 'best' quality setting, and experiment with different contrasts and color intensities until you get a print that looks as close as possible to the original. leave the copies on the 8.5"X11" sheet, or else they're useless.
copy; do NOT scan. almost all printer drivers have a built-in bill-identifying function that will recognize patterns on the bill and halt the printing. this may also alert the feds via internet. you have been warned.

6) once you have the front perfected, run anywhere from 2 to 10 copies of the front of the bill. write down the settings you used, and turn the placeholder over so that the back of the bill is down with the black construction paper on top. run a few copies until you have the back perfected, and write down your settings.

7) figure out which side of the paper gets printed on in relation to the paper tray. also note which way is 'up' and which way is 'down'. if you're a stoner, this is easy to fuck up, so draw and arrow on one side of a piece of paper and scan an empty page.

8) put your already-printed 'fronts' of the bill in the paper feed according to your results from #7. put the 'back' side of the bill+placeholder in your scanner bed with the black construction paper on top, and run your 2 to 10 copies.

9) inspect each 8.5"X11" print, checking for detail, quality, contrast, etc. next to the original bill. keep ONLY the candidates that look convincing. destroy anything you don't use, and dispose of it elsewhere.

10) using a ruler and a razor, cut out each bill reproduction to exact specifications. crumple and smooth the bill a few times, iron it flat, and repeat. to make it even more convincing, fold down a small piece of a corner or two and iron it down, then smooth it out, etc etc until it is convincing enough. study a currently-circulated bill for the wear patterns and try to mimic them.

11) if you used rag paper, and your product looks to be 'close enough', skip to step #12. if you used printer paper, or if your bills just seem 'off' to the touch, put small amounts of baby powder on the bill and crumple/smooth/ruffle/smooth the bill until the powder isn't visible, but makes the bill feel more convincing.

12) put the new bills in between some real bills in your wallet and sit on your ass for a while. this is to de-scent the bills and make them smell like ordinary money.

passing off the bills;
plan when you're going to pass the bills carefully. know which places are likely to check for a watermark, use the pen test, or look for the 'USA' strip that's in a lot of new bills.

if your school cafeteria is usually packed during break, the cashiers will typically be in a hurry and not suspect anything. keep the bill in your pocket, wadded up a bit, and only present the money when it's time to pay. do NOT look around to see who's watching; keep your eyes lowered. when she hands you the change, calmly pocket it and walk out with whatever you just bought.

have a friend help you out, if possible. avoid passing bills from the same batch at the same place, and give it a few days between attempts. basically, be creative in how you pawn them off, and if you get caught, it was money a friend owed you and plead the 5th.

in conclusion, counterfeiting is easy and profitable.

p.s. i've heard vitamin C can help defeat the pen test; is this true?

Pix or phail.

The choice is your's.

That would be incriminating, dumbfuck.

You're awfully haughty for someone who's a twit.

Either way, your concept is good but there is some refinement that could be made. Those counterfeit detection pens simply contain an iodine solution, which turns black when it meets up with the starch normally found in consumer paper but obviously not found in the linen paper used for US currency. Interestingly, you can buy or steal said pens from most office supply places - probably where you'll be buying or stealing your paper from anyway. Find some non-starched linen paper that your newfound counterfeit pen doesn't react to and use that to print your bills on. This works to your advantage as anyone who does do the pen test will invariably trust the bill because people (especially minimum wage cashiers) generally don't understand how the pens work and figure they must be some form of infallible voodoo magic.

You show me my grammatical errors and I'll show you a grammar nazi. Fuck capitalization, I'm too high for that shit.

Ah! Yes! There's a few things to be done as far as getting the technique/details down perfect, but this was just a basic outline of how it's done.

Hm, could you boil the rag paper in a water/paraffin mixture to at least reduce the amount of starch?

And as far as watermarks go, I've known people who used dye sublimation printers with great success. Are there alternative methods?

It's a tad more difficult, but one could use actual $1 bills as base paper. They would need to wash these bills in a bleach solution, until the bills were faded enough to be printed on. This also eliminates the problem of creating wear, although it is a real bitch to do. Also, a slightly easier way is to sponge a 10/90% clorox/water solution over them, which should defeat the counterfeit pen. The works of Frank Abagnale are astoundingly informative on these matters. Also, another great paper to use is a "rice paper blend." It can be picked up at most stationary places and feels almost exactly like real money.

submit this as a text file, good work

Interesting concept. If it works, I give you about a month before they track the currency back to you.

