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Counterfeiting With High Resolution Inkjets
Makarand writes "Thanks to the availability of low cost high quality inkjet printers, crooks
are now able to
produce currency indistinguishable from the real
banknotes, at least under dim lighting conditions like that in a bar or a nightclub.
The term "digifeiters" is being coined for counterfeiters that use
cheap high-resolution printers to produce fake currency. Unlike costly color xerographic copiers that come inbuilt with features
to detect security details on banknotes and stop currency copying, no cheap printers
come with such feature. An anti-digifeiting system for cheaper printers may consist of printer driver software capable of recognizing data patterns indicating currencies of several countries." I wonder what GimpPrint would think of being forced to print or not print certain documents based on their contents.
In the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/Willy Wonka, someone made a forgery of the winning certificate.
Other recent articles about counterfeiting have mentioned a proprietary chemical mixture that removes a vast majority of the ink from printed currency, yet leaves the security strip, watermark and colored fibres intact. Bills treated in this manner will fool those colored markers that most places uses for confirmation. You get a stack of $5s, 'bleach' them and reprint them as $10s and you've doubled your money, print them as $20s and you're up to 4x, print them as $100s and you're at 20x. If you take bills as part of your job, double check that the watermark image is the same as the face printed on the bill, and that the value in the security strip matches as well.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Of course, with printer manufacturers producing beauties like this, it's no wonder people can get away with things like this.
More info and pictures here. Note the clear patches show up as black bits down in the bottom corner.
Here you go:
Willy Wonka Bars Candy Recipe
1/2 cup margarine, softened
1 cup peanut butter
1/2 box powdered sugar
1 1/2 packages graham crackers
1 package chocolate chips
2 tablespoons margarine or 1/4 cup milk
Combine margarine, peanut butter, powdered sugar and graham crackers. Press mixture in pan. Melt chips and 2 tablespoons of margarine or milk. Spread over graham cracker crust. Refrigerate. Cut when cool.
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
From Anna's News Clippings
"A woman was charged $2.12 at a Diary Queen drive-through in Danville, Kentucky, and she was given $197.88 in change for her $200 bill. In case a clerk might not know that a $200 bill isn't legal tender, this taped-together bill was clearly marked as a 'moral reserve note' and featured George W. Bush's portrait. The White House picture on the bill's back has yard signs reading 'We like broccoli'and 'Rooms not for rent'. Police were notified as to the woman's presence shortly after she left. They do not consider the bill to be a counterfeit one."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The idea is to use a lower value note, say a one, then bleach the old ink off of it. Use your handy-dandy inkjet to print a twenty note on the paper that used to be a one. The one is well suited to false promotion because it doesn't have a florescent nylon strip that a bartender could positively verify the paper isn't a twenty.
Since all US notes are the same size, feel the same, and mostly look the same it's easy to fake. I know the French franc, prior to the Euro, used different sized paper for different values.
As a side note, if you've never seen the movie The Grifters there's a scene where John Cusack flashes a twenty at a bartender, asks for a beer, then pulls a slight-of-hand leaving a ten on the counter expecting the bartender to remember the twenty and give change as such.
I know folks in the US complain about the Monopoly-esque look of other currency, but it's a hell-of-a-lot tougher to copy, easier for the blind to judge denomination from size, and easier for visitors to manager. Put a dime in front of a visitor and ask him the worth of it. He can't. Nowhere does it say "ten cents" or "10 cents." It just say "One Dime."
Sorry for ranting.
This is a boring sig
To slow down counterfeit bills (about 1 in every 10,000 bills is a counterfeit). The US treasury will be releasing new bills this year. And every 7 years.
Having caught people using counterfeit bills from working in nightclubs and restaurants, it is starting to become a problem.
Here is a link:
new $20 dollar bills.
TruePunk | Games
Why did Saddam have dollars instead of euros?
Our money is used to control the world economy. Monitary supply is watched extremely closely by the fed. By keeping our money consistant it makes all those illicit activities good to do because the money never "expires".
Could you imagine a columbian drug czar or saddam going to the bank to exchange their 1/2 a billion dollars?
This is how we tople governments. Money.
