The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Money Counterfetiting Genius Reveals How He Printed Millions In Fake Hundred Dollar Bills

Episode Date: March 9, 2024

Understanding multi-layered news like government corruption is easier with Ground News. Go to https://ground.news/theconnect to get 30% off their unlimited access Vantage plan. Jeff Turner is a brilliantly talented designer and printer. Little did he know that those skills would help feed a drug addiction by printing some of the most realistic counterfeit bills that the Secret Service has ever seen. He has been described as the Picasso of counterfeit money. Jeff joins the show to detail how he taught himself the art of printing fake money, the rise of his scam, and the moment he was caught by the federal government and sent to prison. His work was so legendary that the Feds praised him for his sophistication and even had him film tutorials for them on his process. Today he is running a legitimate printing business, sober and being a positive influence for his kids! Go Support Jeff! IG: https://www.instagram.com/j.turner727/ Website: https://graphicalwarehouse.com/ YouTube: @jeffreypatrickturner Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you think about, like, rack your brain on ways to make money, I mean, that's if you are capable of printing money, like, that's the ticket. I didn't just have this recipe off rip. They progressively got better, and I'd put a stack of, like, 10 pieces of paper and print 10 copies of the background color. And then when that was done, I'd put it in another printer. And at the same time, I'd put another stack of 10 in the first printer and print 10 more the background color. You know, just move them through this cycle. I could print, like, $5,000 in a few hours. I wanted something to every, any test you give it, anything you look for, like, I've got it. And I got that.

What's up, everybody? My guest today is Jeff Turner, that money counterfeiting genius, who you've seen all over the internet. We got him in here today to tell his story. If you don't know, Jeff is from Tampa, but he made his bones in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was a drug addict. And to fund his habit, he started printing money. But he's excellent at it.

He grew that into a multi-million dollar operation. He teaches us exactly how he counterfeited $100 bills. He even managed to make the new ones that have the blue strip on it. I had no idea about this process. It is fascinating. He caught a Fed charge, but he got out. He's cleaned himself up. And he even taught the feds his method for making money.

That's how good he was. If you want bonus content, head over to patreon.com slash the Connect show. Without further ado, I give you Jeff Turner right here on the Connect with John. Mitchell. I'm just sitting there printing, you know what I mean? And I hear a knock on the door. So I go look through the peephole and it's just like black. Like somebody's thumb was over it or something. And I like look through the little window and I see Cleveland Secret Service, Knoxville Secret Service, organized crime unit, drug task force, Knox County Sheriff's. At that point, I was just like, yeah, it's jigs out. That's when I see lights behind me start to flash. And I didn't even think. I just

hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. And then I parked the car popped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls out a burner, shank, it's like six inches. And he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of that place alive. Based off of the background of your crimes and you have a hand, a knack for design. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's your background? Um, well, I basically, are we recording right now? Yeah, we just go. Okay. Sorry. Are you my age?

I'm 38. 37. I'm 37. Okay. And you're from the Tampa area. Yeah, I was born, like, just outside of Miami and Sunrise, Florida. And moved to Clearwater when I was like three. So basically, I mean, as far as I remember, I grew up in Clearwater.

Right. And I started, I got into the sign business, like, as a sign installer. And that's kind of what got me into, you know, the start of, like, graphic design work and stuff like that. Yeah. So I started like installing and then started kind of manufacturing and printing on vinyl and stuff like that. So were you a young entrepreneur? Did you get into like drug dealing as like a youth? Or were you into like legitimate entrepreneur?

No, I was into the drugs and drug dealing for since I was like 16. You know, the same old story for most people started selling weed at like 16. Started selling Coke at like 17, 18. Yeah. What a shock that a white guy from Tampa that looks like Pitbull would get into drug dealing as a teenager. Yeah. And also like Tampa at the time I was growing up is when like oxies were just everywhere. Right.

The early 2000s. Yeah. So like, you know, pain clinics would literally like, you'd be 19 years old, perfectly healthy and you could leave with 240 roxies and like 120s annex bars. Yeah. That was the re-up. Yeah. It's crazy. People were coming from, you know, all over the country to go to South Florida, you know.

Just pill mills. Yeah. Turning them out. You can probably use insurance, too, to go get your, probably leave with 2,500 pills for, you know, a co-pay. Yeah. A lot of the, like, a lot of the pharmacies, though, didn't want insurance. Like, they just want to cash because obviously, you know, cash is always better. They don't want any pay taxes or whatever, whatever it may be.

Yeah. Yeah. Florida is the epicenter of all of the frauds and the scamming, the insurance scamming, the rehab centers. I mean, it's just a wash in white color crime. Absolutely. It's like the New York with financial crimes. Florida is the place of scams, insurance fraud.

Yeah, it was big. I don't know if it still is. They probably cracked down on it, but like tax return fraud. You know, people would like fall sleeve. File tax returns for like crackheads with 10 kids. You got like 20 grand. That was really big, maybe five, eight years ago. As you grew up in Tampa, you're selling drugs.

Yeah. Are you using drugs besides, you know, smoking? Yeah. I started out, you know, just smoking weed, selling weed. But then I got on pills, you know what I mean? Because back then, like, pills were, everyone did, did oxies when they first came out, like everybody. Yeah. So that was like a middle class thing.

like the way of like upper class lower class middle class because they were just back then roxies i could get for like five dollars a piece even on the street let alone you know what retail you're getting for five of piece yeah like people were selling them for like two for 12 dollars like two pills for you know now they're going for like 30 40 bucks or whatever was there a hustle could like you buy them for two dollars a piece in florida and take them out a town and get a markup for it? Absolutely. A lot of people did that. I never traveled state to state.

But like my thing was I would sponsor people like so people because basically you'd need like $250 for an MRI and then your first visit was like $250 and then the script would cost $100. So basically like people who wanted the pills or whatever but didn't

have the $6,700 bucks. It's like well I'll pay I'll give you $6,700 just give me half the script and you take have the script. So it's really win-win, you know what I mean? Yeah. You're getting 120 pills for like 500 bucks, you know what I mean? Yeah. And then, and you only need the MRI, the first visit. So after that, it's like $400 for 120 pills. Right. You know what I mean? So like, and then they sell them on the street for six, seven, eight dollars, you know? So you're giving out like business loans almost. Basically, they call it sponsoring. Yeah. That's kind of the term that we all use. That's how,

That's how widespread it was. You guys actually have a term for that. Oh, yeah. Dude, Oxias were in Tampa at the time, dude. It was crazy. And like, there was, uh, and originally the pain management clinics could dispense too.

