Funny Money

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. I almost said darkweb.com and then I thought, I bet that's not it. Campsite media. Rory, pop quiz. Yep. Who's on the five dollar bill? Why do I think it's Abraham Lincoln? Is it Abraham Lincoln? OK. Correct. God. I think it's excusable to not know this now because we've moved so far away from cash. Although you and I, I think are old enough to not be able to use that as an excuse. I know I was trying to. Thank you, Josh. Just in case there are more questions. You're not off the hook yet. Who's on the hundred? Washington's on the one and the hundred is Franklin. Correct. Boom. I mean, that's only because of people using the slang of Benjamin's third and hardest. The two dollar bill. Thomas Jefferson. Correct. You're three for three. Your attention to detail means obviously that you're old first because no one under 25 could answer those questions. Shit. It also puts you way ahead of some of the criminals on this week's episode. Oh, we delve into some of the wildest stories about funny money, counterfeiting crimes. Oh, so grab your highest resolution scanner, your finest color printer, your linen and cotton paper, your tiny colorful security strip and your best renderings of America's presidents because it's time to do illegal art projects. Yeah, I love that. Coming up on CrimeList, how not to counterfeit US currency. Hello and welcome to CrimeList, a weekly celebration of the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. I am Josh D. I am Roy Scoville. OK, I already gave you a pop quiz, but I'm feeling a little academic today, so I'm going to give you a history lesson. Do you know which government agency handles counterfeiting crimes? Is it the FBI or the IRS? It's the Secret Service. So that's what I was about to guess. I was doing that for the listeners because I was guessing what they would probably think, but I knew it was the Secret Service because obviously. And an even harder question. I thought you might get that one right here. It's an even harder one. Do you know which president created the Secret Service? Just pick one. Famous one. No. Lincoln. Oh, OK. I got to say, that's way further back than I was going to guess. Lincoln signed legislation on April 14th, 1865, establishing the Secret Service. Their main job then was focusing on post-Civil War counterfeiting. So stopping counterfeiting was their original job. OK. It wasn't until 1901 that Secret Service agents added presidential protection to their job duties, which is ironic because do you know what also happened on April 14th, 1865? Is this a no? Lincoln was assassinated. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's a sad irony that the man who created the Secret Service to counter counterfeiting was assassinated, probably in part leading to the job becoming presidential protection whatever 25 years later. Yeah. Because it's, you know, you would think the Secret Service would have been there the night that he was killed, given the fact that they are after counterfeiting. And this was a production about people pretending to be other people at a theater and they weren't there. Did that was that joke too wordy? Yeah. You lost me on the way. You lost me on the way to the final. Lincoln getting shot at the theater. I was trying to say counterfeit, people counterfeiting themselves as other people. I thought it was a reference to the actual play he was watching. I don't even remember what that was. I don't either. And also no one that night knows how it ended. There. So by the end of the Civil War, nearly one third of the currency in circulation was counterfeit. Oh, wow. Today, the statistic is less than 1%, so great job, Secret Service. Yeah. But that less than 1% is still a lot of cash. According to the Department of Treasury, an estimated 70 to 200 million in counterfeit bills are in circulation at any given time. So if you are considering a lucrative career in counterfeiting, maybe don't. It's a felony and a serious one. Under federal law, you face up to 20 years in prison and very large fines in the ballpark of a quarter million dollars. But I will say, of the felonies you could commit, it does feel a little on brand for crime-less. No one gets hurt. There's arts and crafts involved. Yeah. And that's one of our big tenants is arts and crafts. It's kind of a Robin Hood situation, except you're not stealing from the rich. You're just slightly destabilizing the economy, which let's be honest. These days feels like a... Yeah. It's for the public good, maybe. Yeah. In my research for this episode, I've come across three categories of counterfeiters, and I made up the classification system. First, professionals who take pride and joy in their craft. They've got all the equipment and materials. They probably keep a tidy workspace and use code names. Then there's opportunists. These are crooks who don't make it themselves. They source it elsewhere from larger operations or purchase on the black market. I'm guessing there's serious counterfeiting on the dark web. I still don't know how to get to the dark web, do you? No. No, I don't know. I don't know. As you asked that, I almost said darkweb.com. And