Stuff You Should Know - 5 Successful Counterfeiters

Episode Date: May 14, 2010

Counterfeiting currency successfully takes serious skills, and some consider counterfeiting an art. Josh and Chuck recount the stories of five artful counterfeiters and their successful careers in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's time to reboot your credit card with Apple Card. Apple Card is designed to help you pay less interest. Unlike other cards, it estimates how much interest you'll owe and suggests moves to help you pay off your balance faster. Also, you can keep more of your money. Apply now in the wallet app on iPhone and start using it right away. Subject to credit approval.

Interest estimates on the payment wheel are illustrative only and may not fully reflect actual interest charges on your account. Estimates are based on your posted account balance at the time of the estimate and do not include pending transactions or any other purchases you make before the end of the billing period.

You're ready to travel in 2023 and since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European River Cruises. And right now, through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour.

That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th. Visit gateonetravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gate the number one travel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you?

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. This episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by GoToMeeting. We all have to meet, but the average cost of a single business trip is $1,000. With just one click, you can save time and money and have your meetings online

with affordable and easy to use GoToMeeting. Use GoToMeeting for sales presentations, product demos, training sessions, collaborating on documents, and more. And at $49 per month for unlimited meetings, it saves time, money, and travel. Try GoToMeeting free for 30 days. Visit gotomeeting.com slash stuff. That's gotomeeting.com slash stuff.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. This is Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. This is Stuff You Should Know, eh? To live and die in LA. Yes, Chuck just did a little, I don't even know if that's foreshadowing. I am really off my game today, so.

No, you're not. Yeah, I am. You're so on it. I am. What Chuck brought up, see, listen, listen to me. What Chuck brought up to live in, I wanna get through this sentence. What Chuck brought up to live in die in LA for.

Yeah. Is because we're talking about counterfeiting today. And that's the best counterfeit movie in history. It is. Easily. It is, and we've talked about it before, but I think it's worth talking about again. Like you just did.

It's great. Thank you. You're welcome. Moving on. So Chuck, counterfeiting, as you may or may not know, is a dying crime. A lost art. It really is, and actually,

this is one of those old school types of criminal activity that people who are good at it have the respect of law enforcement. Yeah. I was reading an article about this bust of some counterfeiting ring, and it amounted to just some guy with an inkjet printer who was printing off terrible, terrible currency.

On fiber paper. Right. And this secret service guy, who's like a 22 year vet, was just shook his head and disgust. And he's like, it's a dying art. Like you just, you don't see good paper any longer. Yeah, it's definitely a lost art.

And I kind of, I know this sounds goofy, but I kind of like the idea of, since it doesn't happen that much anymore, I can say this, of counterfeiting. Instead of a thief, anyone can throw a chair through a window and go break into a cash register at night. But to think, I'll print money that's so believable that you can pass it.

It's like, it was artistry for sure. It is. And when researching this article, there was a common theme among these great counterfeiters, these five most successful counterfeiters, that they all were just, they had tremendous guts. Yeah. They were, they tried to break out of jail at every turn.

Yeah. And they were just really admirable criminals. Yeah. And most of them wrote books about it too, which is interesting. Well, it's a good way to make some money afterwards. You don't write a book about my life as a flat screen TV thief.

No. And if you do, no one reads it. It's self published. Sure. So Chuck, let's get into this, all right? All right. Let's talk about some of these successful counterfeiters. And we should also add a caveat here.

Successful doesn't mean that they never got caught. Oh no. They don't get caught. We don't know about those counterfeiters. Exactly. Right. The ones who got caught, but still had these tremendous careers are the ones we're going to talk about.

And we're going to do it chronologically, buddy. Starting with a guy named Steven Burroughs. Stevie. He was born in New Hampshire, Josh, in the 1700s, late, mid 1700s. And was raised throughout the United States. And I think that you have one of the best sentences you've ever written in this article.

Which one? From an early age, he showed distinct signs of a cute chicanery. Why did you read that like Anthony Hopkins? Oh, that was Anthony Hopkins. Oh, you said, why did I? Yeah. That wasn't supposed to be anything.

Oh, OK. That was just my newsreel voice. That was good. Thank you. And he was a little mischievous guy. All his life, it sounds like. Apparently, he gained a reputation as the worst boy in town at a very young age.

He stole a bunch of watermelons from a local farmer. And he joined the search party to find the thief. That shows he's smart. Right. And I think at age 14, he ran away, joined the merchant navy, ended up basically being the de facto ship doctor. Well, he deserted. That's right.