So you'd literally just go there with 500 bucks and leave with pills. Like you'd see a doctor that gave me my back hurts and then they'd give them to you. And then they passed a law that you couldn't dispense at the same place you were writing them because they thought it was like too much like drug dealing. which, you know, it was. Sure. So then, like, all these pain management clinics would, like, build a wall and separate their addresses from A to B.

So, like, technically it was two, you know, addresses or whatever. And then they kind of cracked down on that. And then, you know, it's slowly. And then, like, the pill monitoring system hit where there was, like, the DEA numbers and databases and stuff. And that, at that point, prices skyrocketed. And, you know. But now it's too late.

All those places are strung out on opioids to this day. Well, yeah. I mean, obviously. Now it's fenced. That's where the heroin came in was pills got expensive. And, you know, that's kind of progression of how it went down. Counterfeiting money is becoming harder and more rare in the U.S., it seems. That might be a different story in Europe.

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Yeah. Later, later on. That was kind of like. I'd say pretty much like, well, a contributing factor to why I started counterfeiting. You know what I mean? So like I got into the sign business and moved up to Knoxville. And that's where I got into, you know, heroin. Why in Knoxville?

Well, I kind of wanted to just leave Florida because like the drugs. You know, I was trying to like get off drugs, like move, clean start type shit. And like the last year I was in Tampa Like I went to like 10 funerals and you know And there's just a lot of people were dying and going to prison And I was on drugs like wanted to get clean so ODing Some of them

A couple were murdered One killed himself Just like it just started getting crazy You know I mean pretty much like a lot of them White guys or did you roll with Mostly white guys I started messing with a lot of of black dudes in Knoxville.

But in Tampa, it was like kids I grew up with. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, yeah, I move up to Knoxville. And I got clean for a little while. Got another job at a different sign company. And I was just doing pills at that point. I ended up relapsing and getting back into pills.

But then I wrecked a work truck. Like, I was driving an install bucket truck and, like, wrecked it, lost my job. So basically, like, at that point, I was married. I got married. I had a couple kids. I had a newborn baby. Just so happens that, like, the lease, we were just, like, renting a house. The lease was up in, like, a couple months, and then I lose my job.

And I was making decent money at the sign company, but I was, you know, living paycheck to paycheck. Pretty much. I had a little bit saved, but not enough. So, like, when I had a newborn baby at home, the lease is almost up. You know what I mean? Like, just lost my job. that's when I kind of was scrambling to like think of ways to make money. I thought about just getting back into drug dealing, you know what I mean?

Because I met a few people in Knoxville that were like big drug dealers, which is funny, actually, that a guy I worked with at the sign company ended up being like a really large drug dealer. And I didn't even know it. Like, I just worked with this guy. And he said, he's like, oh, I got some Coke or whatever. And I was like, right on, you know, I just got weed. I was like, I figured he was just like a small time. Like he's working out of sign company. You know what I mean?

Yeah. But he ended up getting fired. And then like a few months later is when I got fired. So we linked back up and I went over to his house. And like it just so happened. He had like kilos of heroin and meth and coke and, you know. So I was like, holy shit, bro. Like he just had a passion for sign making.

He didn't do it for the money. Well, I think after he got fired, he like met the plug. And then in those three, four. months like, you know, but, uh, yeah, there's big time drug dealers in Tennessee. Yeah. It's a, it's a corridor and prices are really high. Exactly. So that's the thing is in, especially Knoxville for some reason, like a lot of these drug

dealers from Detroit, especially, like they're known in Knoxville, like the Detroit boys. It's like, um, you know, like thousands of people from Detroit have access to all this heroin up in Detroit, but like, it's so much more expensive in Knoxville and like there's no competition. So like all these dudes from Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Atlanta, they go to Knoxville to just sell dope. It's crazy. Like they'll go up there for a year. Most of them end up getting indicted or, you know, having warrants and going back to Detroit, whatever. But I started dealing with a lot of those guys because like those people come to Knoxville to sell dope, but they don't really know people to sell it to.

I mean. So they just like go up to random people at gas stations. You know, like you party or whatever, trying to find customers or whatever. So like, you know, as a counterfeiter,

that was great. You know what I mean? Because strangers would be like, oh, I got, you know, so I'd just buy it with fake money. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And did you get into selling heroin before that? Like when you're hard up, you know, money's getting tight. A little bit. But I didn't know.

Like, I moved up to Knoxville, married with kids, with the job. So, like I knew some big drug dealers, but like I didn't know all like the junkies run around Knoxville. So like I didn't really have the customer base to do it. Like some people, I'd middleman some shit, make a little money or whatever.

But yeah, I really didn't have the customer base. And I wasn't going to go up to random people. You know what I mean? Like I got kids at home. I'm not trying to get arrested on some dumb shit. But so basically I started, you know, counterfeiting again. what you say again when is the first time you tried it yeah when i was 19 in florida i did it for like six months interesting okay so let's talk about that what what gave you the idea you know obviously

you have this graphic design ability right which is a special just innate gift like i don't have it my producer has it right he puts together this set and you're good with your hands yeah so what what gave you that idea obviously you were i'm sure you were on pills you know It's another scam. I'm trying to scam a scammer. When I was younger, like in Tampa and Clearwater and stuff, yeah, I was just a hustling. Like, I did a lot of crazy shit, you know what I mean? As a drug addict, a young drug addict, like, you know, at that age, like trying to be a gangster,

wanting to, you know, driving around guns and robbing people. But printing money was just, you know, if you think about, like, rack your brain on ways to make money. I mean, that's if you are capable of printing money, like, that's the ticket. Well, you're an artist. Yeah. You know, if you can print good money. Yeah. So what was the difference?