then I thought, I bet that's not it. What if it was that simple? Wait, have you tried typing in darkweb.com? Have you gone the most likely route? Maybe a future episode will teach the world how to get on the dark web. This is the first time I've actually considered that I don't know how to access the dark web. It's never been a destination I'm seeking out. But for some reason, I think subconsciously, I thought we all could just go to it. Type it into Google? Truly, I think I actually did. I never thought the steps of how you access it till you ask that. No, I think we're going to have to do a future episode on where we figure out how to get to the dark web. And teach people. Yeah, let's teach America how to get on the dark web. So a final category is delusional. Those who lack the skill and knowledge and talent, but make up for it in gumption. We'll get into examples of each, but I want to start with the last one, which is obviously my favorite, the delusional. I mean, gumption, come on. So here's an example. In 2008, a guy named James Ryan in Memphis paid for his meal at Waffle House with a $100 bill. The waitress knew immediately something was off because instead of the portly visage of Ben Franklin, it was the star of the five, Abe Lincoln staring back at her. Yeah. My man didn't even do the most basic homework. Yeah. He put the wrong president on the bill. But he's not alone because we have Michael Fuller, a 53 year old in Lexington, North Carolina, who went on a Walmart shopping spree in 2011. He picked up a microwave, a vacuum cleaner and some other household items, totaling $467. To pay for that, he whipped out a $1 million bill. OK. How did the clerk know that that was fake? Also, I love thinking you're going to get change on a $1 million bill. I love that in your mind. You're like, well, this doesn't exist. But also go ahead and give me 900,000. I know he could have maybe started with a thousand. He honestly could have started with like a couple fake hundreds. I mean, what you said was a microwave, a vacuum and something else. At $400, you could have easily gone in with 500 counterfeit hundreds. Benjamins, as you and I know them. As we like to call them. Yeah. Because the highest bill in circulation is the $100. Yeah. And I bet they still check it, but your likelihood of getting away with it, I mean, clearly, is it's 100% over a million dollar bill. I feel like you maybe can get away with it with a thousand. Like there might be some clerks. Maybe. Oh, you've never seen one of these before. They're very rare. Right. Right. Right. Right. But like a one million come on, dude. A million is so the type of bill that comes out of one of those vending machines where they give you fake money in an egg. Yes. And or a ring or some gum. The Flintstones. Remember we used to be the Flintstones like vending machine? It's probably where it came from. He was like, oh, I got an idea. He's like, I got to go back in there and buy a vacuum. My personal favorite in this category is a woman named Pamela Downs. She was arrested in 2015 for paying with $5 counterfeit bills at a grocery store in Tennessee. Her fakes were pretty easy to spot because they were printed in black and white on copy paper, not even double sided just glued together, which exemplifies a real fucking attitude about life and or assumes that cashiers are really checked out. I'm like, man, is there any chance they take that as a joke and there's no penalty because I would like to try that. It's a bit. I'm doing a bit guys. Clearly. It's black and white tape to get glued to glued glued together. There's a texture. So I want to say try harder Pamela, but also I live in America. So maybe would work somewhere. Yeah. So when police searched your bag, they found a $100 bill printed the same way, although in that case, one side was upside down and a receipt for printer and copy paper. According to the Kingsport Times News, she told police that a new law had been passed by Obama, permitting her to print her own money because she was on a fixed income. Yeah. Which if she came up with that on the spot, not terrible. I mean, look, yes, and you know what I mean? We're doing improv here. Your your backs against the wall. You got to do something. Could have been a way crazier. Yeah, I mean, if you're the cop and you're in the interrogation room, aren't you so like, why didn't you do better at this? Like I I actually am kind of cheering for you. You're clearly the underdog here. What made you think this would suffice? And then if she threw out the Obama thing, I think I would look around to the other people in the room. I'd be like, I mean, I can't argue that. Right. Can't argue that. That's an incredible excuse. Ma'am, did you not have a green crayon? Could you have not got the colors right? Did the glue? Did the texture feel off to you? So at her apartment, they found counterfeit bills totaling between $30,000 and $50,000 plus paper, scissors, glue and a printer. So she like made a lot. So much work to get it that wrong. She thought she was running like an operation. I mean, that is so. Oh, man, that's confidence. That's a confidence I'll never be able to know. Your friend comes over like, what