He went to the army. He joined the army. Deserted the army, then went to college, bailed on college, and then became a de facto doctor on a boat. Right. Which led him to say, you know what? I could probably get away with posing his stuff. His father was a clergyman, so he decided

that he was going to pose as the leader of a church, which he did successfully for six months. Right. Led the congregation. Like mass, everything. Oh, yeah. And he probably could have done that indefinitely, because people aren't that suspicious of preachers usually.

But he got busted passing some counterfeit money in Concord, right? Springfield. Close enough. Yes. And then he was sent to jail. Yeah. And then he thought, I bet a good way to escape from jail

would be to set the jail on fire. Yeah. And it worked. Yeah, it did. Because he successfully escaped. Yeah, he fled to Canada, actually. And I think he did he get caught again? Well, that's where he led the most serious counterfeiting

ring was when he went to Canada. Right. So he was in Canada, and he led this ring for years. And then suddenly he just decided to reform himself. Yeah. He gave up crime, started supporting himself by tutoring wealthy Canadian children, or the children of wealthy Canadians, I should say.

Yes, he founded a library, isn't that what you said? Yeah, he became kind of like a cultural benefactor up there. And even though people were aware of who he was, they still respected him, because the stuff he did was just so respectable. Sure. They're like, eh, he printed some phony bills. He built us a library.

Yeah, he built a library. And he died in 1840. But before that, he wrote a book, like you said a lot of them do, called Memoirs of My Own Life. That's the best memoir title in memoir history. Yes, it is. Memoirs of My Own Life. Yeah, so it's still in print, apparently.

I haven't read it. I haven't either. Well, what's? Moving on. Number four is drumroll. The Lavender Hill Mob, which I found out was a movie from 1951 with Alec Guinness. Try researching them.

I know. That's all you see is the movie. But it's unrelated. No. Not related at all. Right. Instead, Lavender Hill Mob actually are a fairly recent origin.

They were operating in the 90s in Great Britain, around Lavender Hill, I would imagine. They were founded by this guy named Steven Jory. And this guy was awesome. He was what they call an old school rogue. And that's a quote. And another guy named Kenneth Mainstone, who's a retired printer, and Jory recruited

Mainstone to come up with some counterfeiting plates. Right. And they did very successfully. And by the way, Jory is widely credited as establishing the knockoff perfume market. Yeah, I found he actually bribed a perfumer to get recipes. And by the time it was all said and done,

had bottled 5 million phony Chanel number 5s. Really? It's like 5 million. That a factory in Acapulco making stuff. That's how successful he was. If you love Giorgio, or if you like Giorgio, you'll love Oolala and the little spray aerosol can. Yeah.

Yeah. When was the last time you were a cologne? Oh, it's been a long time. Yeah, I wore cologne when I was like 17, I think, was the last time. That's how it's about it for me. You know, it's funny when I lived in Yuma, Arizona, all those dudes work alone.

Yeah, because everybody's sweaty out there. Well, I don't know. There's just kind of this, it was a different culture. And they're like, you don't work alone. They're like, sksksks. They have like gel in their hair? Oh, yeah. OK, I know the culture you're speaking of.

The Jersey Shore type of thing. Yeah. OK, so the Lavender Hill mob, right? They were very successful. They printed about 50 million pounds worth of fake notes. And not pounds by weight, but pound by, you know, their currency. Their English currency.

They also sold fake stamps, which I thought was sort of ingenious. It is. But at the same time, it's like, look, you just made 50 million pounds of fake currency. Right. And one way to get rid of counterfeit money is not to just pass it, but you can actually sell it for pennies

on the dollar to people who know that it's counterfeit and are going to go pass it themselves. But even for pennies on the dollar, that's still many millions of pounds. Oh, yeah. And these guys are making stamps on the side. Yeah. I just thought it was a little odd.

It was a little odd. Apparently, the first bills didn't work out so great, though. Did you hear about that? That the Queen of England looked like she had a beard. And so maybe that's why they were making stamps, until they perfected the note making, which they did, because they fooled UV detectors.

They got so good at it. Yeah. And actually, they got good enough that the Bank of England actually changed their design for their 20-pound note, because of the lavender hair mob's activities and success. Pretty awesome. It is?

Yeah. And he wrote a book, Jory did, before he died. Just died a couple of years ago, didn't he? 2006. 2006? Yeah. He, it's under two titles. The first one is called Funny Money.

Decent. The second one was great. Second one was called Loads of Money. And that's one word. Loads of. Loads of Money. The true story of the world's largest ever counterfeiting ring.

Nice. Colon in there as well. Yeah, it kind of classes up your book when you have a colon in there. Loads of Money. We should write a movie about that, guy. We should. All right, Chuck, on to the Nazis.