How successful were you when you did it at 19? Why did it only last for six months? Yeah, not very long. So like, um, the bills at the time, I thought they were great and they were good enough to sell them and stuff. But, um, you know, I basically tinkered around with it for a while and ended up getting like a decent quality. bill and a friend of mine's dad is was like a connected guy in Tampa um so like I threw him I told him what was up and he was like I might know somebody that wants to buy some it was through his dad but his dad didn't want to meet me I didn't really want to meet his dad so it was all through him like

I'd give him him and then he'd go and bring me back the money um but then he ended up overdosing so it was like the person I was selling him to like I couldn't even get in contact with anymore so I basically at that point, like, you know, at 19, I was making money selling drugs, too. So it was like, when that connection fell through, I just was like, whatever. It's just interest in it. You got money coming from drugs anyways. But now here you are as an adult with a family. Yeah.

Take us through it. So, yeah, like, the lease was up in my house, lost my job. I linked back up with the dude that I worked with and found out he was like a big drug dealer. So that's when I like consider trying to sell drugs again, but like thinking about it, I really didn't know people to sell them to. So that's kind of when I just like I considered like robbing a bank or you know, I mean, I was in a desperate situation. Like, you know, but obviously that's not the best choice. I didn't think at the time. So I basically decided to start counterfeiting again.

And I told my buddy like, because I, you know, he's got weight. So I was like, if you want to re-up, you. You know what I mean? You could throw some of these in there. Right. And you know what I mean? Yeah. So we did that for a little bit.

So, but tell us how you made the bills. I don't know you've talked about it on a million podcasts, but, you know, for the lay person, this is unbelievable. Okay. So it took, I didn't just have this recipe off rip. Like, basically they progressively got better through like trial and error and experiences. But like the main thing that I was doing was a Bible paper, like the thin blank pages. There's usually usually like two pages in every Bible, which is enough to make 100 bucks because I'm sandwiching two thin sheets together. So I can put a strip and a watermark embedded

in between them. So, but some Bibles have like in the back, it'll say like notes at the top where you can like take notes or whatever, study Bibles. And there's like 20, 30, 40 blank pages in the back. So those type of Bibles are worth like five grand for one book, you know what I mean? So I'd basically take two sheets of this Bible paper. And like in order to print it, it's so thin, it would jam up in the printer, but I'd just tape it centered on a regular piece of printer paper and then just send it through the printer. And I'd print like a few different layers for like I'd print.

print the background color first and then like all the black ink and then the treasury sealed and serial numbers. But how do you mimic what a $100 bill looks like? Do you lay an actual $100 bills sandwich between the sheets of paper? Like how do you mean? Like how do you replicate what the drawing looks like on $100? That's graphic design stuff basically. So like I'd have to.

So, like, I actually found a stock image on Wikipedia, surprisingly enough. It's, like, a super high-resolution photo. And, like, I'd take photos, like, high-resolution. I'd take a camera because, like, you can't just scan bills because scanners will, like, recognize it and, like, just posts up some penal code or whatever, some law that you can't do that. But if you take a photo of it and just upload a photo, it doesn't go through any software to recognize what it is. Right.

So, you know, I took like the Wikipedia thing and took pieces of that image and then took photos of like just the green treasury seal, like super close, high resolution. So then I could just copy and paste it and just construct the digital files, you know what I mean, in separate layers. Because if you're trying to color match,

like basically if you adjust the color settings on a printer and you can get the background color right, but then that will make the serial numbers off. So it's a weird process of like color matching each layer. So you have to print it in multiple layers. You know what I mean? How I don't really. So I'm going to just like walk me through like I'm a four year old.

How do you actually do the artwork? Like are you? Oh, I think I see what you're saying. Like an Adobe Photoshop or illustrator. I used a program called paint.net. It's basically a generic illustrator. Okay. So, and then you're just with a mouse going through and looking at just kind of like matching what the bill looks like.

And you're literally just reconstructing it. Well, yeah, like the Wikipedia file is just the image of the front of a $100 bill on the back. So I'd have this basic template, you know, of what it was. Wow. But then I could say take a photo of just the green treasury seal. Yeah. And then copy and paste it and put it on onto the file. And then, you know,

space it and size it just right and cover the seal. But it's also, it has a lot to do with like if you zoom in on a digital image, um, like when there's like black lines, it, if you zoom in really deep, you see pixels and it,

it's not black to white. It's like black to dark gray light. It's fuzzy. You know what I mean? If you zoom in. So then. you got to erase all that and make it just black lines so it when you do print it on a high resolution printer it you know it looks real how long did this first trial run take you probably a couple months

yeah that that was like my lease was up in two months so like i kind of had like a deadline as far as like i need to start making money you know within a couple months yeah um and i'd say right luckily enough right at about the time the lease was up, like I had it to where they looked fucking good. Now you're ready to start printing these. Yeah. So I was selling them to this drug dealer friend

and then one day his house got raided because of his drug thing. They found my counterfeit money at his house. He was charged with that as well as like drugs, but he got arrested and then like you know, I

obviously was sketched out thinking And, you know, maybe, I don't know. It turns out maybe you didn't inform on me, you know, nothing ever came from it. But I was sketched out and my lease was up. So at that point, I was like, we're just getting a hotel and doing this money thing. Because, like, you've got to travel around when you're breaking them yourself anyway. You know what I mean? So basically, yeah, I just started staying out of hotels and printing, you know, probably two to five thousand a day.

And then going and spending them. $100 bills? Yeah. Yeah. So, and I, you said on Vlad that it took you about 10 minutes to print one. Well, yeah, I'd say five or 10 minutes, but I never just printed one because I'd, so like, if you average out the time, it probably took about five minutes or so, eight minutes or whatever. Yeah. But, you know, I'd have three printers and I'd put a stack of like 10 pieces of paper.

I'd tape Bible paper centered on regular paper and take a stack of ten of those and print 10 copies of the background color. And then when that was done, I'd put it in another printer. And at the same time, I'd put another stack of 10 in the first printer and print 10 more of the background color.

And while the black ink was printing on the other printer and then just move them through this cycle of layers. So like basically I could print like $5,000 in a few hours. you know what I mean was so I mean it kind of averages out at about but I do you know stacks at a time like a thousand dollars at a time yeah because if you put I found if you put more than like 10 pieces of paper in because you've got Bible paper taped on it

if you put like a thick stack it'll end up jamming up and you know messing up so like usually I didn't print more than a thousand dollars 10 bills in one click of the mouse yeah I mean did you have anybody helping you um well I mean like my wife life was... She was run out to get the ink? Not at first.