are you up to? Well, let me tell you, you want in, you want in? You have to sign this contract that's I also just scribbled with crayon and is not legally binding in any way. Oh, Pamela. So the second category is opportunists. The opportunists knows how to leave the printing to the professionals. They buy their funny money on the black market or they get it from a different, very legal market. Hollywood. Yeah. Have you ever had your hands on prop money from a movie or TV show? Yes. It looks pretty convincing, I'm told. It's somewhat convincing, but I got to say, when you are holding it, you can tell the moment you touch it. You're like, oh, yeah, right. It looks good on camera. And apparently, if you look closely, it also has things like for motion picture use only or in copy. We trust that's what we've read. So the Secret Service doesn't have official guidelines for prop money. It makes the production process kind of murky. Yeah. And it often means government officials might show up on sets during filming. For example, in 2000, Independent Studio Services, one of the biggest prop houses in Hollywood, was hired to make all the fake money for Rush Hour 2. Do you remember the plot of Rush Hour 2? No. It's Hong Kong police inspector, played by Jackie Chan and his LAPD detective pal Chris Tucker. Yep. His name is James Carter. They go to Hong Kong on vacation only to be thwarted by a murder case involving two US customs agents after a bombing at the US embassy. Yes. I believe there's a new Rush Hour coming. But it's not even a joke. Trump gave Trump's favorite Brett Ratner. Brett Ratner, who happened to make the Melania documentary. So then Trump went to bat to say, we need more Rush Hour movies. You can really connect the dots easily if you know the names involved. But Brett Ratner was like, yeah, I need I want Rush Hour 4 to happen. So help me. All right. Since you're doing a documentary about my wife, him and all of us were clamoring for Rush Hour 4. We've all been waiting, salivating. So Rush Hour 2 needed a whopping $1 billion in hundreds. Do you know how many hundreds that is? Can you do the math quickly? No, I can't. 10 million. 10 million. I was going to say 10 million for all the listeners who think I'm an idiot. You know, my character in the movie Babylon, my big plot line was that I was using fake movie prop money in a real exchange with Toby McGuire's character. We're going to have to cut that in. We're going to cut a clip in. Cut a clip in. It's money. It is. The guy next to it by the kilo. It's not a big deal. What the guy? Tony, the prop guy. The prop guy's money. No, it's the money that he makes. It's from your bank ice picture. It's movie money. That's me and Diego. He plays Manny and like Toby McGuire's character is, you know, so terrifying. Ethan Suppley's in that scene ready to kill both of us. So it really, this is the money that you've handled. There's the money that I've handled. And it was a part of this, what you're talking about. So how stuff works interviewed the CEO of the prop company about this order. It was 14 pallet loads. Jeez. Just to buy the paper to make a billion dollars costs seventy seven thousand dollars. Yeah. And that didn't include printing labor everything. So just the paper, seventy seven grand. Yeah. The producers of rush hour two were able to bring in a secret service agent to approve the film's climactic stunt, blowing up a billion dollars in cash and having it rain down on the Las Vegas strip. Yeah. But halfway through production, the agent told producers they needed to stop filming the money printed by the company was too realistic. Oh, but producers ignored the request and neglected to tell their boss. So we filmed the scene says Wilson, who is the CEO of the prop company. Extras grabbed handfuls of cash to keep us souvenirs. Then those bills started turning up in different places. Yes. Yes. When the proverbial shit hit the fan. Yeah. He got a cease and desist order. He ultimately had to turn over or destroy all remaining copies of the prop money. Yeah. The feds eventually recovered 19 fake bills passed at cash registers in Vegas and LA and more than 180 million stashed as souvenirs. Yeah. Interesting how they were able to get the souvenir ones. I know. I guess they just people are honest. I suppose they're like, OK, who took money? Like, OK, I did. Yeah. I guess if it's the secret service, you're like, all right, I guess you're like, I'm not going to go to jail for fake money. Yeah. Like, like, what's the point? I'm going to go to jail. I better have some real money. That was the last time that prop company did fake money, by the way. Yep. So this is nowhere near the only time prop money has made it into circulation from Hollywood. There's so many stories of people getting fooled by this. Restaurants, bars, box stores, Facebook, marketplace sellers have all unknowingly accepted prop money as payment. Like last year in 2025, two men used movie money to buy two Rolexes plus two gold and diamond chains, totaling 160 grand of jewelry from a store in Boston. Damn. It took two days for someone to notice after they ran the bills through a money counter. Detectives pointed out that the bills said in