Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Professional Counterfeiter Jeff Turner Shares His Secrets

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

Professional Counterfeiter Jeff Turner Shares His Secrets

Take this pen and just draw some little lines. And it was invisible. It was just a clear adhesive, but it would give that texture because some people, they say, scratch the shirt, it's feeling for the texture on the shirt of the bill. Hey, this is Matt Cox. I'm going to be interviewing Jeff Turner. I interviewed Jeff probably maybe three to, maybe three to six months ago. might have been longer. Anyway, he's a credit card, or not a credit card counterfeit. He's a he's a

counterfeiter of US notes. And basically we're going to just kind of talk about prison and the halfway house and what's been going on with him lately. He's got some interesting things that are happening since he was on the program. And I thought, I mean, I'm interested in what's going on with him and how things are progressing for him since he got released. And I thought maybe a lot of you guys would be too so check this out all right so like i was saying so basically you know like i mean obviously i know this but anybody who hasn't watched this like why did you uh why'd you go to prison like can you give us the the three minute or do you have a five minute version or a three minute version or um yeah well uh basically i've you know struggled with drug addiction

for a long time. Ended up losing my job. You know, I had a wife and kids and the whole deal's functioning at it, going to work every day. I lost my job. So I basically just kind of started printing $100 bills to, you know, get out of that situation. And it kind of spiraled out of control a little bit as far as like, I didn't intend on, like,

printing as much as I did over the course of, you know, as long as I did. It was kind of just like a, I was thinking I'd do it for like a month, rack up some money, get a new house until I found a new job, but it kind of, you know, the bills ended up just being so good and so easily spendable that, you know, over the course of like, I'd say 18 months, maybe two years, I printed, you know, close to a million dollars. I'm not sure the exact amount. And, yeah, so I was eventually set up by a drug dealer that I was selling fake $100 bills to. You know, the Secret Service raided my hotel room. And after cooperating with the Secret Service, giving them, like, explaining how I was to do, how I did everything, they wanted me to make a training video for Secret Service agents as far as, like, my counterfeiting techniques and stuff. So I made a Made a couple bills on camera for them And it reduced my sentence from like three years down to

The range of 10 to 16 months And they gave me the low end of that at 10 months So I'm really lucky with how all that worked out Right And so you went to You ended up going Where'd you go to prison? Where'd you go? The prison I went to was FMC Lexington

Which is a it's like a it's a federal medical center but because of COVID they basically stopped like transferring patients to the medical center so they basically it's just like a low security federal prison basically

but it was FMC Lexington was where I went how was that it was I mean it wasn't bad it's not really this is the first time I've been to prison so it's not exactly

what I expected prison to be you know what I mean? Was it? a low or yeah it was it was a low well technically it's it's a it's an administrative low so it can house like low medium and highs but for the most part it's just a low i mean you know what i mean yeah yeah like yazoo is a like they have like a a low at yazoo but it's for like administrative like punishment it's a shitty shitty low yeah um i mean like it's much worse than the low at coleman I've heard Coleman is all right from some people.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Coleman's great. Like, it's not like the low at Coleman. You go to Yazoo, and it's, you know, it's a much rougher low. Yeah. So, but you were there. So how was that? How was your first day in Lexington?

Well, going into it, it was still under quarantine. Like the COVID, I was kind of at the back end of. the whole covid restrictions so you had to quarantine for your first 30 days in and quarantine for the last 30 days out um so basically like but yeah it's it's not really what i expected um you know really well i'm sorry what was a quarantine was it like in did you go to the shoe for the quarantine oh okay but the shoe was uh like it was basically just kind of like a bus stop you know what i mean like if people know what that means like uh just like kind of bunk beds kind of thing um in like a big room and all of us just couldn't leave the room

oh okay all right no that's not bus stop is right like in the units it's kind of like where all the bunk beds and stuff are yeah they call that like in colman they called them the fish bowl um okay but yeah no and I meant the shoe, I meant like the hole, you know, in the, you know. Well, yeah, it was basically like the, it was the shoe, but they kind of just kept the doors open because it was for quarantine. So it was like this, basically this really small unit that just we couldn't, couldn't leave. How many people are, how many people are in Lexington? I want to say it was like maybe 2,400. or something.

Man, that's big. I'm not sure exactly. Yeah, I want to say something like that. Yeah, Coleman's like 1800 to 2000 roughly. So that's a big, that's a, yeah, that's a big, a big facility. So, so you were there, how long? How long before you? I was only in the prison for like six months because, you know, I did the, you know, I did the,

a month in Knox County Jail, a month in Blunt County Jail, a month in London, Kentucky at like the federal holding facility there. And then from London, they brought me to Lexington. So, and I did a few months in Knox County before all this on state charges that were eventually dropped before the feds picked it up. But, but yeah, I was one of the few guys that literally like, as I was coming in the prison like i don't you know what i mean i only had six months left yeah so yeah it's not worth

unpack yeah it wasn't that that bad for me honestly um you know because i you know you're in there with people doing 10 more years and whatever um but yeah six months wasn't wasn't too horrible could have been worse for sure um how long did you end up doing you did like 12 years or something like that? Yeah, I did. I would say 13. I usually say like 13 because it was like it was just shy of 13. It was like 12 and 10 months or something. So it was. Yeah, it was basically 13 years, you know. Yeah, but it was all right. You know, I mean, once I got out of the medium, it was, you know, it's just, you know, you get into a routine and then you're just whittling away time. And, That's the worst of it, that keeping yourself occupy, you know, trying not to think about the outside world.

And, you know, like for you, like, you got, you know, you have a, what you have a wife and kids. Well, next wife now. But yeah, at the time, at the time, that's, that it's harder for somebody who has a wife or, you know, it's, it's harder for somebody who has people out there than it is for somebody who doesn't. Like I didn't have anybody really out there that I was, you know, you know, desperate to get out to because they just really wasn't. I mean, they were there, but they basically, you know, had walked away from me at that point. So it was just, it wasn't like, you know, oh, my wife struggling to to take care of my, my three kids or, you know, there was none of that. So it wasn't, you know, those are the guys that are are just in hell or the guys that are, you know, calling their wives, you know, where were you last night? I called last night.

what a chance you know that yeah it's like those guys are miserable that's the worst that's i was i was lucky about that yeah i was lucky everybody gave up on me so you you got into like writing writing stories and stuff while you were yeah i started writing guys stories but but and that that but that definitely that absolutely helped me because it got me into a routine it got me focused on something gave me a purpose but like you know same thing with but different than you And as far as with you, you know, you didn't have time to do anything like that. You basically what? You probably just read the whole time you were there.