At first, she knew what I was doing. Right. But after a while, I started making so much that it was like... And we had like a nanny that ended up finding out what I was doing and she'd help. So like I had them, like, they were taping paper all night, you know, taking Bible paper and centering it and putting thin pieces of tape and doing that. You know, because you got to think $5,000 is... 50 bills, right?

But there's a front and a back. So that's a hundred pieces of paper. You know what I mean? Got a tape. So normally we'd like sit and tape paper for an hour or two at night. And then cutting the bills. Yeah.

How when they're all, when the graphic design is ready, when you think you got the feel right, how do you cut them down into the perfect rectangles? So the whole process is kind of, If you want, I can just go through like the whole process, basically. Sure.

Tape the paper. I'd print, you know, each layer to make a front of a bill and then do the same thing for the back. And then in order to print the watermark and the strip, I would have to print on the reverse side of the back. So this looks like a back of a bill, but I'd need the watermark and strip on the other side. Yeah. So I'd have to like cut a hole through the printer paper to expose the back of the Bible paper, tape that, and then run it back. through to print a strip in the watermark. And what do you use to make the strip?

We're talking about the blue strip on the $100 bills. Well, no, this is when I was just doing the $96 series, the $100 bill before that. Oh, the old $100. I ended up doing the blue note later. Okay. We'll get into that. So how were you making the 96 series strip? I was just printing it.

Got it. So like if you look at it up a $100 bill in the light, you know, it's like it just says USA 100, right? if you actually cut it open you can pull out a physical strip but like I just printed it on and then would take invisible ink UV pen

and just draw a line over it so that way if they put it in the black light it would glow red just like a real bill if you held it up you'd see USA 100 but there was nothing physically there I just printed it on and used a marker to draw it on right and those were easier because now the blue strips

are a different material than the bill. Yeah, I was able to counterfeit the blue note, but like this is what it takes so long to do it that it's not worth doing. I didn't think. Right. I didn't have,

I mean, I think if I would have continued doing it, I mean, obviously you get faster. Yeah. Well, how many hours would it take to print a blue note? It took me about 45 minutes to an hour to make $100 bill. Right. So it's like, but the 90s.

series spend the same. So it was like, yeah, I'm fucking with this more as a hobby, like, just as like a challenge to do it. Um, and thought maybe I could get faster at it. And that would be like the future of what I was going to do. But like at the time, 96 series, I mean, they still, you can, you know, spend them wherever. So what year is that? Uh, that you're, you're making the 96 series. It was like five years ago. Because I feel even in 2018, it was rare to see the 96 series. Like, I feel like, you're, like by then it was all the watermark, the blue watermark. Yeah, I mean, I'd say if you go to a bank and pull out $1,000, you'd probably have maybe

one of the 96. I mean, they're around. But you got to think if I go into a dollar general and buy whatever, a Red Bull and something and give them a 96 series 100, they may not see those all the time, but they see them. You know what I mean? So it's like they don't know that I'm spending. I'm at every store I go to. They're just like, oh, unless, you know.

Right. Just so happens he's got one of these. Yeah. And you kind of get excited because you're like, oh, I haven't seen one of those for a while. Yeah. When you see an old $20 bill, you're like, wow. And you got to think like 18 year old cashiers, they may, like I said, see them once a day, once a week or whatever. But they don't, you know what I mean?

They don't know exactly what they're supposed to look like necessarily. And they're all on roxies. You know, they're dirty. They don't care. You know, they're crubs. Yeah, so like... Memorial Day weekend is almost here, and it's time to kick off summer right.

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But there was, so I had to acquire the Bible paper. You know what I mean? And, you know, Bibles are like $50 a piece. So I just like go into thrift stores and bookstores and like open a Bible and take the 10 blank pages and just rip them out. Right. And just, you know what I was going to guess you went around to every shitty motel room you could find. Yeah, that was the other thing. I was living out of, you know, hotels.

Right. So normally there's a Bible in the nightstand. And I, you know, it'd take two pages, it's 100 bucks or whatever. Yeah. But I started to notice that they weren't in there at a lot, a lot of motels and hotels and stuff. So one day I asked, I saw like the maintenance man or somebody who worked there or whatever. And I asked him, I'm like, can I get a Bible in my room? And he was like, yeah, I'll bring you one in a minute.

So I was like, I'm like, why you guys don't keep Bibles in the hotel rooms anymore? Like, what's going on? He's like, well, it's like, it offends some people or whatever. So it's upon request, but I've got boxes of them in the maintenance closet. So I was like, I'll give you $100 right now for all these boxes of Bibles. And he was like, deal. You look like a man of the Lord. Well, I mean, obviously, you know what I mean?

But I guess so he brought me all these Bibles and I just went through, took the blank pages and then gave him back. So he didn't even know what he, he was fucking confused. You know what I mean? Like, why did he just pay me for these and give him back an hour later? Man, this guy loves God. He wants a thousand Bibles. But, you know, so staying out of hotels, I'd start to do that to a lot of places. Right.

You know what I mean? Right. So that definitely increased production. Sure. But as far as the around the clock thing, like I had to acquire this paper and then tape paper at night to prep for the morning. And then, you know, I'd normally wake up at like nine,

print until like noon one, two, whatever. And then go spend them. You know what I mean? And you can only use like, well, at first I was only buying stuff for one bill and getting 80 bucks going to the next place. Right. But I, you know, this is what I was saying.

I learned as I went and got more productive and better because, like, then I would go buy a $100 prepaid visa card, which has like a $3 fee added to it. So it would be like $103. So I'd give them two bills, get $100 prepaid visa card and $95 change. So it was like, brilliant. Even better. But then I started getting money orders. Just like, fuck it.

I'll just go buy a $500 money order and just then just go cash it. And so it was like, start. started, you know, that $2,000, you know, whatever, like just got, started making more money as, as I went. I kind of learned from mistakes and, like, realized better ways to do things. How much a week were you printing? Even on like a lazy day, I'd print 2,000 a day, every day, no matter what. Bond, some days it would be like 5,000. The most I ever printed in a day was like 10,000.