prop, we trust on them. Yeah. But they probably looked realistic otherwise. Yeah. It didn't catch your eye. That's the whole thing. Also, by the way, and this is what makes this story especially crime-less, the suspect showed off jewelry identical to what was taken on social media with one tagging the other and writing, we made history, bro. Nice. Nice. I believe if we look back at our Philly coin thieves story, we will recall that maybe when you're stealing things, you should not talk about them on text threads and social media. That's right. I believe the lesson we learned. Yes. These guys also have learned that now. Yeah. You will not be shocked to hear that the police in Boston were able to track them down and arrest them. You're right. I won't be shocked by that. Blindly accepting 160 grand in cash is one thing I'm not so sure that I would catch a counterfeit bill though. I also rarely ever use cash as you pointed out earlier. Yeah. And you're not studying it. You could have cash on you right now that's counterfeit with also prop instead of God on the bill and you wouldn't know. Yeah. How are we going to expect like the Gen Z cashiers of tomorrow to be able to tell? Yes, exactly. Well, actually Newsweek did an article called Gen Z cashiers can't recognize real cash. Yeah. I think their counterfeit. Yeah. So there was one story about two teen workers at the Yogurt Shop in Florida scrawling fake do not accept unreal but pre-1999 five and ten dollar bills. Yeah. The teens slightly older 22 year old assistant manager had to explain to them that back in the day, bills looked a little different. Yeah. So I love having to explain that. I mean, sadly, someday when we're all paying for things in crypto, we're going to miscounterfeit. Yeah. Yeah. And then so I mean, that's the irony that now it's all digital. It's like, well, now is it just a number you put into a computer? Like what's even real in any capacity? It's just the fake credit cards. Yeah. Yes. Like bank codes, scams on your emails or text messages you get where someone wants to know your social someday. This episode will be a quaint artifact of a time when you're like, Oh, you use paper. What? Yeah. These guys time off paper, paper money after the break. We're going to really make it rain. Okay, Josh, fake money. Okay. You never talk like that, but okay. Hello and welcome back to crime list. Finally, our last and longest story is about the professionals. Okay. And this is a good one. Yeah. The printers of extremely high quality fake money are harder to catch because they're so good at their jobs. They're artists. Yeah. These are the guys the Secret Service is most concerned with boiling. Since the late eighties, the Secret Service has been tracking the distribution of the quote, Super dollar, a very high quality counterfeit 100 allegedly made by unknown organizations or governments, suspected origins of the Super dollar are North Korea, Iran, or maybe even the CIA itself. Oh, the calls coming from inside the hell. I almost said that. We could have done it in stereo, but that's not the professional counterfeiter. I'm going to tell you about today. Okay. We're going to go back to 1938. When Secret Service agents encountered a professional counterfeiter who would elude them for a decade. They dubbed him Mr. 880 after the name of the case file started when his first fake was discovered. But here's the weird thing. Unlike other professionals, he actually wasn't very good at this, nor was he very talented at reproducing anything. He was actually very bad at it. In fact, over the course of his career, he actually got worse at reproducing money, but somehow the feds still couldn't catch it. Oh, during the 10 years they looked for old 88, they arrested and convicted 1,385 people on counterfeiting charges and seized over 3.4 million in counterfeit money before it got into circulation. So who was this guy and how did he get away with it for so long? Don't worry. That's a rhetorical question. I don't expect you to have an answer. Could you imagine if I just knew it like it's my favorite theft in history? That would have been great. One of these days that'll happen. When it will, it will line up. That was Kevin. That was Kev. That was Kev Train. In 1948, the New Yorker published a three part series about Mr. 880, which is where most of this information is being sourced from. Here's what we know. Emreck Jutner, born in 1876 in Austria at 14, he boards the ship to the US to pursue the American dream, that dream to live in a basement apartment in New York City. Hey, we all don't have all the biggest dreams of the world. Sometimes it's an apartment, basement apartment. I have literally lived that dream. I did. Yeah. It wasn't my first. My second New York City apartment was a basement. Yeah. So me and Emreck, totally relatable. He first found work as a picture frame gulder, adding gold to frames, I guess. He also dabbled as an inventor, creating his own camera, but Kodak didn't buy the patent. Later in life, he developed his own Venetian blind that he also couldn't sell. And I'm now wondering what twist you could possibly put on the Venetian blind. Like, is it kind of a badded concept already? Yeah, does