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rrwood writes "This is an intriguing insight into the activities of a master Canadian counterfeiter. The subject of the article, Wesley Weber, is/was a distinguished hacker and cracker who used a combination of technological skills and social engineering to produce what is probably the highest-quality counterfeit currency ever detected in Canada. Even more interesting to note is the widescale effect this one guy had, since he and his confederates single-handedly managed to force businesses to stop accepting $100CDN bills, thus affecting literally millions of people. The story is a fascinating look at his brief career, and the dumb, shortsighted mistakes ultimately responsible for his downfall."
Isn't it great how there are advertisements for inkjet printers on the second, third, fourth pages of the article? Now you know, those things just pay for themselves if you use them right :-)
Ceci n'est pas une sig
I actually said that once ( I was younger and stupider) to a sweet young thing I met while staying in Quebec. She turned to me and told me that since most play money in Canada is green American play money to them it's American money that always looks like it's play money.
As it turns out it's all relative to your reference frame. Who woulda thunk it?
KFG
I once had the idea of making counterfeit US money for tourists travelling to other countries. The idea was that when you ran into someone who mugged you, instead of giving them your wallet you'd just pull out your money clip of fake US twenties, tens, and fives and give it to them.
The sheer joy at landing such a great deal of cash will dissuade them from stealing actual valuables like cameras, credit cards, and checks. After all, when you've just been handed say, $400 in cash, why bother trying to hide the other stuff you just stole?
Besides, those new bills look so fake, they are extremely easy to duplicate by appearance anyway. And a look of grief over losing it is so easy to fake. So that is a legitimate form of counterfeiting, but yet is illegal to do.
One bill per 290 people isn't rare. It's commonplace. Every store here has a UV currency checker. McDonalds employees are getting a crash course in currency examination. At one store where they'd gotten two counterfeit 50s in a single day, they not only stopped taking 100s and 50s, they refused to take the "old" 5s 10s and 20s, and even held the new ones up to the light. We had to wait in line while they did this for every single customer.
Please tell me it's like this in the states, and tell me again how 1 in 290 is rare.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Actually, the first time I was introduced to Canadian money (on a trip to Seattle to see my uncle), my good-ol' Unc confused me by referring to Canadian quarters as "funny money" and implied that there was something sneaky about the little buggers. Which there was--imagine my surprise when I came home to LA a week later, hit the arcade, and discovered that I had about $4.00 worth of CN quarters.
That's a lot of rounds of Street Fighter that I missed out on!
But seriously, I think that any American pretension toward implying that foreign currency is fake or "confederate" is probably just joking. I have a hard time imagining that anyone could have their history/poli.sci. that fucked up.
if you want to talk about art, let's talk about JSG Boggs. this man DRAWS the notes BY HAND, and has been doing it since 1984. his art is not only his physical artistic ability in recreating the bills in great detail (with his little added puns), but in creating social networks around the passing of his bills. he tells people they're not real bills and gives them the choice of accepting his art in return for goods and services, or to accept real money.
Or maybe you're not spending enough? :-)
The other day I paid for my insurance with a 1.000 dollar bill - yes, one thousand Canadian dollars bill.
You should have seen the lady's face. Very funny, actually, as she had seen me put one bill on the counter while she was still filling in some stuff. The insurance came to just under 1000, so she was sitting there talking to my father and waiting for me to put more bills on the counter. First time for her, or anyone in that office, to see 1.000 bills.
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
Canadian money is not called "confederates" - actually, that's quite offensive and really does show how the author either doesn't know anything about the world outside American boarders or just assumes his culture applies everywhere. Typical.
No, you're mistaken, and I take offense at your offense. His "confederates" are his accomplices. I have never heard of Canadian money, or any currency for that matter called a "confederate." Except perhaps the South's dollar during the Civil War.
Oh, and the author's "American Boarders" are the nice couple from Wisconsin he's renting the second bedroom to. But you're right in that they have a narrow view of the world.
Wes has never been after more then a get-rich-quick kind of guy. Every type of scam/pyramid scheme out there he has tried at least once.