So, I mean, I'd say, you know, two to five thousand a day. So let's say 20, 35 grand a week. Let's say, yeah, say 30 grand a week that you're printing and counterfeit. What kind of profit can you make off that after spending them? I mean, about 80, 80% of it. Yeah. Because I'd usually go buy something for $10, $12, $15, you know, with tax, whatever. I'd usually get like anywhere from $80, $80 change, $85.

change maybe. But once I started doing the money order thing, it was 100%. You know what I mean? Because it was just, you go buy a money order and cash it. Yeah. But I was also selling bills to drug dealers and stuff. So, like I was saying, people would like come up to you at gas stations in

Knoxville all the time, like offering to sell you heroin. So I'd like, yeah, let me get a gram. If it's good, I'll buy a ball, if you know, whatever. Because you're on heroin now. Yeah, I'd snorted it. I never used needles or anything. But yeah, I was, you know, doing heroin. It was like that brown, the gray stuff or the brown stuff?

I mean, it was different. There was, at the time in Knoxville, it was like, well, there was a lot of just white. It's just fentanyl nowadays. Some people, like, you know, pretend it's heroin. Like, we'll cut it with something to make it look darker or whatever, but a lot of people just sell white powder and just, you know, whatever. What a sketchy place. Yeah. I feel like that's probably, I mean, fentanyl, from what I've heard is in every, city now. Yeah, but you know. Yeah, it's, it came to Knoxville probably 10 years ago. Yeah, Knoxville and Florida are on the cutting edge of the latest, you know, crime and drug and just misery. Pretty much. But, um, okay, so how did that work with drug dealers? Um,

so yeah, I normally start out just buying, you know, two, three hundred dollars worth from them. Um, but then how do you make money? You resell it? Well, that was just like, I didn't really look for that. That was like if somebody came up to me and offered me, I'd just buy a couple grams for myself. You know what I mean? But then, you know, some of them found out that they were fake. Some, some, you know, never did. And I just stopped messing with them or whatever.

Some found out and were pissed. Some found out and were just like, damn, like, these look really good. Like, you fooled me. And like, you know, they were able to go re-up and spend a, So, like, they weren't, a lot of them weren't even mad. Yeah. Because they weren't really out money. But when they found out they were fake, they were like, just impressed and basically

saw an opportunity and was like, you know, I want more of them. Like, start selling me for 20 cents on the dollar now. You know what I mean? Which, you know, when he goes to re-up, say he's spending 30 grand on the re-up, he only has to give the connect 20 grand and real money. And that's how the guy set me up, actually. But I'll get into that later. So yeah, and some people didn't want to buy them, but would trade heroin for them.

So it was like, instead of buying a gram for $100, I'd give you two fake $100 bills for a gram. And they knew they were fake and they just mix it in with their money and, you know, whatever. It's a come up, a little bit of come up for them. So basically I got like, you know, free drugs, essentially because they knew they knew they were fake. So they just, you know what I mean? So I just trade them for my own personal habits and stuff. Um, did it have it get worse as you got more money. Yeah. I mean, yeah, probably. I'd say, um, yeah, yeah, it wasn't, it's never good to give a drug addicts like unlimited funds. Right. But. Dude, you're, you're like the Fed. You could just print money out of thin air. Yeah. Yeah. Money doesn't, uh, I mean, at least at the time. Like it didn't mean a whole lot. You know what I mean? Because it was just like every day, you know, buy whatever you want. But, but. But the thing was people were always asked like, oh, buy like sports cars and houses and shit.

But like it was a trinkled in. It was like a few grand a day. So like I never had stockpiles of like a half million dollars and shit. But like it was just living very comfortably. Yeah. I mean, doing whatever you want. You know, going to different cities, stuff like that. Yeah.

Did you start expanding and going to, you know, getting nicer hotels? Yeah, sometimes. And how did you manage your family? Did you all? Were they always with you? Or did you leave them in Knoxville and then shoot out of town to do your dirt? Both. Sometimes, like I said, we had a nanny.

So sometimes they'd stay in Knoxville and I'd just go to a city for a couple days. Sometimes the kids would like go with us. But like they didn't know what was going on. You know what I mean? Like, because I'd just like, you know, maybe get two hotel rooms print in one for a few hours. And then just they thought I was at the store or something. I could just come back. And then it's like, hey, let's go shop.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Because they were young. They didn't really, you know, I think they probably suspected that that shady shit was going on. Did you have to end up employing people to help you break the bills? Yeah. So, like, I probably, at the peak, I'd say there was probably 10, 10 or 12 drug dealers that I was selling them to. And I'd say maybe, like, between, like, me, my wife, the name.

And then I probably had four or five people that I'd go, you know, give them 500 bucks and just be like, bring me half, bring me back, you know, two, three hundred dollars or whatever. And they just wanted, you know, like they were on drugs too. So they just want their, you know, money for the day or whatever. So like, they just call me and be like, hey, you know what I mean? You got anything? And I'll be like, yeah, come, you know, he was five bills, bring me back a couple hundred bucks. So like, I wouldn't say it was necessarily like employed, but it was just like, You know, if I happen to have an extra five or six bills and was sick of shopping or didn't want to like, because like you, the thing is, it was a full-time job because like, first of all, there's specific corporations that are best to go to, right?

Because different businesses like try to detect counterfeit currency in different ways. Right. But like, specifically like grocery stores, most grocery stores, dollar stores. dollar stores, they just mark them with a pen. You know what I mean? If the cashier does suspect something or anything, maybe they'll hold it up and look for the strip of the watermark. But like my bills...

Yeah, they beat all of that with flying colors. So, like some stores have those bill validator machines. Right. And it didn't work in those. So like, I would steer clear of certain corporations and specifically go to other ones. I tried not to hit like mom and pop stores just to fuck over like, you know,

somebody trying to make a living. Sure. So did you, was there trial and error in that? Like, did you ever go try to spend, you know, hundreds at Target and then get denied? Yeah, well, I rarely got denied, surprisingly. Because like, but I learned from situations. So, like, one time I went to, for instance, I went to a CVS, right? Walgreens just mark it with the pen.

but CVS have a pen with a black light attached to it. So I went to a CVS one time, and she marked it and marked good, and then she shined a black light. And this was before I used the UV pens. This is why I ended up doing it. Because she shined the black light, and it didn't glow red.