it feel like it's kind of where it's going to be? He's like, no, mine twist the other way. Yeah, like Australia with flushing a toilet. Turn it and they go backwards. Yeah. Actually, Venetian blinds go both ways already. Exactly. They're very fluid. OK, anyway, in 1902, he marries a woman named Florence Lemayne and they have two kids. To support his growing family, he starts working as a maintenance man and a superintendent, allowing him to live rent free in the basement of a building on the Upper East Side. So for many years, he lives a normal and uneventful life. Then in 37, his wife unexpectedly passes away. And by that time, his two children had also grown up and left the nest. Yeah. So at 61, he's a widower. He's home alone. He doesn't know what to do with himself. He's feeling like he's too old to be a super. So he quits that job, moves out of the basement, finds a small flat for himself and his dog, described in the story as a, quote, undemanding mongrel terrier. Seems a little mean. It does. I don't know why undemanding has to be a part of the breed type, but OK. An undemanding mongrel terrier that, according to the New Yorker, had no name. When asked why, he said this, what good would a name do the dog? When I talk to him, he knows I'm talking to him, don't he? And I know who he is without calling him by some made up name, don't I? What does he refer to the dog to call for the dog? I mean, by his logic, none of us would need names. Hey. Yo. Yeah. Hey, dog. I mean, it's not terrible logic. It's sort of like, yeah, the dog doesn't care that you're calling it. Like he doesn't know yours doesn't know his name is Charlie. Exactly. He just hears your voice, right? That's right. Anyway, to make ends meet for himself, he becomes a junk collector. He pushed a little card all over the neighborhood, picking up discarded items to resell later, but that doesn't pay the bills either. You know what does pay the bills? Cold hard cash. Yeah. And so Emmerich decides, hey, I'll just make some. He already had experience with cameras and he could fix anything he put his mind to it, so he sets up a print shop in his kitchen. Here's how he does it. He takes a picture of a real one dollar bill, transfers those images to a pair of zinc plates. So this is like, I would not know how to do that personally. Right. He then Peyton stakingly filled in all the small details by hand. So he like makes etches a little plate using a hand powered printer and sheet paper founded at the stationary store. He prints a bill. The serial numbers are blurry and crooked and George Washington looks nothing like the actual president. Also, he spelled Washington's name wrong. W-A-H-S-I-N-G-T-O-N. Hey, little mistakes. What are you going to do? Backtrack? Come on. I mean, if you're going to go to the effort of etching a zinc plate, though, yeah, maybe you would like, you never had to do that. Josh, you have no idea what kind of a time commitment that is. I'm sure it's worth prison. It's actually worth prison than going back and doing it. And he probably takes long enough that he's finished. He's like, whatever. Fuck me. Right. What is the deal? What is live with it? He promptly spent that first fake bill at a cigar shop. But the very next day, the Secret Service received this bill. They initially thought someone was pranking them because it was that bad. Well, clearly the jokes on them, because for the next 10 years, Emrick would make $7,000 worth of fake one dollar bills, which is the equivalent in purchasing power today to about 131 grand, but he only makes one dollar bills, which he uses very sparingly. He sticks to spending money locally, subway stations, dime stores and taverns, and he never hits the same place twice. This is extremely low stakes crime. If his spending habits are different, say if he drops 501 neighborhood or makes an abnormally large purchase, the Secret Service would have found him easily. But this was mostly limited to Manhattan, although a few did make it across the country, Seattle, Denver, Atlanta, Richmond. The Secret Service dismissed the idea that the purple is traveling. How could he afford to travel on such a tight budget? Yeah, they try everything to catch him. They set up traps at 10,000 stores in New York City. Oh my God. How many employees? Yeah, this is you, everybody, get everybody, every department. They distribute 200,000 flyers, warning of the counterfeit bills. They ran PSAs on radio stations, alerting millions of listeners to keep an eye out. Mind you, he's only done $7,000 one dollar bills at this point. Man, OK. None of it works. Wait, none of them worked? Nope. Why are they going so like crazy with the resources here? I mean, maybe they're embarrassed. So like the guy didn't even spell Washington right. Like this is ridiculous. It's almost like, oh, let him try to spend it. Like no one. Well, but it worked again. I guess in the fear that you get it right. I don't know. So here's how he did get caught. Finally, a fire broke out in his apartment building and firefighters were trudging through his apartment trying to put it out. Right. But it was cluttered and they needed to clear a path through. In doing so, they threw boxes of