He has always worked very hard at not working. Anything to make an easy buck.
He has also been arrested for growing pot, (several million dollars worth IIRC).
This guy is not worthy of any praise or adoration. We (the family) strongly suspect that he was a scape goat for organized crime in Toronto. He is NOT the evil mastermind that the media is making him out to be.
I know his MO. He will be back in jail again.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
It's obvious that "confederates" means "accomplices." And what evidence does he have that the submitter is American? I looked at his user page and didn't see any evidence. The flamebaiter just makes up senseless accusations with no evidence whatsoever and claims to be offended. Typical troll.
Other Canadians would probably be more offended that this guy's username compares his country to antarctica.
My corner store won't.
The other corner store will only accept electronic transactions if I'm buying at least $10 worth of goods, which kinda makes it useless for a quick drink after a bike ride.
And it all depends on what kind of cashless society - if we move to a entirely debit/credit card based society, where all purchases are verified by a remote server, there's no counterfeiting, but an e-cash system could have counterfeit problems (depending on implementation).
Also, we will never actually get rid of untraceable cash (of some variety), because that would prevent politicians from being bribed anonymously.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Funny story that.
Seriously, though.. how many $1000 bills have you seen?
How many $100 or even $50 bills do you see on a daily basis coming out of people's wallets? (or even flashed from within one?)
Canada has become so hooked on Interac that cash is almost a nono.. I was back home (B.C.) on Vacation... and had probably $300 in my wallet.. and most people were like "Wow you carry too much money"... $300, and I'm an anomaly.
Typically, I have double that in my pocket.
I have never actually seen a real life $1000 bill in Canada.. though I know they exist (though I believe they stopped minting them a few years ago). I've heard a few stories about them.. like about four, including yours.
Canadians are getting scared of cash.
Nice try... Face the facts, you guys are stuck with us. The second you try to buddy up with the Europeans, GW will proclaim you a rogue state, that you are harboring terrorists, and that you are stockpiling WMD. Within a few months, we will bomb you, occupy you, and proclaim you liberated.
On a serious note(yes, I was joking), you don't realize this yet, but it's the Euro that gives the EU the strength to stand up to us(speaking US centric here). Alot of people don't seem aware of this, but Iraq was a proxy war against the Euro. Saddam began selling oil in Euros back in '99 and because of the strength of the Euro, this proved lucrative for Iraq. Other Oil producing nations were talking about doing it as a result. That would have threatened the dollars standing as the world reserve currency, and thus, Americas ability to live the good life on credit. As long as oil is priced in dollars, everyone needs our dollars and they need our dollars to be valuable, so they work towards making them valuable.
I know this whole thread is somewhat offtopic, but it really sucks that so few people seem to grasp the signifigance of all this. If you wanted to stand up to the US for real, you would need to embrace the EUs currency. The power of the US is rooted in the power of the dollar. Thems the facts. If the world rejected the US dollar as its reserve currency, and oil was suddenly priced in non-dollars, our ability to make war would be cut out from underneath us and our economy would collapse.
Research fiat banking and the history of it and you'll begin to understand why this is.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
I wonder how hard it would be to just use OCR to track money these days. You could put scanners into each ATM that would scan bills as they were dispensed and store the serial numbers, a trivial bit of OCR. You could also have banks install scanners at each teller's station when they dispense the cash (many of Washington Mutual's new branches have teller stations that are like ATMs, you make your withdrawal and the teller never handles the cash, it is dispensed from a slot. By tracking serial numbers you could see how your currency is flowing. Additionally you could spot counterfeiting, if bill serial number 1234567890 is simultaneously used in several locations and scanned you could assume that it was counterfeited. No fancy RFID's required, just modifications to bill dispensing machines in banks and other financial institutions which could easily and quietly be mandated by the Department of the Treasury.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
You do have a point there.
:)
In India (where I grew up) a 100 rupee note is equivalent to a $20 bill here, in terms of the frequency of use not exchange value. i.e. you could expect to hand over a Rs.100 note and get change back from a bagful of groceries the way you would with a $20 here.