So she was like, huh, that's weird. And then she, like, held it up and marked it again. She was like, well, it must be good, though. And she took it anyway. So then I was like, fuck, I got to figure. I got to make. Close. something to make this strip glow red.

You know what I mean? So then I tried like breaking apart highlighters and soaking them in water to make it invisible to the eye but still glow. But the highlighters didn't really work. I tried like neon colored pencils and lightly coloring it on the inside of the paper. And that worked well,

but it didn't look great because it was still like colored pencil. You know what I mean? Like I would never think to even know how to do that. Did anybody teach you? no it's just you know reading i mean if it glows it's got to be ultraviolet you know i mean so you just look for neon stuff yeah yeah this is combining talents of both science and art a little bit we looked it up before you came here the government estimates that there's only 200 million dollars

in counterfeit bills in circulation now there are probably billions of dollars especially in the last four years. We printed 20% of the money in circulation has been printed in the last four years. 200 million is a drop in the bucket. So not a lot of people are doing this, especially not successfully. Yeah. I think. So what I'm saying is you need to think about getting back to this. No, but this is really like, you know, I met one guy when I was down who was just like this. You know, but when you're when you're locked up, you meet all sorts of people. Most of them are lying. but I met one guy. He was a drug addict, white boy,

but he was describing in much the same way that your hustle is, was that, yeah, it's, it, you can become rich very, very quickly. Now, obviously that goes all to drugs, you know, usually, right? I mean, you could have built, you know, you could have become a millionaire, very quickly. I mean, it's printing money. It's, it's, the only limit is your imagination on how to

integrate that and make that, you know. Yeah, if I were, not that I will, but if I were to redo that, you know, hypothetically, like obviously not being on drugs and like, you know, living out of hotels and traveling to do that was expensive. You always spending it. So yeah, just, you know, it was basically like a paycheck to paycheck situation. But it was, you know, five grand. a day and then you spend it every day and then the next morning you know I mean it eventually little bits you know I had a little stockpile

what was your end game because you really just got into this because you were about to get evicted so did you have a thought like okay five years from now I'm going to get out well there was some of the drug deals so like when these drug dealers all of them

are the same dude like when they first found out the bills were fake they were like I want to can you make me 200,000 400, I'm half a million. Yeah. I'll give you 50 grand, 60 grand, whatever for it.

You know, which with the way I was doing, like each bill was handcrafted. You know what I mean? Like, it would take me months of just printing to make a half a million dollars in one go.

You know what I mean? So like, I was like, nah, like hit me up when you're going to re-op and I'll sell you 10 grand. You know what I mean? But I'm not,

I can't, you know, sell you a half a million in next week. Like, it's just not possible. so but there was some of the dudes that kept hounding me about these lump sums like you know what I mean I want a half a million like um so in my mind I was kind of thinking like eventually I'm just gonna stop spending on myself you know what I mean and just like just do a couple big deals you know what I

mean yeah you know just sell somebody half a million for a hundred thousand do that a couple times and then just stop and you know can't retire a couple hundred grand, but like, that's a new start. You know what I mean? I can move to another city. Because last time when I kind of figured when I was younger, I kind of did that. I made, you know, over the course of six months, probably 50 grand, which wasn't a lot. But when you're 19, you know what I mean?

Like, you know, I made some money and then the dude died and I just was like, cut my losses, got away with it, you know, whatever. So I was thinking that that is probably how it would turn out again. Like I'll just, you know, maybe sell a couple big chunks. get a couple hundred grand, move to another city, and just stop doing it. And, you know, get on with life. Sure. But that didn't, you know, didn't end up having anybody.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense, though. That's like a drug dealer saying, okay, no more hand-to-hand sales. I'm just going to sell to two or three dudes a couple of times and then get out. Yeah. Did you know that you had to get off drugs? Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. That was like, I've always kind of wanted to. Like, I moved up to Knoxville to get off drugs. Like, I wanted to forever. Like, I never really wanted to. to be on drugs. I mean, I guess some part of me did. But, um, you know, with heroin, it's fucking hard. You've got kids. Like, you got sick for like 10, 12 days and like, you know what I mean. Like I had to support my kids. It was just easier, I guess, to just continue on with it. It's pretty

wild to think you can be a functioning heroin addict. And there's a lot of those more than you would, you would think for sure. But probably they're not shooting it. Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, I wasn't shooting up and, you know, I just. snort a line in the morning. You're going about my day, you know. So that's your, your plan is to, to start dealing with these, these drug dealers more,

to start, you know, supplying them with counterfeit money. What were some of your biggest problems on the supply side? Like, you talk on Vlad, I wrote this down, the crane paper, which is what they print bills off of, what the government

actually uses to print bills off of. Well, that's a company called crane currency. Right. And they are the like basically the government just contracts out companies for like everything. So the money is, I mean, it's actually printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, but they buy the paper and the security threads and all that stuff from crane currency. Right.

Did you end up sourcing paper? Did you ever end up moving on from Bible paper to something like more sophisticated? No. I mean, Bible paper is pretty perfect, dude. Surprisingly. because like, first of all, like the thickness of two sheets of Bible paper makes up the thickness of a full, you know, bill. So that was good. And like if you shine a black light on regular paper, it's bleached when they manufacture it. So it glows like a bright fluorescent blue.

Money glows like a dull purple. And for whatever reason, Bible paper also glows a dull purple. So it was just like, it was perfect. It didn't mark with the pen, but I was spraying the bills with a matte lacquer spray to coat them so the pens wouldn't react. So that's like where the science comes in. Like if you're trying to counterfeit something, you've got to understand how it works, right? Like if you're trying to replicate something. So like, you know, just reading, I learned that how the counterfeit detection pens work. It's an iodine-based ink, an iodine reacts with starch.