junk out onto the street. So no, it's not what you think. The firefighters didn't find the stuff. Yeah. A few weeks later, a group of nine middle school boys are rooting around in an alley and discovered the discarded boxes, a few sink plates and 31 dollar bills. Even the kids knew it was fake. They pocketed it anyway. And they used it to prank their other friends with stage. Yeah. When one of the boys' fathers discovered this, he alerts the authorities. The Secret Service scrambled to gather all the information they could, tracking the boys down at their homes and local playgrounds. When the friends come clean, he couldn't quite remember which one of them had the zinc plates because it turns out the kids had made a series of trades. This just gets deeper and deeper. All for Dunkaroos and Little Debbie's. Someone traded a used catcher's mitt. Oh, really? Yeah, used catcher's mitt. So the trader used catcher's mitt for the plates, then went on to trade those plates to a different kid for a Japanese bayonet. What? Oh my God. Wait, I mean, I was about to say, where do you even get that? But it's like, yeah, of course you've got. Yeah, a Japanese bayonet. Yeah. Eventually, they find it with a 10 year old kid named John Canning. And the zinc plates confirmed it was Mr. 880's work. The Secret Service finally had their man. When they show up at his door, they were shocked to find a cheery 73 year old with a quote, shiny bald dome, a fringe of snowy hair over his ears, a wispy white mustache and hardly any teeth. Emmerich seemed unconcerned that he'd been caught. He freely admitted his crimes. According to the New Yorker, this is how the questioning went. How long have you been making these bills? Oh, nine or 10 years, a long time. You admit it? Of course I admit it. They were only one dollar bills and never gave more than one of them to any one person, so nobody ever lost more than one dollar. Interesting. So each theft was tiny and he never went back to the same store twice. I think it shows that he did have a brain and a heart about the matter to a degree. Because he knew that he was also ripping off his fellow citizens. It wasn't like Robin Hood, to be exact. He wasn't really taking anything away from the rich. No, it was kind of a concern for like, here's how I justify it. I only stole a dollar from anybody. Yes. Any one person. Yeah. I actually kind of get behind that. I like it. Yeah. So Secret Service agents searched his apartment and found the printing press, photo negatives and a drawer of one dollar bills that did not pass his very low standards. I can only imagine what was on those. You can only imagine what those look like. That's Washington with a V. Interesting. He was arrested and charged with possession of counterfeit plates, the passage of bills and manufacturing of said bills. He could have spent 30 years in jail. Instead, the judge gave him a reduced sentence of one year and one day, a duration that allowed for parole after four months, and he faced a poetic fine of one dollar. I honestly think that's the right call. I hope you paid for it with a fake. And they were like, well, now we got to charge you again. Going back to jail. God damn it. After the trial, the New Yorker published its series and the popularity of the story led to a film called Mr. 880, which stars Bert Lancaster, Dorothy Maguire and Edmund Gwynne in the role of a lifetime. Nice. Gwynne is an Englishman best known for playing Chris Kringle and Miracle on 34th Street. Oh, there you go. He won a Golden Globe for his performance in this film and was nominated for an Oscar. What year is the film? A rest was, oh man, now you're going to make me go back and. You have to do more research. Lane, do you remember? This is 1938, so he's arrested in 48. No, but when did the movie come out? The movie came out in 1950. Oh, OK. Two years later. Very cool. It's funny because I feel like this is our catch me if you can type thing. Well, there's a great coda too, because by optioning his life rights, he ends up making more money than he ever did as a counterfeiter. He lived for the rest of his life comfortably with plenty of real dollar bills to buy cigars. He died in 1955 at the age of 79, but had to be a counterfeiter in order to get there. That's true. You know, life's little paths, Josh. Yeah, if you asked him at the end, was it worth it? I'm sure you would have said yes, right? I mean, he didn't even if they never made a movie and he got rich, I think he'd still go. Has fine. Four months in prison. It was kind of fun. I met some guys. We hung out lifelong buddies. It's not an actually unfamiliar scenario to imagine. Like your spouse passes away unexpectedly, your kids are grown and out of the house. And suddenly you're like, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? He's like, yeah, OK. Yeah, I got an idea. Yeah, amazing. So it's a true Hollywood happy ending. The Secret Service finally caught their man, Mr. 880 retired in style and a little boy traded some trash for a bayonet. Yeah, everyone wins. It's literally zero losers. I love that story. It's I mean, how could you not root for that guy? At no point do you picture it to be sort of heartwarming in the