Yeah, pretty much. You know, worked out, shot pool and read, read books, really. That's about all there was to do. Yeah. I ended up getting a job in the kitchen, which sucked at first, doing like dishes and pots and pans, which is like just a miserable job. but then like basically nobody wanted to do that job and I didn't either but like the CEO the guy in the kitchen basically was like oh I'll give you the highest pay grade if you just

keep doing this plus I had like the little hustle of you know bringing back chicken and peppers and onions and stuff to the unit so I was able to actually get by pretty pretty well you know what I mean making like probably three to five flat books a day you know what I mean working in the kitchen which yeah so that's like that's 20 bucks 30 bucks a day yeah plus like the the hundred dollars they paid me every you know one yeah did you have that RP um restitution yeah i did but i they never i don't think they ever ended up taking it out because you you don't have to do it for the first or no i think they took it out once or something because like they they don't take it out for the first three months or something like that law enforcement often

questions him not because he's suspected of a crime but because they find him fascinating he is the most interesting man in the world i don't typically commit crime but when i do it's bank fraud stay greedy my friends support the channel join matthew cox's patreon so yeah i think i ended up like paying 80 i think they took like one of my paychecks one month or something but i was since i was bringing in peppers and onions to the unit chicken all that stuff like yeah i was basically getting by on on the stamps that i was making and the store man i wasn't i didn't run a store i would just everybody knew that i was in the kitchen and i had you know you you get these big boots because i was in the dishroom so like i just stuffed them you know put the chicken in bags

peppers onions bag them up and just put them in my boots and i just walk out of the kitchen with these big ass rubber boots and and the guards knew what i was doing like they didn't yeah you know they they they don't really care as long as you just you know do your job and keep it on the down low and stuff um so so what when did you get put in for halfway house well they they denied my halfway house because I didn't have like enough time I guess or something you know what I mean I was only there for like six months so um you didn't have any halfway house not no not in like the mandatory federal halfway house when I when I got out you know I came to a sober living house because my wife and I divorced while I was in prison so I couldn't go to my you know my house

Like, I had a wife and kids in the house, but that was in North Carolina. So when we separated, the feds basically were like, we have to release you back to Knoxville, Tennessee, because, you know what I mean? That's your sentencing district. So I basically got dropped off, you know, took the bus into Knoxville. I had like, I think like 600 bucks on me or something, getting out of prison. And they said, contact your probation officer in the next two that was the next 24 or 48 hours. Yeah. And that was it.

So you, did you already have it arranged to go to the sober living? No, I went and stayed, like my parents live close to Knoxville, like an hour outside in Knoxville. So I stayed with them for like a week or two until I could get into a place. So, yeah, but it's not bad, really. It's just like I'm on probation. I get the whole drug tests and everything anyway. and the sober living house is basically just like you know pay your rent pass your drug tests kind of thing and that's it so you know all right can you come and go yeah yeah it's not it's not even considered like a halfway house it's just a sober living house just like cheap rent as long as you stay sober kind of thing right so why so where'd you work thank you where did you work thank you where did you

world when you first got out well after i was out for probably like a week or two i stayed with my parents for like a week or two then i got into this house in knoxville i moved there and uh like literally the first place i applied to um it was for a print shop which um why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you no matter the size whether You're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus. IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it.

Shop now at IKEA.ca. You know, that's like the field that I've been in for years was like the sign business and printing and graphics and vinyl and car wraps and stuff like that. So I applied to this one, the first place that through this print shop, They hired me right away, so it worked out. And that ended up being a great job that I still work at. So I've been working there for about a year now. I've already been, like, promoted.

I'm a production manager. I've basically run production at this print shop. They're good to me there. Okay. Well, yeah, that's funny because you had told me that after you did the podcast and everything, that, you know, you were a little concerned. and then they like they saw the podcast and they're like wow that's pretty you know that's actually pretty amazing so yeah i think the owner said that he thinks they were uh under utilizing my

my talents is what he said so i got i got a raise in a promotion after um so how did you get in touch with me like that because you were you had written me Had, did you contact me in the text or you wrote me at, you wrote me, I mean, did you contact me in the, in the, in the, um, comment section or did you, I thought, I think you sent me in, I know we started emailing and then we talked on the phone. Yeah. I think I messaged you on Facebook, maybe. Oh, okay. I, I forget. You said, wasn't it like a friend of yours told you to contact me? Well, no, I've seen, excuse me, I've seen your, like, concrete podcast before I went to prison, actually. And I saw, like, John Boziacs, which I was telling John on our interview that I read, I watched Boziac's concrete and then I went to prison. And I didn't know his name or anything. I just watched the interview.

And then I go to prison and read that book, Kingpin. And I thought it was about him. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I remember this. Right. Yeah. So, I don't know.

Basically, when I got out, like, I was just had nothing to do scrolling through YouTube. I stumbled across your stuff again. So I just, like, sent you a message. You know what I mean? Like, I just was like, hey, I just got out of prison. You know, you seemed interested. So whatever, we talked on the phone. Yeah, I was, I remember I was, I was interested because, you know, after.

like 12, 13 years in prison, I had met maybe four or five counterfeiters. And really, only like two of those counterfeiters were real counterfeiters. You know, like you always have the idiot who's just making, you know, stupid bills. He gets caught right away. He ends up having to go to jail. Like he never really passed any real bills. Like it just didn't, he wasn't a professional about it. And then I met two other guys.

that were really knew what they were doing. And so when you said, you know, I'm a counterfeiter and then you explain that, look, I was supposed to get this much time, but they reduced my, they were willing to reduce my sentence. If I showed him the technique I was using, I thought, oh, well, this guy knows what he's doing then. Like that that's not something they're going to do for just anybody at all. So, you know, and that's what I remember sparked, just sparked my interest. I was like, oh, this fucking guy's got a story.

like there's no fucking way that the feds cut his cut his sentence just for him showing them the you know hit the actual technique that he was using so uh yeah and then i thought then you did you came on you had a good story and then yeah you you flew down here to see your your buddy or your cousin or something uh just to see old friends and i i had a court date a child support from my first child down there too um so yeah i was i was basically after i talked to you I was already planning or before I talked to you I was already planning on going down there so then you know when you said schedule you know you wanted to schedule it I was like well that's perfect you know yeah so you came here we did a we did an interview that was the first interview you'd you done and then after hearing your huh I was going to say I was a little like nervous or something on your interview I didn't really know you know never even camera before or anything really well and and honestly like i i wasn't i remember thinking like after you did mine and then you did you did ended up doing boziacs um i just remember thinking that i

my interview with you was like so bad like i could have really dug in but you know a lot of stuff you were saying i was just kind of like just listening to you talk so i wasn't really digging in and asking really i think i did a really horrible job interviewing you Um, but then, so after I talk to you, that's when I, I remember I, after hearing your story, I was like, this is a fucking good story. This is, this is super, super unique, super interesting. And that's when I, that's when I called Danny from concrete. And I told the same, same thing to Danny. I said, listen, man, I met like maybe four or five counterfeiters in 13 years. Two of them were actually professionals. So I've met two credit, you know, two, that's how rare it is. I met two counterfeiters.

and I said you got to talk to this guy and then you you went over there what that night yeah just a few hours after your house and you were interviewed by Dan in Concrete and then how long was it after that that you were you were contacted by like a producer or screenwriter? Yeah it was probably like a month

a month later maybe pretty soon after maybe a few weeks um i mean after after the podcast came out yeah i started getting like 10 20 30 messages from just like people every day like right um and one of them was this guy tom who like i think he he set up a facebook account just to get in contact with me because it was like there was no profile picture he had zero friends kind of thing right but he he messaged me I think, I forget what he said. I think he was like, oh, I'm a screenwriter.

I saw you on a podcast. I'm interested in talking to you about your story or something. So I just, you know, he gave me his email. We started emailing back and forth. And then, you know, he wanted to talk on the phone. So he three-way called me with the director, Alex. And we kind of just talked for like three or four hours. hours. I told him my story and then we just kind of, you know, bullshaded about stuff for a while.

And then like within a couple weeks after that, yeah, he basically offered me the life rights option or whatever. Email me the contract. Right. You contacted. That's when you contacted me. You were like, hey, this is what's going on. Yeah. So they optioned it for for like 12 months. months is that right or was it 18 month option with a 12 month they've got extension yeah they can extend it for 12 months yeah if they're in negotiations with uh with a production company right yeah and so so is it tom what's tom's name tom groanberg and alice mclean right so tom wrote He just finished the screenplay

And it sent it to you You said you've read like half of it so far You said it's pretty good Yeah, it's good for sure I mean, they're professional writers You know what I mean, so You probably sound like a superstar, right? Like you're like

Well, I mean The story's based on Like I only read half of it Because they just emailed it to me like three days ago so I'm not even done reading it but you know from what I read it's good you know what I mean

that like obviously the names are changed the story isn't like exactly how it went down but the whole gist of everything is pretty accurate he's been known to cure insecurity just with his laugh his organ donation card lists his charisma

his smile is so contagious vaccines have been created for it. He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crime, but when I do, it's bank fraud. Stay greedy, my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. Well, you know, what they're trying to do is get the spirit of the story.