Yeah, I didn't know this. Most people think of the Nazis as the worst fascist state to ever emerge in the history of humanity. Not true. Probably worst state ever. Oh, no. That is true. Not first, worst.

Right. Because Mussolini wasn't all that successful. You know, they directly murdered 10 million marginalized people, including Jews, Roma, Catholics, homosexuals, and others. They invaded Poland and France and other countries. But they also ran, arguably, the most successful counterfeiting ring in the history of humanity.

There were a lot of in the history of humanities with Nazis, almost all of them were horrible. Actually, all of them were horrible. This is the least horrible thing they've ever done. Probably, but it was going to pan out pretty bad in the end. Yeah, they made about 650 million pound notes, which would be about $7 billion today. Right, which was about 15% of the currency in circulation in

Great Britain at the time. Right. And their brilliant idea was to fly over England and drop cash money from planes. Right. They actually figured out, and this was called Operation Bernhardt after Bernhardt Kruger, who was an SS officer who was in charge of this operation.

Yeah, they had the operation named the operation after himself. Basically, what they did was they went around and figured out what nearly dead people in their camps used to be printers in the time before the war. And they identified them and drafted them to work in what was called the Devil's Workshop, which is like a secret printing office.

And what is it? You speak German. What camp? Saskatchewan? No. Schauschenhausen. Nice, Chuck. So they had some guys there all assembled to crack the

English currency. And they did. Sockslenhausen. And they did successfully, leading to the 650 million pound notes. Yeah, and while they didn't drop it from the plane, though, they laundered it. Right.

They used some of that money to import things. And this isn't factually backed up, but there is rumor that they actually used that money to pay for the rescue of Mussolini. Did they really? Yeah. Well, they apparently made a bunch of cash. They gave the money to a German businessman who served as

a front for him to launder it. And he bought anything of value that he could get his hands on with this money. And apparently, it wasn't a secret like England had known since like 1939 that this was going on. They tried to close their borders to income and currency, but it didn't really work. They finally cracked the American $100 bill just as

their camp was liberated. The Nazis knew these guys were coming. So they took all the printing by these guys, the allies. They took the printing stuff and threw it in the lakes, blew stuff up with explosives. I don't know why they were trying to cover this aspect of the Holocaust stuff. Right.

And they were about to execute everybody who was involved. And the allies showed up and saved the day. Yeah. And I think we should point out the idea behind all of this was to undermine the economies of England and the United States. Oh, did we not point that out? No.

Which is a pretty important part. That was the plan. They weren't just like, ooh, we'll get English money and then we'll buy things. Because if you have a sudden influx of cash, a lot of cash on the market leads to inflation. Yeah. Indeed.

There was a BBC TV show, Josh, about this in 1980 called Private Schultz. And then one of the Jewish prisoners forced to do this was named Adolf Berger. And he later wrote a book. And that book was turned into a movie that won Best Foreign Language Film in 2008. Yeah.

It was called The Counterfeiters in English. Nice. Don't ask me what it was in German. Oh, let's just check it out. Moving on. Check. Moving on to number two. Charles Ulrich.

Yes. Not related to Robert. Yurich. Yurich, as far as I know. Because there's two different names. Right. Now, this guy was another kind of dashing counterfeiter filled with daring due.

And he was also a ladies' man, actually. Daring due. I couldn't help it. There's no other better way to describe it. A cute chicanery. Yeah, he was a ladies' man, right? Yeah. It actually led to his downfall, right?

He was a polygamist. And he wasn't shy about it. He was like Bill Paxton, for goodness sake. Right. And this was in the 1860s in New York. He, and like most of these counterfeiters, he was a gifted engraver of plates. Right.

So the local mob figures out that this guy is a gifted engraver of plates. And they corral him to try to get him in, well, working for them. Right. And he does. And he ends up getting in trouble and ends up forming his own mob, his own gang.

And with all the women included, right? He finally gets caught in 1868 and stands trial. He was in Cincinnati. And he got 12 years in the federal pokey. And by his own estimation, he printed about $80,000 worth of phony bills. A lot of dough back then. Which is equal to about $1.3 million in 2008 dollars, right?

Right. But what was his downfall, Chuck? I said women, but specifically what? Well, like you said, he was just sort of a blatant polygamous, made no bones about it. And he engaged, moved all around, engaged in relationships, and never broke off the old ones. Eventually, he moved his wife to live with he and his girlfriend

and a third woman. Right. And one of them finally said, you know what? I'm going to turn you in, jerk. Actually, all of them turned on him. But they did. Yeah. Interesting.