Greed is good. -Gordon Gekko
Slight correction.. it's not really that the Australian dollar is going up, just that the US dollar is going down. So we've actually being going down against the Euro (luckily I only spend Thursday in Europe before flying across to the US).
..like, for instance, Norwegian ones (see http://www.norgesbank.no/english/notes_and_coins/n otes.html for more on those) which has real securitymeasures like holograms and 'mother of pearl'-effect on it. Good luck trying to copy or scan that, 'cuz it plain can't be done without very, very specialised equipment. In fact, a while back I wrote up a short piece on Norwgian money for one of my american friends who were comming over to visit, and since he wondered how they have apperantly managed to scan it at http://www.norgesbank.no/english/notes_and_coins/c ounterfeit200kr.html , I gave them a call and asked - and was told that that picture was made out of a "number of scans at various angles blended together". For some reason they didn't want to give me any more details on how to achive that efect...
Sorry for not giving proper links, but I seem to have misplaced my little 'cheat-note' on how to write that bit of code...
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Rumor has it Australia has the contract for making IRAQ's new banknotes. Everyone knows america's notes are easy to forge.
It's easy to hand over counterfeit notes in australia because nobody checks, or cares if they're valid... but it's bloody impossible to get a color printer to print a clear window with a watermark onto a plastic note.
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In Canada we have holograms embedded into all bills 20 dollars and up. While some crooks have indeed gotten away with glueing on fake holograms, anyone with half a clue could tell simply by touch that the bills were fakes. Then again, from my experience people arent checking bills too throughly at busy nightclubs.. I am sure in a single night at the ones around here you could pass at least 1G in fake 20s without a problem at all.
It's just the US dollar that has been going down, and the others seem to be going up compared to US dollar.
Here, try comparing AU$ to CDN$. Neither is growing compared to the other.
Or, here's EURO compared to AU$.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Brazil's new 20 Reais note has a plastic insert. Very hard to counterfit. This would defeat the "too dark to see decent though not perfect copies" copies.
A lot of people don't like it though, feels different, doesn't fold the same.
The solution of the euro notes are the diferent sizes, if you wipe out a 1,00 note it will be smaller then the 5,00 so you could not print it into the blanc note.
Also the diferent sizes makes it easier for blind people to recognize the value of the bills.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
The official explanation was that the printer (the Xerox Dover) jammed frequently, and RMS wanted to hack the drivers so that some sort of alert would display on his terminal if the printer jammed. This was in 1979, long before anti-counterfeiting features were incorportated into copiers.
Actually, we have a great anti-counterfitting technology in all US currency that could easily replace the stupid pens with an electronic pen that costs just a few dollars, and would not mark or harm the bill at all. In addition to the color changing ink, the watermark, and the embedded plastic stripe (which the conspiracy theorists amoung us know the gub'mint uses to detect how much money you carry through the airport with remote sensors), all U.S. bills are printed with magnetic ink. Run a small recording head over the portrait of a real bill and you'll get a nice detectable signal from the background of the picture. Move the recording pick-up at a known speed and you can even determine the denomination from the frequency. And the inkjet printers will produce a bill that gives no response at all, no matter what paper it's printed on.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
How does the plastic money handle?
:-)
Pretty much like paper currency. A plastic note feels pretty much like a fresh paper note in terms of properties; a little stiff and textured, but still very pliable. By feel, they are obviously not paper, but they don't feel like you're playing with a cheap plastic wrapper either.
The difference is that these properties don't really change as they get older. The notes get a few more creases in them, but they don't start to feel like tissuepaper like paper notes do.
The creases are about the only problem; it can be a bit of a pain to flatten them out, but on the whole, I gotta say I prefer them.
As a result, they last a lot longer in circulation - about 4 times longer. The down side is that they tend to tear catastophically; once a tear is started, it runs through the note fairly easily. However, it's very hard to start a tear in the first place (contrast with paper notes, which are easy to start a tear, but tend to tear slowly once started).
What exactly is in that window - some sort of hologram or other image?
Its a clear window, with an image in white ink in it. Each note has a different image. For example, the $10 note has a windmill. Its not a complex image - just a basic silhouette. There are some other security measures; microprinting, front/back alignment marks, that sort of thing. No RFID tags yet
I take it each denomination has its own color and size, but I think differing size would make it hard to carry around in your wallet.