The problem is that if you were to write a book and it was 300 pages, that's like 20 to 25 hours of screen. time so they have to try and say hey here's we got a 20 hour or 20 to 25 hours worth of screen time that we have to condense into less than two hours like and people are like well why don't they just do the real story because the real story is a is a fucking it's a 20 part series like they can't do that they're trying to get a they want to make a film so they're going to try and condense it and and so some scenes and it's funny if you've ever read like Frank Abigail's book, You know, Catch Me If You Can.

And then saw the movie. Like, it's really, really close. They remove a lot of stuff. But some scenes, they actually kind of combine two or three scenes together. Yeah. So you watch the movie and you're like, that never happened.

And then you kind of go, well, actually, that did happen, but he was behind a motel. And that part of it happened. But that was actually. not an FBI agent that was you know what I'm saying so you start kind of going they kind of put multiple stories together

and some they just leave out so you know it's like that's why it's always kind of based on um yeah you know based on the story but in uh catch me if you can I remember the book goes into like a lot of detail about when he was in prison

in France and like the hole remember yeah um and the movie it was just like it just kind of showed him sickly you know what I mean it didn't really go into like the solitary psychological aspect like the book did but but they they did cover a lot of great parts that you know they covered like him escaping from the plane you know they covered him being you know passing the passing the bar and being with the girl the chick and her father worked for the he was a u.s attorney and i'm sorry he was a district attorney in new orleans and

he he escaped like there's there's tons of stuff that it's it's very very much rooted the spirit of it is rooted in the in the story uh so yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't mind taking a look at at at the screenplay if you know if you if you ask you know todd and them if i you know um you know if they're okay with it if not that's fine too like sometimes they get super concerned um you said that didn't you say they were they were talking about possibly doing a sizzle reel um i think i think i think he wants to hear soon like that the the copy of the script that they gave me is just the first draft so they're still like busy working with stuff and you know i don't like talk to them every day about it

you know what i mean it's kind of like a once a month thing we'll just kind of email back and forth real quick but um i think he's going to put put together something i'm not sure if you know how or what it's going to be right have your option you're you're you're you're you're life rights yet or are you going to? No, you know what happened was like when I got out of prison, I was contacted by a bunch of people, right? A bunch of different production companies. And I didn't, you know, what I did was they would contact me and I didn't pursue them because my fear was that if I did my story, then all these other stories that I had written would never really be taken seriously, if that makes sense.

because so you know Jordan belford they did the wolf of wall street and after the wolf of wall street you know he'd written a bestselling book that was turned into a movie so he turned around and tried to get a couple he pitched several series of different types of series that he also was interested in that he he had co-written or written but nobody took him seriously because he walked into the boardroom and they looked at him they're like oh man you're Jordan Belford, you're the Wolf of Wall Street. He's like, yeah, yeah, I get it, but I've written this series, and I'm trying to pitch this series, and it never took off because nobody can really, he was typecast as the Wolf of Wall Street. And I was concerned that that might happen.

In retrospect, I probably should have pursued those, you know, those opportunities. But what had happened with me was I got, I ended up getting a. several meetings with Blumhouse productions out in LA and they make a bunch of series for like Hulu and Netflix and we had a bunch of meetings and I was actually supposed to fly out and this took place through the course of three or four months maybe six months and I was supposed to fly out to L.A. and meet up the whole crew and negotiate a contract with them and two weeks before I was supposed to fly out COVID hit. They shut down their their offices, then it became, well, you know, we need to figure out what's going on.

Then months and months went by. We had a couple more meetings. And ultimately, it just fell, fell apart. So in the meantime, I ended up pitching a John Bozziak story. And that got picked up. We optioned his life rights. I then optioned another guy, Pete Rossini's, life rights that uh to a production company and then i started working with a podcast company on on a bunch of my stories so like everything was going well but you know so so once everything started going well i decided what i was going to do was start kind of working on my stuff so i'm working with a production company right now in uh the uk to try and do like they're going to do like a feature uh a feature documentary on my story

And, of course, if that happens, then it's, it's, it's, it's a stepping stone towards getting either a series or a film made about you. And right now it's perfect for a, or a documentary about my life because we're slowly starting to go into another recession. And so that's kind of, you know, it kind of, it kind of feeds into the whole housing crisis recession thing. so so that's where mine's at but uh but yeah i remember we were talking and you were saying that they were thinking about doing a sizzle reel they're still working on their stuff the uh you would talk to the producer um i mean it seems like everything's you know moving forward and and yours is moving forward faster than anything i'm working on so that's why i was like hey let's let's talk like let's do a podcast yeah i was i was surprised that glad tv hit me

up um right wasn't wasn't expecting that at all well you know it's funny because you had mentioned vlad to me and then then before i because you were you had said something like um you'd mentioned i was going to give you their information or something i forget what happened and before any of that happened they contacted you yeah i i wonder they they probably contacted me through through your podcast, I would think, because you did... Or Danny. Or Danny. Oh, yeah, or Danny. I mean, Concrete has a lot of, like, you know, popular people on there, you know, as far as, like, true crime.

They've got some good guess, for sure. Yeah, he does a lot of, um, he's doing more and more, like, conspiracy theory kind of stuff. Yeah. you know which is you know he's you know aliens and cover-ups and he's he does a lot of that he he's getting huge numbers though like when i went on there he he would he there would be months where he all of his guests he was getting 20,000 30,000 10,000 like he wasn't getting big numbers now it's like every time he puts out a podcast he's getting 200,000 400,000 300,000, 600,000 it's like it's his his thing's blowing up yeah my interview got three has like 300,000 I think

yeah if he redid that interview now it probably gets 600,000 like like if I asked Danny to go on his podcast right now like hey man I'm going to come by and let's do a podcast I he probably say no he probably listen I'm big shot now I don't you're small fry so but you're We're going concrete, like, every couple weeks, it seemed like for a while there. You know, he would. Yeah, I was. But I really do feel like he's getting so big that. And he has to be raking in the money.

Like, I mean, I know what the numbers, numbers are. And he doesn't do short podcasts. He does two hours, three hours. So you put out those podcasts and you get 400,000 views. you're making a ton of money. Those are five, 10, $15,000 podcasts at that point. And there was a time when I first,

probably the first year that I was going on concrete, probably the first year, there were times when he was like, you know, bro, I'm struggling. But he, you know, he pushed through it. Because, you know, listen, you start, it sucks. There are times it just sucks. Like nobody's watching.

like what i'm talking i'm talking i got like 12 friends that watch this out of pity that's what i'm talking right now it's it's that bad and then one day it picks up and picks up and you know so i think he's doing great i'd be thrilled with those numbers hell yeah i'm trying to get my youtube channel even monetized right now you know what i just put out i put a ticotok out uh like two days ago, and it's got like 80,000, 80,000 views and something. I'm surprised at that. Your, oh, that's what I was going to say. Did you ever send the producer?

Did you ever send him the little shorts I did on you? I think he's, I think he's seen him, because I posted them on Instagram, I want to say. Those are almost, those are almost like sizzle reels. Yeah, you did a good job. on all those. Yours? I'm like to ask you, how did you find the clip?

Like, obviously the clips that you put in there are from like famous movies, but like, I mean, what's the process of like getting, because the clips relate to what people are saying so well.

You know what I mean? Well, with yours, you know, there was only really one counterfeiting movie that was perfect for you. That was to live and die in L.A. Yeah. Like, that was perfect.