end, but something there's something charming about misspelling Washington. Agreed. It would be slightly less good if he'd spelled Washington correctly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love this guy. He reminds me very different, but it reminds me a little bit of the British man who kept escaping from prison. Yeah, I was going to say, I also kind of felt something like that where he don't even blame him. He's almost like, I don't know. I mean, it's on them to keep me in jail. It's incredible. Anyway, if you ask nicely, I'll tell my counterfeiting story in a future episode. Oh, it involves identification. All right. Or maybe it's a bonus episode. Stay tuned. Oh, after the break, though, we'll play some games. Lane's game. There she is. Lane's games. Lane's games. You theme solvers. But we got to keep that record that model that puts the music behind it. Yeah, maybe we'll we'll switch it up. There's the episode we switched it up. Finally. Lane, is your hair permanently pink? I mean, is that a wash out pink or is it going to be? I mean, it'll eventually wash out. The kind of hair dye works. Yeah, Josh, you don't know. You don't know the science behind, you know, I don't get getting your hair pink. You don't know. Never do that. It's too dark. I can't dye my pink. You have to bleach it first. Yeah, bleach it and then that's a bonus episode. Yes, we would love nothing better in podcast than a visual gag like that. Yes. OK, welcome back to crime list. It is time for Lane's games. Wasn't there wasn't there one more line? Oh, I don't know what I say. I don't know. Lane's games. Time for Lane's games. Get some music in there. Get a little jingle. Make it pop. Make it make it nice. There she is. Lane's game. Lane's game. Lane, what are you in your cat there? He keeps on. He keeps coming back for more. You know, the camera loves the camera. What are we playing? Bugsie and I came up with a game kind of a choose your own adventure type. It's can you make a convincing counterfeit past this quiz and you might. So there's kind of like, you know, this or that, this or that. And then we'll see if you pass the final test, which is me judging if I think you did. Are we playing as a team or individually? Let's have a counterfeit team. So you guys are working together on this. So be it. First question. What bill are you printing? And I got multiple choice. A, a one dollar bill, B, a ten dollar bill, C, a twenty dollar bill or D, a hundred dollar bill. Well, I feel like. Wait, so how could we get this wrong if this is? There's no wrong answers. Yeah. OK, Josh, what are you going to do? The furry quiz. There's kind of like the furry quiz. It's going to lead us somewhere. OK. Should we go twenty dollar bill? Yeah, I feel like that's going to be the most used. Yeah. OK. So what details are you including on the bill? A, Alexander Hamilton, B, Benjamin Franklin, C, George Washington or D, Andrew Jackson? D. Is it in Hamilton? Oh, I thought it was Andrew Jackson. Uh oh. We're already in trouble. Oh, our crew is divided. Wait, Andrew Jackson is on one. I thought Hamilton was on the ten. I don't know. Now you've got me doubting everything. I'm going to go. I'm going to let you take this one. Oh my God, but this could derail everything. I'm going to go Andrew Jackson on the twenty. OK. We're a team, so I have to go with it. Josh, follow me, even though I think I'm wrong. OK, how are you sourcing your design? Are you, A, hand-drawing everything? You only trust yourself. B, on Wikipedia. C, you're scanning a bill you have in your wallet. Or D, taking a photo of the bill. I think we should take a photo, right? OK, yeah, we'll take a photo. I mean, look, if we don't even know who's on it, we're just we are basically the criminals we've talked about in this episode. So after careful editing, your image is nearly identical to the real thing. But you need to pick a paper to print it on. What material are you using? A, a bleached one dollar bill. No. B, Bible paper. No. C, satin paper. Nope. I know that. I'm making my own paper with fabric scraps and lint. No, I think it would bleach in a one, aren't we? Are we bleaching a one? It's a combination of linen and cotton, which I know because I wrote that thing at the beginning of the show. So. OK, I'm going to go with Josh on this one. Bleach. OK, how are you printing this? A, in a motel room with an inkjet printer. B, at home with a color laser printer. C, at a local kinko's with a flash drive. Or D, I'm hand-drawing them. What was A and B? A, in a motel room with an inkjet printer. Or B, at home with a color laser printer. I mean, B, the word laser feels right. Yeah. Clearly from the future involved. Yeah, it feels like that's from the future. So that sounds right for us. OK, what extra security features are you adding? Choose all that apply. A, green eyeshadow to fake the color changing ink. B, texture on the portrait's vest using a fine tip glue pen. C, glue a plastic strip into a slit you made in the bill. Or D, spray a matte lacquer on the bills. I think all the above. Oh my gosh, Josh. I know because I know that. That kind of confidence I'm following you. I know that colored strip thing is right. I feel like