Each note is the same height, but each larger denomination is slightly (7mm, IIRC) longer. The longest note ($100) fits easily in an average wallet. A $10 note (all that I have with me at the moment) is about the same height, but about 20mm shorter than standard US currency. That would make a $100 about the same size as a US banknote. (I don't have one with me to compare)
However, the real benefit is the colour. You look into a wallet stuffed with AUD bills, and you can tell if you have a little or a lot of money. See lots of pink, you've got lots of $5. See lots of green, you've got lots of $100. Single colour currency is one of the hardest thing I've had to get used to in the US. (that, plus tipping, and the fact that sales tax is never on the advertised price - but that's another story...)
Russ %-)
... and never, ever play leapfrog with a unicorn.
1. Forex is short for foreign exchange.
2. There are three major global currancies now that the Euro group got behind the Euro. The Dollar, Euro and Yen. The British Pound is a smaller but still important global currency. The dollar is still has the largest foreign holdings, mostly thanks to oil trade being dollar denominated, asian currency holders, things like Euro-dollar accounts, and criminal activity (which still usually takes place in dollars. For a currency to be weakening it should depreciate against all three, however, most of the smaller currencies are directly or inderectly linked to one of those three currencies (mostly the Dollar or Euro).
3. Following the removal of the gold standard worldwide, most currencies trade on a floating market, meaing that unless the government takes careful action to prevent swings in the currency, its value is determined by market transations. While it used to be that speculators drove trading (George Soros made his early billions by breaking the London central bank) today the vast majority of transactions is related to either foreign investment or imports and exports. Complete speculation: The increase of the Euro is likely the result of large foreign investment portfolios moving into Europe and out of the US. Some of this is Saudi Arabian, and driven partly by politics, and some of the trading is driven by Eropeans who are chasing yields. Our large trade deficits are typically made up with foreign investments in the US, which was one of the main reasons the dollar remained so strong throughout the 1990s while trade deficits remained at very hight levels. Now that foreign investors are realizing that they might not get outsised returns from their US investments, they are beginning to look for investments in other regions. Economics is pretty self regulating, the weaker dollar will make imports more expensive, and exports cheaper which should reduce the trade deficit, assuming the investment change is not temporary.
4. A falling currency benefits people who borrow from foreigners (if the fall is unexpected) and exporters. A rising currency benefits those who loan to foreigners (if the rise is unexpected) and importers or tourists, who travel to the foreign country, but are effectivly importers. Exporters benefit from falling currency in the following way: Lets use Ford and Nissan as the example companies, when the dollar falls relative to the yen, Ford, who still pays most of its employees in dollars, can now sell a car in Japan for the same Yen price and reap more dollars after the currency transactions. However, when the dollar is rising, Ford's dollar value of a Japanese sale, is lower and they still have to pay their employees in dollars.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
My first real job in 95 was at a Kwik Kopy. From about 6 months after I started, we (well, a couple of us) were aware that the color copier tagged it's serial number on every copy it made.
When I first discovered it I was working with the head typesetter. We couldn't figure out what this strange very light interference pattern on every printout from the color copier (which had it's own RIP) was. It was the same regardless of whether we were printing or copying, and regardless of the content, and it was an identical pattern on every sheet. That particular copier (as far as we could tell) didn't have any moving parts that synced with the page ends well enough for it to be a physical problem. And if we put the machine into black and white mode it went away.
It took several weeks of me badgering the service guy, and 3 service calls for 'Image Quality', before he finally admitted what it was.
We weren't really surprised, the copier had other more noticeable anti-counterfitting measures as well. While we never had a problems with copying, occasionally if you printed a file from the network with a complex enough swirled pattern on it (which one of our typesetters was unfortunately fond of), any green on the page would get shifted towards blue. We solved the problem by firing the typesetter. (For unrelated reasons, of course.)
The smaller black and white self-serve copiers also apparently had currency detectors (of an informational, not active type), which we found out about when one of the machines had a service call for a broken belt and the tech qustioned us because he said the currency detection register had been set. Since none of us had seen anybody trying to copy money, and it was a black and white machine, he said it was likely a mistake and he didn't even have to report it, but asked us to keep an eye out.