Perfect. You said you would watch the movie after that, right? Yeah, yeah. It was, it's great. Like the guy, the manufacturing process, all the stuff he goes through. It's a great movie. And so, I mean, that was the only movie I could think to pull from. So I pulled from that. And I might have pulled from one or two other movies.

But I think that was pretty much, that was pretty much it. Oh, and the shopping. There was a bunch of shopping scenes where I said you were, we showed you guys shopping um those are great you know i wish i could play those on this um just to show people because man they they're they're they're they're they're they're perfect those are perfect tic talks for you and that one ticot got like it got like half a million views and then they then ticot censored it because for uh showing criminal conduct really yeah yeah remember it got five

You said it was like instructional or something. Yeah. And you, well, yeah. Yeah. Like, instructional for like your, it's criminal conduct. And it's you're instructing people or showing people criminal conduct. Yeah. Does that make sense?

Like, you're not just talking about it. They were concerned that it was almost like you were giving them a blueprint. But it wasn't a blueprint. It was just the fucking B-roll that I used from to live and die in L.A. you know it's TikTok it's just stupid um but yeah those were those were those were those were those were great uh i was going to say it got to like oh and then you know what i did then i ended up deleting it i deleted it not realizing that i shouldn't have deleted it i should have made it just private uh and and i reposted and i reposted every time i've

reposted it it's it's gotten two three hundred thousand views but it's never did as well as the very first the very first one it was great that was great trying to think that was a shoot trying to think where is it where are you oh this is one right here oh no the cooperating one the guy where he's cooperating yeah yeah you're right oh yeah it was all good Yeah, you got to send those to that guy. It might give them some ideas on how to do the sizzle reel. Because a sizzle reel is super important to get a decent sizzle reel down because that's what they're going to use to pitch, you know,

larger production companies or studios. Is a sizzle reel typically like something like that or is it like with act like actors? It all depends. It depends. like it can be exactly like what i what i did for instance uh did i sent you boziacs remember you watched bozziacs for ghetto white boy yeah yeah he he's in like that like fucking fur coat and like yeah yeah that's great it's a great one he's got a great sizzle reel and honestly i'd love to be able to talk about like that's why i asked you like to talk to the producer

because the guys that are doing his documentary, like they don't want, they don't want anybody to know anything. You know, they don't want any social media, don't talk about it, don't this, but he's got a great,

he's got an amazing sizzle reel. And they've used that and they've pitched it and they've got a huge production company, you know, and now they're pitching other people. So I can't even say who it is. But it's super important to get a good, you know,

a good three-minute sizzle reel. Like, I mean, you don't have to have, actors they can just do it off of an interview you've got some great interviews and those are you know those may uh work perfectly for for them but um so you're working at your job when you come back and you're doing the podcast how often are you putting out stuff on your podcast um what like on my channels and stuff or yeah i'm probably uh not very often

Man, it's hard to find the time between, because I'm writing the book as well. I'm working. And then I travel like, it seems like once a month or so for a different podcasts. Yeah. So you're on like you're on Vlad. Mm-hmm. Mine, concrete. Concrete.

I've done, I just did MSCS Media. Right. two days ago um crime and entertainment uh oh yeah yeah a bunch of the other smaller ones that um but yeah i just got some uh some somebody commented on my youtube page saying about no jumper have you uh you know no jumper um a bunch of guys like a hip-hop type uh interviews like rappers. It's kind of like Vlad TV. Yeah. Yeah, guys have mentioned it to me. I've never reached out to them. I could, I don't know. I think actually, I think Tyler, I think Tyler has reached out to them and they've never, you know, they just may not be interested. I'm not, I'm not everybody's

cup of tea. Yeah. So, you know, um, did you ever do, uh, Julian's? Not yet. He, uh, he messaged me on Instagram. saying he wanted me to come, like, the first of next year. So probably January, February or something like that. Yeah, his is TrendaFinder. Is it TrendaFinder? Trenda fire, trend of fire. Trend of fire.

I always say it wrong. I mean, when you're making up, when you're making up words, you know, it's going to be hard. So I can barely read English. So, so, yeah, Julian's got, and he's, he'll do, he'll talk to you for four hours. yeah yeah he seems like a smart a smart guy for sure i saw his uh interview on concrete i never heard of him until that concrete interview he did and uh yeah he just seemed smart so i checked out his channel and uh you know i watch his stuff every now and then too so yeah he um he you know he had a he had a super successful career ahead of him and then and then

then just suddenly and then just kind of it was that he said he was at that point where it was like if I take this they offered him a position and it was like if I take this position I'll never be able to back my way out of this course that my the trajectory his life was was was headed on and he was like I was I wasn't happy and he said and I just kind of decided you know what that this is something I want to do and I want to be I want to do podcast and and he quit he quit a job that was probably going to be making three 400,000 a year and quit it to start a podcast. Yeah. Wasn't that like working on Wall Street or like exactly. Yeah. Investment banker or something. Exactly. I mean, you have to admit that's a huge

that's a you got to be committed to say, hey, you know what? I'm not I'm not going to do this. Like I'm not going to end up getting stuck in this rut that I don't like. like. I'm sure there are people that love it. But he knew he knew he didn't love it. He said, this is something that I want to do that I want to pursue. And this is what I want my life to be about. And he went for it. I mean, that's most people don't realize that until it's way too late. And they got two kids, a massive mortgage, a wife they can't stand. They're teaching Little League. And then suddenly they realize I hate my job. And I can't quit because I I have all these obligations.

Then he just decided that I'm not going to allow myself to get in that position. So I always thought that was super, was really, really cool. You know, that in and of itself is a story. Like you've got a story. I have a story. But he's, that's also a story. Yeah, for sure. You know, you and I were.

Go ahead. It's crazy how accessible the internet is. Like, you know what I mean? how easy it is. It's not easy, but like, anybody can become a famous rapper or a talk show host or whatever, you know, with like YouTube and SoundCloud, all these different platforms. You know what I mean? You used to have to like get in with these record labels or, you know, production companies and stuff. Now you can literally post a video and, you know, if it blows up, it blows up and you're, you know, you can make a living off of it. Yeah. It's pretty crazy. I got this

Like, my studio, I just redid my studio a little bit. Not a lot. I tweaked it since you've been here. So it was a lot bigger. And I mean, did you ever see the closet that I put this stuff? I put the foam stuff in the closet. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax.

Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. wrapped all around the closet. Yeah, inside, I took a closet where you could actually sit down. It's got a platform and sit down, put your laptop. I've got the mic, everything. You close it and it is, it's a perfect sound studio. And I, the other day, when I was working with this production company in the UK,

they sent me a script and they said, can you please record this script? And then they started trying to explain to me, like, you're going to, you may have to do this and do that. And, and I was like, no, no, listen, I'm done. I got all that. Like I, I, and I recorded it on garage band in that room and sent it to them. And they were like, this is, this is amazing. Like, the quality is amazing. Like, that's, and it's, it's to your point where any, any goofball can download garage band and go stand inside their.