the edges is right. Yeah, let's go all above. I'm with Josh. OK, and finally, how are you spending the money? A, Walmart on a Saturday morning. B, self-checkout at Target. C, a diner at midnight. Or D, a dimly lit dive bar. Oh, I mean, C and D feels like you're getting away with it. Yeah. B, self-checkout feels like the computer scans it. So who are we? Are we we're choosing one of these? OK, I think you're right. It's either C or D. What was it? Dive bar or what was it? What was C? Diner at midnight. Diner at midnight or it's darker in a dive bar. Don't you think? Yeah. Yes, let's go that. D. OK, let me review your choices. Here we go. Are we still Wildcats? I, you almost messed it up right at the beginning. Andrew Jackson is on the 20. So, he got it. Yes, I was going to go Hamilton. So far, we're OK. Taking a photo of the bill, not the worst choice. You normally can't really scan the bill because of the material of the paper it's made out of. OK. One of the top counterfeiters that got arrested, like within the last decade, uses Wikipedia to source his images. So that would have been a good answer. Yeah. OK. A Bleach Tell Our Bill. Yeah, pretty good. That's a good, good choice. At home with a color laser printer, I probably would have gone with in a motel room with an inkjet because. Why? Because that's what this Jeff Turner character did. But I don't know. Could be OK. Hit or miss. But the laser printers from the future, Lane, are you not factoring that? True. I don't know what year this laser printer is, though. Thank you. It's from 2126. OK. Well, in that case. 2126. Yeah. 100 years in the future. Crazy. When cash is definitely obsolete. I think it's risky to glue your own plastic strip in there. But you need it. That's what they're looking for. You do need it, but at a dimly lit dive bar, I don't. No, oh, that they're going to notice. They probably won't notice, but they're going to notice is like weird glue. Oh, the lighting. But if you're spraying a matte lacquer spray on it, it could smell weird. There's a smell and probably a different kind of sheen. But I feel like bills are gross, but no one's smelling a bill. I've never seen anyone do the smell test. I mean, even your most normal bill is going to smell at a dive bar. Yeah, exactly. So I'm going to let's see if I can. Somebody's keeping that in his chunky cheese costume. It smells real bad. Because there are no pockets in that costume. I love that you're calling back other episodes. I'm going to say it's 50 50. Whether we get away with it. Yeah. So heads or tails? Heads. Yeah. You heads, you get away with it. OK, are you flipping a coin? I'm flipping a virtual coin heads. You got away with it. You got away with it. Hell, yeah. And to our listeners, that's how you make fake money. That easy. We just got that easy. Also, Rory credit, you saved us there. I was about to go Hamilton. You know, you're almost dead. We're all dead in the water. You almost really got arrested. I will say the more I Googled this, this sort of stuff, the more nervous I got about my search history. That's a good point. I even think about that. I was like, what's the best paper for? Yeah, yeah. Wait till we get to the dark web episode. Then you're going to be in real trouble. Can I get a burner computer? But also, you get this information from less websites. So you only got to go to one stop shopping when we get to the dark web. That's true. Dark web dot com. That's right. I want it to be that easy. I still want it to be that easy. I'm afraid to search it. I am. Even as a joke, I'm afraid to find out. All right. Well, we have won the coin toss, which has declared us incredible criminals. Master counterfeiting criminals. You made it. You screamed by you got that free Miller light. Yes. With your fake $20 bill. Our families will be so proud. Yep. And we'll see you next week. Bye bye. Bye. CrimeList is a production of smartlist media, campsite media and big money players. In partnership with I Heart Podcasts. It's hosted by Rory Scoville and me, Josh Dean. Our senior producer is Lane Rose. Emma Stiminoff is our associate producer. This episode was written by Lane Rose and me, Josh Dean. We're sound designed and engineered by Blake Rook with support from Ewan Lightroom. Ewan. Mark McAdam composed our theme song. The executive producers at Campsite Media are Vanessa Grigoriadis, Matt Share and me, Josh Dean. The executive producers for I Heart Podcasts and big money players are Jack O'Brien, Lindsey Hoffman and Matt Apadaca. For smartlist media, the executive producers are Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Richard Corson. Bernie Kaminski is head of production. The associate producer is Maddie McCann. A special thanks to our operations team, Ashley Warren and Sabina Mara. Do you have a question, comment or confession for the crime list team? Email us at crimelistatcampsitemedia.com. And if you enjoyed crime lists, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts. It helps people find the show and also makes us feel validated, unless you're mean, in which case, keep it to yourself. We'll see you next week, Crime List Nation. This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed human.