So when you hit a regular piece of paper, the iodine reacts with the starch and turns black. Money is printed on starch-free paper so it stays yellow. So then I was thinking like, you know, trying to find starch-free paper, but like it's like you realize like I'm looking at this wrong. Why look for starch-free paper when I could just coat the bill with something so the reaction can't happen. So then you're spraying it with a lacquer. But also the good thing is, is like when you spray a thick coat first, the pens won't react. so they mark right.

But then you let that dry and spray another coat from a distance. Yeah. And it kind of mists on and it gives it a texture. You know what I mean? So it was like each little revelation I had usually solved two problems. Yeah. So it was just like, you know what I mean? Yeah.

It's the best. Those are the best revelations is when, you know. And you can look all this stuff up. You were looking at all this stuff up online. Yeah. I mean, I knew. Because when I was 19, I researched it. Yeah.

Back then, the internet wasn't as, you know, there wasn't as much information. So, like, I learned a lot more the second time around. But, like, I already knew the basics of a lot of this stuff. So I knew what to search for and all that. And I actually figured out how to replicate the blue strip on the new blue note through Google patents. Wow. Yeah, because I knew crane currency made the paper security features. So I was just looking. And if it's a private company, like, they have to patent this technology.

You know what I mean? So I just went on Google patents and typed in crane currency, you know, crane and company an event just scrolling through. That's all public information. Yeah. I mean, they got to patent it if they want the rights to the technology. So I found the patent and just, you know, read through it. And it basically was saying like fly eye lenticular lens arrays, which is like a thin,

clear film that like it's got like microscopic little half spherical lenses right and when you print underneath that in dots the different ways you look at the little

sphere it's like microscopic you can't really see it but like you know the images change because it's a lens so you're seeing this dot at this angle but this dot at that angle so if you if you prints a specific pattern underneath the lens film, it makes it move.

You know what I mean? So how long did it take you to perfect the new hundred? Well, I was messing with that the whole time. Right. But did there ever become a point to where you were like, okay, I need to focus pretty much solely on these because the 9600s are too old? Like it'll look too obvious if I'm just printing these and breaking them. I mean, that was the goal.

But like once I did kind of perfect the blue note, I did realize like it just takes too long. Yeah. It's just not. An hour takes you an hour only get you one bill. Exactly. So it's like and then you go break it. So you're making $80 an hour. Which a normal person is like a good wage.

But when you factor in the hotels and the gas and the drugs and, you know, driving from city to city just to break up. it's like it just wasn't wasn't really worth it so the government really did a good job with that like you think making that new hundred with the with the blue strip is has cut down on wholesale counterfeiting yeah i think i mean people obviously still counterfeit the blue notes but they're just uh crossing their fingers and hoping the cashier's an idiot and we'll take it with a piece of tape over it you know what i mean like and that that was my thing like i didn't i wanted to make a bill that like I felt confident going in. Like I'm not just hoping that you're an idiot cashier.

Like I wanted something to every, any tests you give it, anything you look for, like I've got it. So then, and I got that. So it was like, you know, I wasn't even nervous going into the stores. Like I got turned down a couple times. But even when they turned it down, it was mainly because I just went to that same store like multiple times. And eventually it would hit the bank and they'd find out and form the store. And then the store is looking for them. but even looking for them,

they couldn't prove it. Because it had everything. So like, you know, if they suspected it, you're like, oh, I'm looking for these fake 96 series bills.

You know, this is a 96 series. I'm trusted. I don't want to take it, but they'll give it back. They'll just be like, yeah, I just don't want to accept that.

Okay, and take it and leave. And you have plausible deniability, right? Like, if you go in with a handful of bills to a business or the bank, like you may not know. Yeah.

I mean, an average citizen that truly doesn't know they have counterfeit money could be spending it around too. That's the thing. Like if they did the couple times they said like, oh, we've been getting a lot of fake bills. You know, I don't feel comfortable accepting this. I'll be like, I'll just say to them like, well, I just cashed my check at this grocery store. Like that's what they gave me. Like, if you think it's fake, like I got to go take it back to them and talk to them. So then they're like, yeah, you should and give it back. So now there's no evidence. All you've got is a cashier being like, I thought a bill was fake if the police come.

Like, okay, you thought, but there's no evidence against it. You know what I mean? Because they always give them back. Yeah. And did you ever have a situation where the cops got called? I mean, not. There was a Bolo out for like a be on the lookout, almost like a wanted poster for it. But they didn't know my name.

It was just a picture of me at a register. Oh, really? But I've never, I never encountered the police. Did you try to fan out from Knoxville? I know you were on the road and stuff, but did you try to, like, stay away from where you lived when it came to, like, breaking the bills? No, that was probably my mistake.

Uh-huh. Even though that's not even what got me hemmed up. But, yeah, I mean, I started just locally in Knoxville and the surrounding area, you know, surrounding cities. But then, like, eventually going bookstore to bookstore to get the paper and hitting up the stores to break them, it's like you kind of spiderwebs out and you don't really want to go back to that area because there's no Bible paper there.

Right. Because I'm taking the blank pages out. So I'll go in a bookstore, take all the blank pages. But those books are still on the shelf. They're not going to order more Bibles because the inventory is still there. So once you go to a bookstore, you can get enough paper to make 50 grand, maybe, out of a bookstore. But once you go to that bookstore, there's no more paper there. So, like, you started running out of turf.

Yeah, pretty much. I'd go down to, like, Atlanta, like Atlanta in all the little surrounding. Like, there's a dollar general. I'd Google where Dollar General's, Walmart's, you know, grocery stores, the corporations I like to go to. And I just hit, hit up every exit that has those stores on the way down to Atlanta and then spend like, you know, five days in Atlanta just hitting up everything there. How much Bible paper would you come back with?

Well, I'd normally go to Atlanta, get the Bible paper, print in a hotel room, make the money, spend it. You know, next day. Yeah. I'd have a stack of Bible paper like this. And then stay in that city till it was. you know, all spent and then just go back to Knoxville. And so were you aware that you were federal? Is that why you were moving like this?

Like never wanted to have too much on you? Well, yeah. Simply because you wanted money then because you were, you were coming down from your high and you need, like, no. Why were you moving in this kind of like, you know, factual, like piecemeal way as opposed to like,

like my brain goes to, okay, I'm going to get as much Bible paper as I can in these different cities and then go back and then sit, print. You know what I mean? Like, why were you moving like a cat, like a thief in the knife? I knew the Secret Service specifically investigates counterfeit money. So like, yeah, we were wondering about that too. Most people probably have no idea that the Secret Service doesn't just guard the president.