closet and record and it sounds like you were in a fucking professional studio it sounds that good that's just how amazing all the equipment is out here and then it just boils down to are you talented and are you lucky yeah because you could be super talented and still not get found it's a combination of talent and luck yeah it seems like it seems like with the whole posting on social media it's like about consistency you know i mean if you just post uh you know nonstop every week or every day or whatever like eventually followers add up you know what's gonna catch up yeah like people don't typically like unfollow you for any reason so i mean the more you post it just eventually it just you know it's stacks up eventually you know and then it's just a matter of do you happen to put out that

one video that people go, wow, like I'm going to share, I'm sending this to five of my friends. Like, this is amazing. And then next thing, you know, that video does really well. And you get even more subscribers. And then it kind of starts to take off. Like, I, I, you know, my subscriber rate is not huge, but it's fairly consistent. And so for me, I know that it's just a matter of hanging on long enough until the numbers can support me and the moment they can support me and I can drop some of the other things I'm doing I'll double down on on the content you know what I mean like I can't afford it I have to do other things to to pay my bills YouTube doesn't do that for me right now but it's it's getting there and at some point it will get there and that then it'll be

fuck then it'll be man it it you know it'll it'll be amazing because then i'll be able to double down and say okay now i can really make this full time you thought i was putting out content before like now i can't do that now yeah you know i'll get it fucking evicted i owe this guy rent every month i got to pay they'll take my car the bank the bank keeps out sending me these statements that they tell me you know like they're not going to be like no no listen i got a plan i got to double down they'd be like yeah you fucking figure that out later so yeah yeah i'd say i'm a year or two away from that shit how many subscribers do you have on youtube now you got like are you had like 50 000 a while ago didn't you yeah you still

it's like 57 000 i'm getting like whatever 1400 a month at this point so two months from now It'll be, two months from now, it'll be at, you know, what, 60? Yeah. Which, you know, is, you know, that's like, you know, it's not Danny. It's not, you know, single, it's not 50,000 or 20,000 a month. But it's, for me, it's, I'm thrilled with that. You just got out of prison, though, like two years ago, didn't you? You're doing great, bro.

That's what I'm saying. I'm doing great. I really am doing great. Listen, two years ago, I was living in somebody's closet, not even like the spare room. Like, my bed was in the closet. There was a big closet. I actually stuck my bed in there so I'd have more room. So, I mean, literally, I was living in someone like spare room, you know, two years ago. So, you know, I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled. Oh, yeah. What's up with, are you still writing people's stories? Or was that just kind of? something you did in prison no i i am i don't you know what happens is i keep getting sidetracked i just finished i i'd written a book or i wrote a book partially wrote a book in prison i finished it i had a couple half kind of partial projects so i just finished this one book and i'm kind of breaking it apart now to kind of turn it into like a so that it could be turned into a documentary very easily so that's one project i'm almost done with that and i'm then going to work i'm working on jess's story my girlfriend um or my fiancee her story so i'm i started writing

that but you know she doesn't know like most people they only know their version of the crime so we ordered the the criminal records and arrest records of as many of her co-defendants as we could get. So I ordered, I did Freedom of Information Act, I got those in, and that's a nice little pile now. And it's funny too, because stuff would come in from her where she was like, oh, wow, I forgot about that. That's right. So, you know, they're helping to remind her of things and dates. You know, people don't know the dates. You don't know the name of the officer.

you don't know. So we've got a nice little pile and I'm going to write her story. It's going to be, you know, it's going to be probably, I don't know, probably 10,000 words maybe, maybe 12,000. I'll put it on the website. And then I have another story that my buddy Pete and I work on and he's in prison. We work on a story. I call it, you know, it's called the company. And it's about a I've talked about it several times over the last year or two. It's about a bunch of guys that were robbing computer or chip manufacturers. They were making computer chips back in like the 80s and 90s. And so it's it's a group of Asian, you know, gang members that were that were being hired by people from China and Shanghai to rob.

chipping manufacturers in the United States and then they'd ship the chips back to China and they'd put them in the computers and sell them back to us. So, yeah, it is. It's an insane story. And especially with China and just everything that's going on right now.

So it's a super interesting story. But I haven't had time. It's like the outline is there. It's a matter of me sitting down and writing the actual stories. But I'm close to it. I'm going to finish Jess's. And then I want to work on that one.

Yeah. But, you know, it's still a lot. What? In California or something? The Chinese gang. Yeah, they were, it was, they were, um, what do they call them? They're called the, it's a triad. The triad, yeah.

Yeah, it's out of China, but they were robbing places all throughout the United States. So it wasn't just Silicon, Silicon Valley. It was, they were robbing places in like Idaho and, you know. you know, you know, Kansas and these places that we're making chips, you know, and getting Intel chips. And, you know, and I literally, I mean, it's, it's super like spy stuff. Like, they're showing up in a van with 120,000 chips in the van and a guy's giving them a briefcase for $5,000 or $5 million in cash for $20 million in chips. And they just pull up in the van and get the briefcase he gets in the van they get in a car and they drive their separate ways i mean it's and these are

like chinese officials yeah it's an amazing story what's great is that you know we ordered all the documents the problem the reason it took so long to get to the point where i am now is that covid because of covid they had shut down the archives so we weren't able to get the transcripts that we wanted because they were in the archives so eventually we ended up You know, they opened it back up. They actually, actually Pete has a friend, a girlfriend who has a friend that was dating a judge in San Francisco. And he got the guy from the archives to go down there and pull all the documents for us. That in and of itself, that's cool.

That's a great story. Like, who can say that? In the middle of COVID, we got a friend of a friend who's dating a friend. who's dating a judge, and the judge calls down and says, get out of bed, go down there, get these people, their fucking documents. I mean, that's great. That should be in the story. Well, yeah.

But yeah, I think that would be an interesting story. Does it ever get made? I don't know. I mean, I wake up at, sometimes I wake up at two, three in the morning, and I'll get up and I'll come downstairs and I'll write for two hours. And, you know, I might do that once or twice a week. and so it you know it's just little things it you know how it you write a page here a page there a page here and one day you'll turn around you'll go holy shit i'm done like this is

it takes a long time though i've been writing for like six months now and i'm uh i'm probably like six chapters in maybe five five chapters yeah that's the problem you got a job you got a job yeah that's you know what it is yeah you're not a professional writer eat something till six you know and then it's like I can only write like a paragraph a night and that's even if I have time to do that every night so I need to focus on it more though I want to finish the book for sure you have to push yourself you know even if it's you know even if you have to do it and you even if you do it badly you know do something try and do something every day because it will add up yeah that well that's what the the director was telling me he's like just write it down because

he's like 90% of writing is editing after the fact oh absolutely get it on paper and then from there it's like it's just doing the work you know what i mean it's just fixing this fixing that switching this around yeah the hardest thing is looking at that blank page and putting something down once it's down you can you can you can you can fix it later yeah yeah for sure i need to start start writing more but man it's it seems like with with the like in and past like month or so a bunch of other podcasts have hit me up it seems so it's like i've done two podcasts this week already plus working and you know what i mean but it's good to stay busy though i you know well and if you had a book out there then those would be every

time you do a podcast you're going to sell some books you're not going to sell hundreds but you're to sell it doesn't matter if you sell 10 that's 60 or 70 bucks you know in that and the residual that comes in you know as people see the older podcast and then every once while you do a podcast and it gets a couple hundred thousand views and then you do sell 100 bucks i mean you're making you do it on amazon you'll make 650 to seven seven dollars and 50 cents a book Self-publishing? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you could make more, but if you want to price it reasonably, my book's reasonably priced, it's like 20 bucks. Yeah. So it makes me like, it depends on where you buy it, but it's like between $6.50 and $7.50 per book. You know, that's pretty good, though. Yeah. You can sell 10,000 copies of that.

See, that's. Yeah. Yeah, don't I wish. But yeah, it's, yeah, it's happening. so you just got to keep you just got to keep hammering away at it for sure hey i appreciate you guys watching i'm going to go ahead and we're going to put jeff's um his interview not his interview with me because i didn't do a great interview just an interview with jeff telling his story uh you know in his own words uh that i have on inside the darkness which is my my other

channel and we're going to i'll have a colby's going to load the the interview uh on the back of this so if you want to watch jeff's story told by him it's a really interesting story um yeah and it's uh it's it's it's great so check it out and i appreciate you guys watching and do me a favor if you know if you like the video subscribe hit the link you know all that also i have patreon if you want to see me do uh create content that you you know you want to see uh most of my content is better than, you know, this, this anyway. But then this interview, just because I just wanted to catch up. And so do me a favor and go to my Patreon. You know, you can subscribe to Patreon for 10 bucks. Also, if you want to, you can thank, you can support the channel by thanking me.