So most ATMs I saw would return at least Rs. 500 in 100s and the rest in 500s. Pretty smart and convenent. I don't know if any of the ATMs here do that because I rarely withdraw more than $40 or $60
US hospitals, I believe, cannot refuse reasonable emergency treatment based on the ability to pay. The same goes for most 1st world hospitals, I believe.
Healthcare, generally, is separately regulated.. a society sets up the standards by which they want that care delivered, and that usually always involves some level of charity. It's not just a for-profit business, but a necessary element of our societies. Exactly how much care and of what quality will vary from place to place...
but if you have a heart attack, I don't think there is a hospital on earth that won't try to give you at least a jumpstart.
. . .which nation's currency is the easiest to counterfeit. . .
Smaller countries typically have their money minted privately. It might come as a surprise to some that the Franklin Mint actually is a mint.
As such every country has access to fairly sophisticated anti-counterfeit technology. Some might be easier to fake than others, but none of them are easy. In some respects it's far more important in a smaller economy (especially if it's a poor one) to avoid massive counterfeiting than in a larger one. It's the sort of thing that can topple governments overnight.
I suppose the best you can do is to move to a place where you are least likely to get caught passing funny money.
And yes, since you bring it up, I do have a pining for Mongolia. I could probably live there for some months on what I've got in my pockets right now, it's the cost of getting there that proves the fly in the yak butter.
Of course there's also the fact that I don't like yak butter and Mongolia is one of the few places in Asia where a rice eater like myself is at a disadvantage.
Lovely looking place though, and you can download togrog jpegs on the internet. I suspect that the average yak herder is fairly sophisticated about checking his money though. Most people for whom money is a real scarcity (as opposed to the modern western concept of "poor") are.
KFG
There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services.
To deny you service. Bussinesses have a right to deny anyone service. The only time it can really get them in trouble is if they are categorically and automatically refusing service (like refusing to serve any blacks). However they can toss you from the store if they don't like you.
Well, cash is just an extension of that, they have a right to refuse to take your money and do bussiness with you.
Hospital ERs are required to accept/treat anyone who comes through the doors regardless of money or insurance or lack thereof. They do have loopholes to get out of this predicament, for example telling the patient that all the beds are full.
Yup, the story _is_ gripping, but at the same time both the parent posting and the story show how current thinking about paper money is fatally flawed.
The fix is to have EFT-POS used widely, and to have a much less counterfeitable currency for the odd transaction which still needs it. Here in little old NZ almost every business doing legitimate cash sales has a terminal. The 'paper' money is printed on a clear plastic film, with the registration of the printing on the two sides of the plastic being perfect. There are two 'holes' in the printing where you can check it. Certainly it's quite impossible to replicate it using a computer and an ink-jet printer. For a central bank to design a currency so that a kid with a printer worth a few hundred bucks can replicate it so simply is just plain lunacy on the part of the central bank. Leaves the country open to economic sabotage by any bunch of wealthy neredowells. Think of the social chaos if Al-Qaeda dropped a few tons of forged banknotes on any Western city. The cash economy would grind to a halt in a day or two.
Not that i'm a Liberal Canadian myself, mind you. I'm actually more right-wing than anything (which is still tame by American standards), but I just wanted to offer an alternative viewpoint. I'd actually agree with you on the case that this guy probably should have been given more jailtime. I don't think that gives anyone the right to use him as a slave though. But I guess thats just the difference between you and me, and where we live. Me, I kind of like Canada, even if it can be a little soft at times.
Cheers, eh?
Hold on, that's not the same thing. It's not like the government prints the money and just "drops" it into circulation such as giving it to someone. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong regarding the U.S., but all actual new money is created as debt by banks, not by the government. If you borrow money from the bank, they just "make up" the money, i.e., they increase the number in your account but you then owe it to them as real money (cash). The bank doesn't actually have to have that money somewhere that they take and give to you. Yes, they do have to have a certain percentage of all "created" money in reserve.