And they turned him in. And that's where the Cincinnati trial came from. Before that, he had been incarcerated. And in the grand tradition of counterfeiters, he broke out and actually led the cops on a chase across the Niagara River, like right at the falls, and made it across, actually, into Canada and escaped. And he was like, who's that lady in the barrel as he was going?

And if that's not daring due, I don't know what else. That's daring due, my friend. That's a cute chicanery. You really like that, don't you? That's great. All right, it's the last one, buddy. And this guy's pretty familiar. Yeah, everyone's probably heard of Frank Abagnale.

Yeah. Because the Stevie Spielberg movie, Catch Me If You Can. Yeah. Tommy Hanks. It was made at a time when Spielberg unwittingly had a stolen Rockefeller in his collection. Oh, yeah. I love this movie.

Did you like it? Yeah, I liked it, too. It was just, I don't know, when Spielberg had put out some stinkers, and everything was so serious. And then he just kind of did a fun, entertaining, heist movie. Right, and it's one of those movies you can land on the couch and watch for the 50th time

on a Sunday, but they never show it on TV. Yeah, I think it ran on TNT for a while, because I saw it. That's it, though. I love this movie. Leo DiCaprio, obviously, played Frank. And funny story, when Abagnale found out DiCaprio was going to portray him, he was worried because he didn't know if Leonardo DiCaprio would be able to be smooth enough to play him

accurately. He's like the smoothest dude on the planet. He is smooth. He's like, does he know who he's dated? Oh, Leo? No, I don't think this guy cares. I don't think he thinks Leo DiCaprio holds a candle to him. Goodness me.

You can land Giselle. And then. Well, so can Tom Brady. Well, look at him, dude. Stud quarterback? Yeah, but I mean. Chiseled out of stone? He's a quarterback.

Shut up. All right. He did most of his work in his teens and 20s, which is the remarkable thing about his story. And he was a check forager. Yes, as anybody who's seen the movie can tell you. And actually, between the ages of 16 and 21, he cashed more than $2.5 million in fake checks in all 50 states and 26

countries. Yeah. That's some serious work. And he was also a confidence man. Yes, he was. Because he would not only write fake checks, but he would masquerade, as you saw in the film, like an airline pilot or a doctor or an attorney, a professor, I think he did at

one point, and fooled everybody. Yeah. And he just forged whatever documents he needed to prove that he had the education or training or resume or whatever and get hired, which made him a good comment, which made him shot smooth. He said, catch me if you can. Suck it?

A few things here, Josh, that are similar and different from real life in the movie, because they always beef it up a little bit in the movies. He did actually pose as a federal agent when they busted in on him and snuck out the back door and said, keep looking. Yeah, he ordered the feds who were looking for him to keep looking.

He said he was like a treasury agent or something like that. Absolutely. Yeah, and he was there first. He actually did escape from a moving plane taxing on the runway. That's pretty serious, dude. That's awesome. That really happened.

However, in real life, he never saw his father again after he left home. And he had a real problem with his parents' divorce. I mean, more so than any kid I've ever heard. Like he would fantasize about meeting his parents again and then being proud of him and them getting back together because they were proud of his exploits. Weird.

That's kind of like Ralphie dreaming that he was going to go blind from having to eat soap for swearing, you remember? It was so poisoning. He was one of four kids, and in the movie, I think he was an only child. Hannity, the character Hanratty. Yeah, Tom Hanks character. Yeah, I was actually a guy named Joe Shea.

They changed his name. Weird. Yeah, I don't know why. Because they said in the original script it was Joe Shea. And I could never find any reason why they changed it to Hanratty. Did they say anything about Captain America? Did he use the Captain America alias?

No, I didn't notice. He was in the film, actually, as one of the French policemen that nabbed him at the end. Oh, really? Yeah, he had a little cameo. Yeah, because he did a stint in the French jail. French prison? French prison.

He is actually married. Married a woman as soon as he went straight, he married a woman, still married to her today. He's got three sons, and one of his sons is a federal agent. Cool. And he did remain friends with Tom Hanks. Or not Tom Hanks, but Joe Shea. Joe Shea, I catch it.

And he does consulting on identity fraud and bank security and stuff like that, right? Yeah, everyone on your list wrote a book except for number two, Charles Ulrich. Yeah. Well, in the Nazis. Yeah. But the other guy wrote it.

Actually, that's not true, the guy wrote a book. Yeah, one of the guys involved. Yeah, Charles Ulrich was just too involved with the ladies. I guess so. He's time writing a book. He should write a book about that. Chuck, do you want to finish this? Do you want to wrap this turkey up in the oven?