There's a scroll button below, below this video, and there's a little thank you. It's a dollar sign and you can thank, you know, you can leave $1.99, $4.99. 4999, whatever you want to leave. I appreciate it. And check out Jeff's, check out Jeff's interview. My name is Jeff Turner. I'm 35 years old. I just got out of federal prison for conspiracy to counterfeit U.S. obligations. See, how are you born? I was born in, outside of Miami. I grew up in Clearwater, St. Pete, Tampa Bay Area. I've lived in Knoxville, Tennessee for about the past eight years, kind of started counterfeiting at a younger age when I was about 19 or 20 years old, making $100 bills. I'd sell them in bulk to one of my friend's father's friend.

And I did that for about six months until my friend overdosed and died, which kind of severed that connection. So I decided to stop for many years. And let's see, probably about 2018, I started doing it again, kind of added desperation in Knoxville. So I was working for a sign company, and I basically lost my job, like two months. before the lease was up in my house. So I decided to get back into the counterfeiting thing. I met a guy I worked with and he turned out to be like a pretty big drug dealer dealing in like multiple different, you know, heroin, meth, methamphetamines, cocaine, you know, marijuana, all sorts of. of stuff um so i i began selling him money so he could go to atlanta from knoxville and re-up with drugs

with with partially my counterfeit money and some of his real money and all that but um so knoxville is is a weird city it's kind of like uh so many people come from other major cities down to Knoxville specifically, for some reason, to sell drugs. A lot of people from Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Atlanta. I feel like the big cities have so much competition that these drug dealers are branching out and going to these mid-level cities because there's a lot of money there and drug addicts everywhere in Knoxville. So this one in particular was from, well, he's from California, but he was buying open Atlanta and selling it in Knoxville. So, you know, he was doing, I was giving him probably 5,000, 10,000 at a time at first with 20s, some 50s and hundreds.

But eventually the 20s and 50s just didn't make sense. I mean, you know, to maximize profits, you might as well just do the hundreds. So I kind of stopped messing with the 20s and the 50s. I was doing the 96 series $100 bill, which, you know, has, let's see, a number of security features. It's got, they've got counterfeit detection pens, they're iodine-based ink, so, you know, to mark the bill to determine if it's counterfeit or not. Well, I found a way around that. But also there's a strip embedded in the bill. bill, a watermark, color shifting ink in the corner, and see, the embedded strip glows red

in a black light for $100 bills, and I was able to crack all of those security features pretty flawlessly. So the one drug deal I started selling two, ended up getting arrested for drug charges, which they found counterfeit money, my counterfeit money on him. But he was set up by somebody he was selling to. His house was raided. They found my bills. It kind of spooked me because I thought he might be cooperating.

So the lease was up in my house. So me and my wife and kids started staying out of hotels. And I kind of just went all in with the counterfeiting thing. to, you know, support my family, support my drug addiction, and, you know, make extra money. So I started just spending the bills. And, I mean, I was selling them to different drug dealers, ripping off drug dealers with them. But I started going to stores and spending them. And they passed every time, which at first I was nervous about.

but by the time I passed maybe five or six of them and there was never an issue that everyone would hold them up look at the strip watermark market with the pen and they always passed flawlessly so I kind of got cocky with it and started my wife and I would go on you know shopping sprees go on road trips the different cities down to Atlanta Chattanooga in Knoxville all around Knoxville, Lexington, Kentucky, Cleveland, Ohio, you know, make road trips, spend about a week or two in a city, and just our job was to shop, go spend money, you know what mean? Break these bills, convert the counterfeit money into legitimate money. And there were different ways we'd do it, not only selling counterfeit to drug dealers in bulk for, you know,

25 cents on the dollar. So for $10,000, they'd give me anywhere from like, you know, $2,000 to $3,000 averaging at about $2,500. But we'd also buy prepaid visa cards with the $399 fee on $100 prepaid visa card. I'd give two fake $100 bills and get, you know, $100 prepaid visa card and $95 change or whatever it may be. And if you go into a Walmart or, and you can go to multiple registers because the registers are so spread out. You can go to the electronic center, the garden center, one or two registers up front and easily leave a Walmart with like $1,000 cash and $1,000 worth of prepaid visa cards. It was also like buying money orders, you know.

I tried to keep it at just a few hundred dollars a piece. Sometimes we got up to like almost a thousand, but I didn't want too much suspicion. But you can go to, you know, a Walgreens, a CBS, buy a $500 money order. And just that was what we did all day, every day. It was driving around to different businesses. We probably have been to every business, every corporate business. I didn't go to like mom and pop stores ever. I tried not to.

It would always be, you know, the big corporate chains. but and different chains have kind of different ways that they detect the money so if you go into a Walmart with someone else and you can each hit up a couple different registers we'd go in like two or three of us at a time

and each go buy like I'd buy like a little $2 birthday card like happy birthday niece or whatever and a $100 prepaid visa card to kind of give it the appearance I was buying a present for somebody and if you know say two or three or three of us say three went into Walmart and each each went to two different

registers you know we could easily leave with you know $1,200 worth of visa cards cash whatever there was one case where we knew a manager at a certain gas station that just opened a safe and just switched out real money for counterfeit money and I think we got like three or four grand for that one. There was all sorts of different schemes of, you know, a lot of the drug dealers that I would, I'd start off just buying heroin from them, you know, kind of ripping them off, 500 bucks here, 500 bucks there. And then typically after, you know, five grand worth or something, they'd kind of get wise to it. one way or the other. And they were, I've had a few cases where the guys weren't very happy

and had to, you know, avoid phone calls or whatever, but most of them were able to use that money and re-up with their dope or, you know, just spend it and it always worked. So they weren't typically even mad. They would just then want to, you know, do business with me and buy them. They wanted to continue getting them just at a discount rate because they knew they're fake now. So I had probably I'd say eight or 10 drug dealers that were, you know, moving kilos at a time, buying, say, maybe 10 to 15,000 worth of counterfeit money every month, at least every month. So everybody, like I said, they'd come from Detroit or Cleveland to Knoxville to sell drugs. So they'd obviously re-up their plugs were in Detroit or.

Cleveland or whatever. So once a month, people would usually drive up 75, go to Detroit, say, buy a kilo of heroin, drive down to Knoxville, you know, cut that kilo to two or whatever, sell it. And they do that once a month. So when it came time for them to go up to Detroit or Atlanta or, you know, wherever, you know, they'd want 10 extra $1,000 of counterfeit money to mix in with their, you know, 40,000 real or whatever. And it just, you know, it was a way for them to make extra money. And, you know, there was one guy who I was, actually, it was the only guy that I was straight, straight up with off rip. Like, as soon as I met him, I wanted to just tell him, because he had really high quality fentanyl at the time. And so I came out with him up front that the bills were fake. I didn't try to rip him off or anything like that. And I'm glad I didn't because he, like, just got out of prison for 25 years for murder. And he was, like, a high-ranking vice lord from Detroit.

But so I just, I asked him to buy, like, a gram at first or whatever. And I hand him a $100 bill. And he was like, okay, cool. And I kind of was like, are you sure we're good? You know what I mean? Like, take a look at that. And eventually he kind of realized he was holding it up. He's like, what is this fake?

What are you talking about? and, you know, I said, I'm like, yeah, that's fake. And, you know, it's kind of up front with him. So he was like, yeah, oh, does it mark with a pen, though? And I said, yeah, of course. So he's like, come with me and takes me to this hotel room that we were staying at. And I walk in there and it's just full of like eight to ten fucking high-ranking vice lord fucking gangsters, tattoos on their faces and this and that shit.

