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Make Money Fast

Posted by michael on from the cashing-out dept.

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."

14 of 482 comments (clear)

  1. Obligatory USian Viewpoint by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "All that Canadian money looks phony to me!"

    1. Re:Obligatory USian Viewpoint by Skjie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      At least it's harder to make Canadian money, with all the colours, than the green USD.

    2. Re:Obligatory USian Viewpoint by kfg · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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

  2. Knight Blinder. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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."

    One man can make a difference.

  3. Mum always said... by ebsf1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Work hard and you can 'make' lots of money.

  4. YRO? by athakur999 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So this is filed under the YRO category because....?

    Or is counterfeiting another one of those things t3h 3v1l g0v3rnm3n7 is trying to take away?

    --
    "People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
    1. Re:YRO? by Sheepdot · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  5. The advertisements by Man+of+E · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:The advertisements by Will_Malverson · · Score: 5, Funny
      Now you know, those things just pay for themselves if you use them right :-)


      Not really. Have you checked the price of ink cartridges lately?
  6. New bills by g-to-the-o-to-the-g · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is sorta irrelavent now, because recently the Canadian mint has come out with several new bills which are extremely difficult to counterfeit. THe new $20 bill came out last week I believe, and we've had new $100, $10 and $5 bills for ages now.

    --

    Hi there

  7. Re:Yeah, but... by willy134 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    highest-quality counterfeit currency ever detected

    Yeah those who do better are never detected. He is still not good enough obviously.

    --
    Can you ping me now?... Good!
  8. Looooong article, but worth the read by MoralHazard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I highly recommend RTFAing. It's a good story, and lots of juicy techy details.

    The biggest problem, it seems to me, is that whatever technical features they introduce to protect banknotes, it doesn't do a damn bit of good unless every high-school dropout grocery clerk can use those features effectively to identify bad notes. You could have forty kinds of anti-counterfeiting devices on a note, but unless the public can easily and quickly use those features, they aren't going to help.

    This got me started thinking on using crypto to protect banknotes--try embedding an RFID-type device into every banknote, with a simple chip that can perform a SHA-1 signing back-ending the RFID mechanism. An RF device sends a random number to the bill, which receives that number and SHA-1 signs it, and returns the signature. If you put the same private key into all of the bills, you could build relatively simple, hand-held currency scanners that all have the public key and can verify that the bill is real.

    This has its problems:
    1) Can we actually build a chip/RF mechanism small enough and robust enough to be used in paper currency?
    2) I can imagine this kind of mechanism adding a lot of expense to the note manufacturing process.
    3) In order to use this, you'd have to distribute gazillions of RF scanners to the point-of-sale. Expensive, and not fast to get that kind of gadget penetration.
    4) Tamper-resistence: you have to build the SHA-1 chips so that they can't be broken open. This is similar to the MS Trusted Computing issue--is it possible to store a key in a physical device such that the key cannot be extracted physically?

    That last problem is the worst--it's a lot like the DVD CSS encryption scheme problem. It works find until ONE INSTANCE of the private key gets broken, and then everybody has the key to every single banknote in circulation. And then the whole thing is kaput, money down the drain (literally). So it would be awfully important to solve the tamper-proofing issue, before you went ahead with this idea.

    Shit, I gotta get a girlfriend--posting coherent ideas to Slashdot at 11 on a Friday night is pretty busted.

  9. This guy is my cousin! by B5_geek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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)
  10. If it is done on sufficient scale by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's ALWAYS detected. The thing is money has serial numbers and those are tracked. So, even if you print counterfit bills that are 100% identicle to real ones (nearly impossible) you'll either being coliding with existing serial numbers, or using ones that aren't valid. This'll get notied if you do it in any sort of reasonable scale.

    It's the same thing as why there are no usable keygens for MMORPGs. It's not that the crackers can't reverse the algoithm for the keys, that's trivial. Problem is any key you generate will either be one that hasn't yet been issued, and therefore is invalid on the servers (most likely), or one that has been issued, and thus can't be used again.