Exactly. This episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by Go To Meeting, the affordable way to meet with clients and colleagues. For your free 30-day trial, visit gotomeeting.com slash stuff. OK, so if you want to see some pictures about the guys that we were just talking about, one I couldn't find.

So I used a picture of Dartmouth College. It was the best I could come up with. And I apologize for that. Sorry, Dartmouth. Type in counterfeiters, C-O-U-N-T-E-R-F-E-I-T-E-R-S. In the handy search part, howstuffworks.com, which leads us to listener mail. Thank the Lord.

Josh, I'm going to call this synesthetes, wrote in. Yeah, we got a bunch of them, didn't we? We did. It's cooled another out there. Being all weird. This is three quickies I edited them down, guys. First one's from Jonathan. When I hear spoken words, I see the written forms of the

words in my visual field. I see them much the same way I see a memory. They don't scroll across my visual field like a stock ticker, rather they appear in flashes and seemingly random positions and sizes. I see the words most clearly when I'm deeply focused on the content of speech, like at a lecture, or when I'm listening to lyricized music.

I often even see words when I'm dreaming. As for the color, the best I can do is say that they are a generic sans-serif font, white filled with black borders. And he's a researcher at UC San Diego. He said, perhaps I should just ask Professor Ramakandran next time he's sitting across from me at Perk's Cafe. Ooh la la. And it's like, dude, if you see that guy, you

should ask him. Yeah, I'm glad that we could bring these two together. It's like the mom with her son who went off to college. That's right. Yeah. So that's from Jonathan. Here's the second one from Ben. When I was eight or nine years old, my best friend moved to

another town. That summer, after not hearing from him in a while, I decided to give him a call once I walked home from another friend's house. A couple of seconds later, my right wrist suddenly had an intense pain and throbbing for no apparent reason. I iced my wrist. It made it feel better.

And when I got home, I was still very confused why it happened. I called my best friend to tell him about this weird thing, only to discover that he was also in pain, waiting for his mom to get him to the hospital. Seems he and his brother were playing Indiana Jones in the escape from the closing garage door when he landed the wrong way and busted his right wrist.

I'm a pretty logical guy, but that is really creepy and 100% true. Is that the work of neurons or a minor psychic event? Who knows? Who knows? And this last one is from Jordan in New Zealand. He's a Kiwi. We love New Zealand.

I associate all numbers and letters with colors, and my mother and I also used to argue at times about what color a letter is. Just like a Nabokov. Yeah, and they didn't know that they were synesthetes. Just like the famous book by Nabokov. Awesome. Police, though.

What a bad show that was. I thought it might also interest you to know that I experience music as a projection of colors. I can only explain it as a sort of mixture of fireworks and a fountain. Cool. A stream of water shoots in the air, changes colors in the shape and relation to the music.

A loud beat is annoying because it's like a pulse ripple in the pond. It distracts and muddies the other tones. Although it is sometimes annoying, I find music distracting. It can get distracting, and I still find it very difficult to focus on a conversation if there's too much background noise or music.

But now I can actually partially mute colors so I can concentrate on music, and while I still see no colors, I do see the explosions. So like a classical piano piece is really intense. He says he still sees colors and explosions even though he's muted it, but he's lessened it to the point where he can actually listen to the music and not go crazy. Gotcha.

Goodness, I'm having an off day, too. Wait, what do you mean, too? If I'm talking to someone and music is playing in the background, I can focus on the speaker much easier than I was previously able, thanks to his new muting ability. So that's from Jordan in New Zealand. That's cool. And we heard from other synesthetes, and I just

couldn't get them all in the air. So thanks for all help. Yeah, we heard from one guy who was like, wait, I thought everybody saw the date physically wrap around them. Right. Yeah, this is pretty cool. Yeah, join us on Facebook and Twitter. Yes, please do.

At SYSK Podcast for Twitter, and just look up stuff you should know. Website, I think it's called Website on Facebook. Yeah, do those things. Yeah, we're having a good time. Send us an email about anything at all, right, Chuck? Sure. I've got nothing, so just send us an email.

We'll get the stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?

You're ready to travel in 2023. And since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European River Cruises. And right now, through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th.

Visit gateonetravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gatethenumberonetravel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. The South Dakota Stories, volume two. I could see beyond the black hills and the way they called for exploration.

I could feel the air, the way it paints against skin and fills hungry lungs. I could hear the way the water ran for miles and the way the bison grazed. The way our boots meet the earth as we step past expected. I could imagine my time in South Dakota and I wish to go back because there's so much South Dakota, so little time.