And they were all blown away. The shit looked as good as they were past all the tests, all that shit. So I started dealing with a few from that group pretty regularly. That was actually the day I got arrested, I was making an order for them, the Detroit vice lords. I think they ordered like 6,000. And I was printing that up in my hotel room the day that I got arrested. But leading up to my arrest, there was one drug dealer in particular from Cleveland that, And I ripped him off for probably 5 to 10,000 here and there, just 500 at a time, you know,

buying eight balls of heroin or whatever from him just for personal use. Eventually, I guess he had a lot of money and one of my bills was on the outside and it was raining. So the color shifting ink soaked off of the bill. So that's how we found out that they were fake. And I came home one day and he was in my job. driveway. So I thought, like, well, there's going to be a problem, you know. But he basically was just talking to my roommate at the time saying, like, oh, I just want to know where you got

these bills because I want more of them. I want more of them. So I started doing business with him. I think I paid him back a little bit for what I had ripped off from. I think I'd probably gave him like $1,000 in fake money for free just because to squash any beef that he had with it. But he was cool with it. We started going up to Cleveland together and he would pick up, you know, usually about a half kilo or a kilo heroin while I was driving around Cleveland, just breaking bills, you know. Every new city is a new opportunity because I traveled around Knoxville area so much that I'd been to like every business, every corporate business in Knoxville multiple times.

And it kind of, eventually they get wise to it because even if it passes at the register, eventually that bill will hit the bank and the store will find out that the money's fake. So after you go to a place two or three times, it, you know, you kind of exhaust the resources. So the guy up in Cleveland, I was doing business with pretty frequently. We had kind of a, he was the only co-defendant, a co-conspirator on my case. Actually, he's the one that set me up and ultimately led to my arrest. So the way I was making the bills was using Bible paper. There's like, there's multiple steps in the process for each bill.

So basically I'd, you can't scan a $100 bill or you can't print just the image of $100 bill because the printer will recognize the image and it'll shut it down. And it only prints like a little portion before it recognizes it. So, I would get a high resolution camera and take a picture of the bill and upload that photo, which allowed me to create the digital image of the bill. Go on like Adobe Photoshop or Paint.net and layer that image to, I did it with three layers on the front of the bill, two layers on the back of the bill, as well as a layer for the strip and the watermark.

So I would tape a piece of Bible paper onto a regular piece of printer paper, because the Bible paper was too thin. It would jam up in the printer, so you had to tape it to a regular piece. And then I would print the background color, and then the green treasury seal and serial numbers, which the serial numbers I changed. I had 24, not on all of them, but I had 25 templates of serial numbers. So if I was printing $2,500 bills, each one would have its own serial number. So eventually they were multiplied serial numbers, but I never, I tried to never keep in my possession bills with the same serial number. So, you know, you print the background color, the treasury seal and serial number, the black work. and then on the back of the bill

I'd print the background color in the back of the image of the back of the bill and then I'd take scissors and cut a hole in the back of the printer paper to access to be able to print on the back of the back to print the strip and a watermark and once everything was printed

I had a little setup with a piece of glass with LED lights under it to make it's where you could see through the bills. So I'd spray a light coat of like a gorilla glue adhesive and put the back of the bill on the glass so I could line up the front and the back and the back so they were evenly in proportioned and then, you know, squeegee them together. And then I would spray it with a thick coat of matte lacquer. which basically made the counterfeit detection pens not work on them. It made them pass for legitimate because you're creating a barrier in between the paper.

So the iodine counterfeit pen couldn't react with the paper because it was coated with lacquer. And then you spray a thick coat of it first. And then secondly, you let that dry and spray another coat from a distance, which misted the lacquer on to create a texture that felt perfectly like money. And I used an iridescent green eye shadow pigment to make the color shifting effect on the bills. So the little 100 in the corner I'd print as black. and then you go over that with the iridescent color-shifting green eye shadow in it, and it went from a metallic green to as you tilt the bill to the black colored.

And I found online these little, they're called Invisible Ink UV pens, which are kind of marketed for like little girls' diaries or something. Like you can write in your diary and it's invisible to, you know, unless you shine a black light on it. So I found these pens specifically in red. So after the bill was glued together and sprayed with lacquer, and I put the color shifting pigment on the 100 in the corner, I would put a ruler over where the strip was

and draw a line with this invisible ink UV pen to make it to where if they ever put it in a black light or had a black light on the back of the counterfeit pen, the strip would appear to glow red, just like real bills. And I also went through, like I was always experimenting with different methods trying to advance the bills. I was constantly on Adobe Photoshop, sharpening the images. And I found this one, it's like a ballpoint pen with like an adhesive in it. It's like a glue pen, but it's really fine pointed.

So I found if where the president's shirt is on the image, you could take this pen and just draw some little lines and it was invisible, it was just a clear adhesive, but it would give that texture because some people, they say scratch the shirt, it's feeling for the texture on the, like the shirt of the bill, because real money's printed on an intaglio press, which is high pressure and the ink actually stands above the paper, it doesn't absorb into it. So money has a texture to it. So, you know, I went through that. I'm almost, like I was always experimenting with different methods trying to improve the bills. My kind of ultimate goal was to allow the bills to go into machines, like self-checkout machines, vending machines. That way I could just go into a

Walmart and buy a $1,000 TV in a self-checkout and then just return it. I mean, I wanted the bills to pass. And if there was magnetic ink on my bills, they'd pass at the bank through their money counters. So that was kind of my ultimate goal was to let them pass in the bank, because that's ultimately how they got caught was at the bank but there's a method of like so in a laser printer like businesses can print their own checks from home and you can buy toner cartridges that are M-I-C-R it's magnetic ink character recognition so it's basically magnetic toner and it's it's sold to for businesses to print their own checks with the routing number and account number on the bottom that way the checks read in the

machines. So I found this out and I was planning to print my black work of the bills with M-I-C-R toner, which would then make them magnetic and would go through bill validators, self-checkout machines, you know, money counters at the bank, all that, which I toyed with and I was about to start doing, but it was hard to edit the image. So like when you print with a laser printer, that background design behind the president's portrait is in such a fine resolution that laser printers usually create this wavy effect behind the president's portrait, which was the only problem. Besides that, the bills looked perfect with magnetic ink, but that it was hard to edit the image. And I was kind of in the process of doing that

by the time I got arrested, as well as printing the new blue note with the blue strip. And I've found out how to counterfeit the new blue notes. Basically, all the security features on the new blue notes are the same as the old security features. with like there's a color shifting like bell little you know image and then the counter shifting or color shifting 100

and there are different color shifts it goes from a copper to green instead of green to black but it's the same technology essentially I found a kind of a mix of pigments and nail polishes actually to create that copper to green color shifting effect

it's like a chameleon a certain kind of chameleon nail polish mixed with a, it was, I think, a gold to green color shifting pigment. And you mix those two together and it creates the perfect copper to green color shifting effect. But the difference with the blue notes is that blue strip down it. So I was trying to figure out how to, you know, counterfeit that blue strip and doing a bunch of research over months, like eventually found that.

So the company that actually makes money for the federal government, it's contracted through the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and then they contract out this company, Craning Company. For all the paper, Craning Company has been selling mint paper to the government for money for like hundreds of years. It's been the same company. So with the Blue Strip, this company, Craning Company, patented that information. I mean, I was able to find the patent on Google patents. It's under, I believe it's motion. I think it's the crane and company's lenticular motion. So that technology I found is basically just like it's lenticular,

like the old like Last Supper things, like the pictures that move as you go from right to left. That's like an old school version of lenticulars. It's little lenses and strips. that the image changes as you move it. But this new method is basically the same concept, except it's instead of long lenses on this film, it's like a honeycomb pattern of like microscopic little honeycomb lenses.