To clean a 1$ bill I was told by an American that EZ Oven Cleaner does the job well, Just leave the bill in it for 12 hours or so.

You can soak bills in pure acetone to get the ink off them; you can turn a $5 bill into a $50 bill and there'll at least be SOME kind of watermark on the thing.

Like I said, pass them off to people who are typically in a hurry. Lunch-ladies are the best to pull this on.

Also, as long as you aren't passing around too many of one serial number, it's difficult for them to trace back, especially if you're not called out on the spot.

Remember, the 5th Amendment is your best friend in this case. Just don't carry more than 1 of the reproductions on you when you go to pass them.

One last thing...
...if I were to get even 25% of the people who read this to give it a try, we could potentially sabotage this country's economy. Imagine it! The secret service would have to spend valuable time and resources to track down several hundred thousand counterfeiters working out of their basements. All this funny money flooding the market would depreciate the dollar. We'd go back to the barter system in a matter of months!
God damn, the thought of all that makes my nipples hard.

I have a question how would you replica the color-shifting ink that changes from one color to the other color.Also if you did create a good bill to pass-by 90% of the public what makes you think that you will not get nab by the secret service or the police.Or is there away that this could be done without getting nab by anybody. and how do these idiots get caught in the first place.

there's also microprinting some where on the note how would you replica that that would be impossilbe to do. how would you get around that.


just a throught or two.

from your friendly neighborly agent ben franklin.....

Not you. User "23." When I was writing that response your post wasn't between his and mine.

color shifting ink is a work in progress
i'd say getting it watermarked would be of higher priority.

Color shifting pigments are actually available commercially these days. Duplicolor makes a green/gold color shifting spraypaint that you could just extract the pigment from and silkscreen on or something.

ORLY?

I hear EZ bake oven cleaner works better.

Good post, kudos.

two words
Ink Jet

Only laser printers are accurate enough to create a near-invisible overlay pixel-pattern like that.

Funny, I don't remember giving my name and address when I purchased my printer.

All this does is show that all of the bills were printed from the same printer. It does nothing to trace you.

microprinting is just as hard or harder to replica then a watermark. The watermark is made when the paper is made if you make paper this could be done to create that watermark but you would have to know the process in replicating that watermark at the same time you make the paper and this paper is not made with wood pulp.WHO knows what that paper is made of. you also can't buy note paper. so what kind of paper could you use and will it fool the public all the time when you pass these phoney notes.remember most people in retail will look carefully at the note you pass them. There is alot of security that go's in currency that the public don't know about and can not see on real currency.How would you get around that. (This is onething you just can't duplicate.)And if you could this would not be counterfeiting but making real currency. maybe this is a deterent against counterfeiting. whats your comments on that side of the bill.


(Fate) good idea But if the paint is not the right color combination the right color the bill will look suspect.

But isn't it ture that if you fold the paper that was printed on a laser printer you will crack the toner on the paper and leave a white crease in the paper, and you can only use laser paper to print on a laser printer.TRY It. And the paper will not feel like real currency. in a inkjet the nozzles spray the ink on to the paper and if you fold that paper it will not leave a cresae in the paper it will wrinkle the paper.O' yeah it with leave dots but inkjet printers are make for plain paper printing and its cheaper then laser paper. The toner from the laser printer lays on top of the paper the inkjet spray's the paper with ink and this ink is absorbed into the paper. There are PROS & CONS IN BOTH MEDIA and printers. And they are both made from wood pulp. And why do these idiots still get caught by the Authority with phoney currency that's been printed with a laser printer. if a laser printer leaves a near-invisible overlay pixel-pattern. laser printers still leave dots dpi. not as much but they do it also depends on the brightness of the paper to there alot of factors in the paper you print on. Its not going to come any near what real paper currency looks or feels like. laser or inkjet paper. what your comments and how would you get around the papers feel and looks and the so call Dots in printers.


Just a throught to ponder over!Top agent Andrew jackson.