Actual printed money gets into circulation by being exchanged for old bills. Of course, if this was the only way then the total amount of cash in circulation would never change. I've been trying to find out how any other new bills actually get into circulation other than in exchange, but so far I can't find that information. But as far as I'm aware, a government can't just print money and spend it. I'm obviously no expert on it, but this question on how additional new cash (bills) get into circulation has been bugging me for awhile. In order for it to get into circulation, it can't just be given out without exchanging it for something of value. I'm just not sure what that is or where it is done. (Gold reserve perhaps?)
So you're saying you'll take the black guy's $100 bill because you might get sued, but you won't take the white guy's b/c he doesn't have a leg to stand on?
No. That is discriminating based on color. Didn't I just say that was wrong?
No one should be forced to make a sale. I am not sure how you can argue against that. Forget about the currency for a second. Why should I ever be forced to sell something when I don't want to?
And you obviously don't realize that the government paying 75% on counterfeit bills means you and I will actually be paying for counterfeit bills. That is tax payer money we are talking about. And what would be the incentive to not abuse the system? If I know that I will get $75 on a $100 counterfeit I can just tell the person passing it that I will take it at $50 and make $25 off of taxpayers.
There are plenty of ways to detect counterfeit bills these days. And after working for a few years in a bank I can tell you that you can tell the difference just by the feel with enough practice.
Do you really believe this crazy talk? At peak, Iraq exported 3.7 million barrels per day, or 1.35 billion barrels. 1.35BB * US$40 a barrel = 54billion dollars for a year. Within the last year, the Japanese were spending as much as 40 billion a MONTH to sell yen and buy US dollars to keep their goods cheaper for US consumers. Asia's foreign exchange reserves totally swamp any one oil producing country's oil revenues.
Furthermore, oil is traded on markets. Getting a commodity to be traded consistently against a different currency is no easy task (resulting in things like the investment premise for gold is predicated on the US dollar). Markets crave liquidity. Saddam era Iraq would have needed a handful of other countrys togo along with him in a game of brinksmanship to try to tweak the oil market enough to change its ways. Not likely. Pricing oil in Euros was a political tactic, but not one that would ever succeed
Do you really believe this crazy talk?
What exactly is crazy about it? It's not like I'm saying that a secret world government is working with aliens...
Asia's foreign exchange reserves totally swamp any one oil producing country's oil revenues.
How does this contradict anything I said? Think about this... Why does Asia hold dollars and not Euro's? Why does any industrialized nation choose to hold dollars, despite our debt, despite our deficits, despite the worldwide illwill towards America? Answer: They need oil and oil is priced only in dollars. This is a simple answer, there are other complexities involved with certain trading partners, but by and large, this is the answer.
Furthermore, oil is traded on markets.
Yes, in dollars. Versus other commodities that are traded in a variety of currencies. No dollar, no oil.
Saddam era Iraq would have needed a handful of other countrys togo along with him in a game of brinksmanship to try to tweak the oil market enough to change its ways.
Yes, I never at any point claimed Iraq could do much on its own. What we feared, what we always fear, was the "domino effect". Iran and Venezuela were both toying with the idea of pricing their oil in something other than dollars. While you can no doubt conjure up enough islamo fascist demons to demonstrate why we would target Iran, why did we suddenly villainize Venezuela? You'll see as we go forward, any oil producing country that talks about selling oil in anything but dollars will be quickly villainized. We can't allow it if US hegemony is to continue. Pricing oil in Euros was a political tactic, but not one that would ever succeed
Definetly not with one country doing it, but if a substantial number of oil producing countries were to do it, it would succeed. There is nothing crazy in what I'm saying at all. I think you're thinking I'm saying that if Iraq continued to do that by itself it would have toppled us. I wasn't saying that. If a substantial number of oil producing countries began pricing their oil in Euro's, there would be a large number of countries who would reduce their dollar reserves and increase their Euro reserves. This would greatly impact the value of the dollar and would substantially reduce our ability to sway other nations.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.