So as you move this print from left to right, the honeycomb lenses different images that you print underneath it. So it's basically just like this really clear, textured sticker that you can put over a print to create that effect. So I found two different companies online that actually sold,

it's called fly eye lenticular lens film. And there's two companies I found, DP lenticulars and microlux that sold fly eye lenticular lens film that it's like, I think it was 30 microns thick, super thin. It's exactly the stuff that they used to actually make the blue strips in the new $100 bills. So I was in the process of,

doing that and ordering certain things as I got arrested. But again, I kind of had the if it's not broke, don't fix it mentality. The bills that I were making, the 96 series were passing without a problem everywhere I went. So I wasn't in any rush to kind of change with the magnetic toner or the new blue notes. I mean, it was easily working, you know, with the old way. So I kind of wasn't in a rush, but I was still aspiring to print the new blue notes with with magnetic ink, color shifting ink, UV, you know, all the security features on the new blue node. That way they could potentially pass out the bank if that was magnetic ink. But ultimately after, you know, I think Secret Service said, last I heard from them on it,

they were saying that they found $380,000 that I spent throughout Knoxville. they were still finding about $10,000 a week at that time, which was years ago. So I believe the ultimate number that I printed was probably around $700,000 to $800,000 in the course of the conspiracy, which took about 18 months, two years. So the Cleveland drug dealer guy that I mentioned earlier was going up to Cleveland to to buy a kilo of heroin. And he, I guess he bought a car from somebody. He bought like a 2009, 2010 charger for $500 and an eight ball.

So I knew it was a stolen car, obviously. But he, the guy that sold it to him had the title, so he thought it was legitimate. I knew it was stolen because that's just, you know, not realistic. But he went up to Cleveland in that car. and got pulled over because, of course, it was stolen. And they found on him, I think it was $20,000 in real cash and $5,000 in fake $100 bills that I had sold him to re-up in Cleveland.

He then decided to cooperate with the Cleveland Secret Service. So the Cleveland Secret Service basically said, we won't charge you for this counterfeit money if you set up your supplier in Knoxville, Tennessee. He agreed to that. He also admitted to his own drug conspiracies and things he was doing. I wasn't involved in, but as far as the counterfeiting conspiracy, basically they let him out of jail and drove him down to Knoxville. I got tipped off that he got arrested by this girl that was running drugs for him, kind

to told me one day, she's like, you know, E's up in jail, up in Cleveland, he told me not to tell anybody, which was a huge red flag for me, obviously, because, you know, there's only one reason why he wouldn't want anyone to know he was incarcerated. So basically, I, you know, packed up my stuff and started staying at different hotels to kind of avoid the heat that I sensed was coming down on me. And he called me maybe a week after that. He said he was back in Knoxville. He had some Bible paper that he was supposed to pick up in Cleveland for me and wanted to meet up. And, you know, I said, no, not right now. I mean, you know, I was almost certain that he was cooperating in retrospect he was. But at the time I wasn't, you know, it was pretty obvious.

to me, but I wasn't 100%, so I shouldn't have even answered the phone when he called, but I answer the phone basically to tell him, you know, I suspect you're cooperating and I don't want to meet up with your due business anymore, you know, in so little words. I wouldn't say that over the phone, but I was being very vague because I assume that the phone was being tapped, and it was. He basically said that he got arrested for the stolen car up in Cleveland. he had to use the money that he was going to re-up with, to bond out. So he's back in Knoxville. He couldn't re-up in Cleveland.

So he was asking me to get him, I think it was 700 grams of heroin, through one of my Detroit connections, which, you know, I didn't ever sell drugs on that level. And for him to even ask me for almost the kilo of heroin over the phone is just obviously stupid. So when he said that, basically, at that point, he's asking me for drugs talking about over the phone like that. I just hung up at that point. But I guess they used my phone, GPS pinged my phone to my location and went to the hotel parking lot I was staying at.

They didn't know which room I was in, but they knew, you know, the vicinity of my location through GPS. So the next morning, I had like a $6,000 order from these Detroit people. So I started printing. My wife went, left a hotel to go shopping. So I found out later that as soon as she left, you know, all these, the Secret Service, drug task force, organized crime unit, KPD, swarmed her car and arrested her. And then basically I was just sitting. and I didn't know this at the time, she just left to go shopping.

I was printing, starting to cut some stuff and spray with lacquer, and I hear a knock on the door. So I looked through the peephole and it was just black. Somebody had his thumb over it, so I didn't think anybody knew, I mean, nobody, I didn't tell anybody where I was at. So I didn't think it was the police at first. I figured like somebody was trying to kick the door and rob me or something. I wasn't sure, but basically the thumb over the piece. I told them, just go away, you know, I don't know. I looked through the window in the hotel and just saw a line of Knox County sheriffs.

So at that point, I was, you know, basically trapped in this hotel room, which sucks because we were staying out of this hotel frequently that actually had a back door. It's the only hotel I've ever found that has, you know, a way out, basically, and I should have been staying there, but anyway. So I see all those sheriffs. I know, you know, they're going to raid the room, obviously. So I started trying to flush these fake $100 bills down the toilet. I put a handful in there, flushed it, put another handful in, went to flush it again,

and the water was shut off. So I guess they suspected that I would have, you know, large quantities of heroin because what the informant E told them. But there was no, you know, heroin in the room. but um so they finally you know kick in the door uh arrest me um on state that state charges originally for criminal simulation over 60,000. Um, I think my bond was like $100,000 or something like that with a bond source hearing, which means if you try to bond out, um, before you can actually bond out, you have to set up a court date and prove that the funds are legitimate through like bank records and all that.

And I already knew that the Secret Service was there during my arrest, so I knew it was going to go federal. But after about three months of sitting in Knox County jail on state charges, I went to court and, you know, my public defender in the state basically said they're dropping your state charges, which I knew, you know, inevitably they were going to indict me in the federal jurisdiction, which they did. So basically, like, they let me out on pretrial release after about four months through like the Bail Reform Act that, you know, nonviolent white-collar criminals can basically get

out on pretrial. So I did that. I went to a rehab center, got off, you know, got off the drugs I was on, which is a blessing. And they, the Secret Service came to me with an offer, basically. They said, you know, E, the drug dealer from Cleveland, that set me up. After he set me up, went on the run. They let him go as an informant, but then he disappeared on him. He got more state charges from what I've heard for like firing a gun.

They found a roughly like a kilo of heroin and I think it was a half kilo of methamphetamine or something. So KPD arrested him on state charges and he offered to be an informant for them. They let him go and he disappeared on them. So he was wanted even though he set me up. He was now on my indictment. He was the co-conspirator, co-defendant on my conspiracy case. So the Secret Service basically came to me and said, you know, we found around $400,000 of your money that you spent throughout the Eastern District of Tennessee.

They said, if you can plead guilty today and show us how you made these bills so well that they would keep that number at under $100,000. They wouldn't charge my wife. And I'd be looking at, it was like 10 to 16 months was the range. So of course, I took that deal. They flew a film crew. I think it was like the head of the head of the counterfeiting division of the Secret Service and investigations and like a film crew down to Secret Service headquarters in Knoxville.

They had all the evidence that they seized, which they said was a mobile counterfeiting lab or something. I think they termed it, but I had different printers, computers, all these different chemicals and color shifting pigments. And they wanted me to basically explain everything, make money in front of the Secret Service on film so they could use that as a training video for future Secret Service agents. So, you know, I did that and ultimately it helped my sentence. So they sentenced me to 10 months in the federal prison.

I did it in Lexington, Kentucky and I got out about three months ago. So I've still got three years supervised release that I'm dealing with right now. And yeah, the old halfway house life. now.