Albert Talton, 44, is charming and soft-spoken, a big, fastidious man with a taste for expensive cars and high-end audio equipment. Born and raised in Southern California, he has been a criminal for most of his life.
[…]
When Talton set out to circumvent the U.S. Treasury’s security measures, he had no experience in counterfeiting, printing, or graphic design, and he didn’t even own a computer. His first attempts were made with a Hewlett-Packard all-in-one ink-jet printer/scanner/fax/copier, which could be picked up at the time for less than $150. Early experiments, printed on regular copy paper, were fuzzy, so he cleaned up the original image on a computer. But there was a problem, Talton says: “It wouldn’t take the mark.” Counterfeit-detection pens mark yellow on genuine currency but brown or black on fake. […] He was about to give up when one day, sitting on the toilet, he found himself staring at the roll of tissue beside him. He took out the pen: The mark showed up yellow. Talton discovered that toilet paper, the pages of Bibles and dictionaries, and newsprint are all made from the same kind of recycled paper pulp, and all take the mark.
Hey, all you would-be counterfeiters out there. All the printers made for the last 20 years put an invisible code on each sheet of paper printed. The code is the serial number and type of printer. Good luck.
1, I thought that only applied to color lasers.
Also, I heard that the way the mob circumvents the problem of having the right kind of paper is by bleaching either $5 or $20 bills and then they print the bleached currency as $100 bills.
It passes the marker test and the only way to know it’s a counterfeit is the watermark. But how many people actually check the watermark?
I heard that the pens were useless because all it did was test what paper it was for a good 5+ years now. And these were from people who work as tellers and in banks.
Counterfeiting money is wrong. Only the FED has the authority to devalue our money and they jealously guard their privilege.
The guy had a great scam going. I have to admire this in a “little guy gets even” kind of way. The problem is the guy got greedy and let more people in on the secret than there should have been.
NOTE: This was done by professionals. Don’t try this at home.
You see it in WW2 pictures==seems every government had a covert operation to print the enemies money and flood their economy. I’d be shocked if that didn’t continue today==but we never hear of it.
Its just “lazy” for the printer/brains of the organization to go face to face with its distributors. Easy to put a break in the chain of illegality==movies indeed.
I don’t see what difference it makes if printers have a secret code ((which I doubt)). All that is “required” is passing the bill at point of use. Feds have all kinds of tricks with serial numbers like all of them not used and so forth in order to catch perfect fakes.
I’m surprised paper money is still used.
#1 John
Try to scan money…the scanner will report back “can’t scan money”. I tried. But it’s easily bypassed. Just use a different driver than the manufacturer’s.
And the marking is easily picked up too. Just re-scan something you printed. In photoshop you can pick up tiny clusters of dots, usually in yellow.
Sometimes I’m baffled by the ingenuity and commitment of some criminals. Had they used their skills into something legit, they would be successful people, even could make their own empire. Sometimes I don’t get it.
I read this story wrong. I thought he used the printer to make phoney bills (invoices) and send them to big companies. A big enough company won’t check.
6, The code thing has been know for at least a few years now. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been trying to crack the codes (they’re different for each brand).
Forgot to mention that CNBC did a documentary called “Big Brother Big Business” a while ago. It talks about codes on color lasers, disc burners burning your drive’s serial number on every disc you burn, etc.
#9–Thanks Guyver. I just wish this info had come to light before I bought my new color laser printer.
I wonder what the fake bills look like if I drain the yellow ink container? Probably the code would then appear as small little blanks?
“I couldda been a contender!!”
I remember when color copiers first came out with ad campaign that they would not print the color of green that was used for money. THAT certainly wasn’t true.
Money, money, money.
One other tip for counterfeiters:
Instead of using newsprint, use real money instead. Here’s the trick: take a $5 bill and bleach it. Then you can print $50 and $100 directly onto authentic treasury-paper.
OK, it costs $5 for each $100, but that’s a pretty good mark-up. And it will fool most people.
Couldn’t be done with Euros: All the different note are differently sized. Also they have, not only white translucent markings, but also, embroided strip, fluorescent markings, tactile braille numbering and hidden microperfurations.
You can’t fake it with a inkjet printer…
#13, Joao
But I bet someone will try.
OH, yes… in fact I’ve had some crude ones in my hand… You know, sometimes people don’t really check the money, specially in bad light conditions, and some get through…
#7… Just tried with a Canon ImageRunner 3225. Scanned just fine. Then emailed me a perfectly good full color copy of a $20 in PDF.
I doesn’t take to many times being scammed for a business person to get savvy about passing paper. Who do you think gets stuck with the loss?
#16 well…
All I can vouch for is a HP 7400c that refused to scan money.
Even my Epson DX3800 all-in-one scanned a one dollar bill I happen to have around…But monday I’ll be sure to test the theory on the scanners at the office. They’re all HP, so maybe is something with the HP driver…
That was an excellent article Uncle Dave.
Ho hum. Television ministers have been making money from the bible for years…
us currency also contains fluorescent color strip when black lighted, under visible light the strip has the denomination visible on it. The one corner of larger bills has two tone ink, there is the watermark, and the position of the previously mentioned strip varies according to the denomination. But likely the single biggest tip off of a counterfeit is –it doesnt feel right. Most folks just glance at their money at a store transaction
A friend once told me the story of an old man he knew in his small home town who got away with counterfeiting for decades. His secret: he printed up bogus ONE dollar bills on a printing press he had. Who checks ones? Plus, he only passed a few at a time, when his monthly budget came up short. He finally got caught when there was a fire in his house — firefighters were tossing things out a second-story window (to save them from the fire, I assume) and someone in law enforcement became interested in the printing press…
Just wipe your ass with Zims.
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