They investigate counterfeit money. Do you know why that is? Why it's not the FBI? I think, well, the Secret Service. Secret Service now does all financial crimes. Oh, really? Like they do check fraud, credit card fraud, all that stuff. I think it's because 9-11, like the FBI started all in on the terrorist stuff.

So then they just kind of kicked this other branch to the secret. I believe that's why. But either way, like, I knew that. Or I knew that the Secret Service investigated. So, like, local police can't really do much. No. I mean, of course, they can arrest you if you're caught with it. But it's like the way I was moving, like you can't, the local police wouldn't have caught me.

You know what I mean? Because it's like I'm parking my car. You know, I'll go park in front of someone's house in a neighborhood over here and then walk a quarter of a mile to a mall and just hit up stores. So like worst case, they're not getting my license plate number. Even if they do know that I broke the bills there, they're looking for a 35 year old white male wearing sunglasses in. Chattanooga. And I don't even live in Chattanooga. So it's like, you know what I mean? Like, you're not going to catch me. And plus, would local pigs know what a good counterfeit bill even feel like? I've had police seize money from me. It was counterfeit. Some of it

was counterfeit. And they just thought it was real money. You know what I mean? Like, they couldn't tell. Could you get to a point where you would forget yourself? Like was your work so good? No, I kept them very separate. Okay. Okay. It's so like, and that's, that's one, another thing is like some people I've given bills to like people that would go break them for me, they think first thing crumple them up and make it look old. Right. And it's like you don't want to do that first because the pens, I'm spraying it with lacquer. So there's a seal over it essentially.

I mean, it's clear. You can't feel it or see it, but it's there. And if you crumple it up, it creates cracks in that lacquer seal. Oh, right, right. So, I mean, the bills I was making looked fresh out of the bank, perfect, 100. bills, but you don't want to... So I basically, when I made them, I got those little, like, plastic sleeves that you put like antique currency in or whatever.

And I just have a bunch of those. And I'd put them in there so they were perfect. You know what I mean? So I kept them all separate. I had two bags with real money and fake money. How long would you have to wait after you put that final coat of seal on it? How long would you have to wait before you could fold them, crumple them? I tried to not fold them.

Right. Okay. But... I mean, they dried pretty quick. But you're, so they felt like new money. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

So you got to be on the low. You can't be just walking in with, with 10,000 and new money. Well, that's the other thing. Like, because I've read all these articles and indictments of other counterfeiters, how they got caught. Yeah. You know, what happened in the scenario to kind of learn from their mistakes. Yeah. So, like, one thing I found was a lot of people would go break a bill.

And if the cashier called them out, the police came, they'd find. mind another 10,000 in fake bills on. It's like you can't deny that then. No. So I would like have my wife with her purse with all the counterfeit money just walk in the mall. And I'd take one bill put in my wallet, go into a store, break it and then go back and just, you know what I mean? So I never had. So I had deniability. Yeah. If, you know, something were to happen. Did you have a straight job or did you have any kind of legitimate income coming in? No, I was all in with that. Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, were you ever

approach by like, I guess nobody knew who you were, right? Now, now that you're a public figure, do you get crime organizations reaching out to you, like saying, hey, man, teach us the ways? Because this is like such a valuable, you know, if the Italian mafia saw you, they would absolutely try to pay you to get them to show you how to do it. Just the way that Mexican cartels pay Chinese chemists, they fly them over and bring them into the hills. I mean, I get lots. of DMs. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, that's, you know, they bring them over and show them how to cook. It's like the same way, show me how to cook money.

You know, because it's such a, again, it's a rare, it's a rare thing. Who were when you, who are the people? Like, what's the, what are the kinds of people that do, have had big indictments for counterfeiting? Are they, are they? It's usually lone wolf type people. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I'm sure there are, I mean, I'm sure. there are cases of like big organized crime groups. But I think they probably don't get caught. You know what I mean? So they're the ones that are probably still out there or whatever. Yeah. But nobody paid you. Like, like, street gangs.

Like, you know, a lot of people from Detroit, like vice lords and shit like that. But they were just the drug dealers I was selling them to. Like, they had no. I mean, why would you get involved with organized crime if you can print your own money? Like, why do you need them for you? You might need people to sell them to or. to break them for you or whatever. But, like, you don't need a boss above,

or, you know, a group above you if you're just printing it yourself. Right. You just stay yourself. Yeah. You know what I mean? I would think. I mean, I'm, you know, could be wrong. Well, if you had the ability to do it wholesale on a massive, you know, level,

then you would, you know, if somebody offered you a million bucks to teach them, you take the million and get out of the game. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, like I said, a lot of people DM me, but I'm on parole. I don't take that. I don't even respond to those people. Because it's like, you just message me on a public platform on record.

Like, no, dude. You see the emails I get full just telling on themselves emails. Hey, man. Hey, Johnny. Love the podcast. I listen to you in my truck while I'm transporting kilos of Coke across Canada. I live in Calgary. But I take stuff to Saskatchewan all the time.

That last guy you had on was full of shit. Can I come on your show? Yeah, I noticed lots of people try to hit me up like bragging about like shit they do. And it's like, dude, don't even, why are you telling me this? Like, that's a mistake on your part. So I can't take that seriously anyway. So how long does all this last? That was about two years.

Okay. Two years before. So basically I was started selling to this one dude from Cleveland. And I was, you know, like I said before, I started buying just personal use. I was getting like an ape all a day from them for like 300 bucks. So just a few bills every day. And I did that for like a month. So I probably got him for like 10 grand or so.

Like I don't know the exact number, but a decent amount of money. Did he know they were fake? No. Not, but he found out. So like I guess on the, I've got like the interrogation tapes of him being interrogated. And he explains this on those. but he said he had one of my bills in his pocket and it was raining. And the color shifting ink came off because it got wet.

So like he found out that there. And then he said he put it in a cup of water. And I guess the bills, the pieces separated. So he found out they were fake. I didn't even ask you about that. Yes, them getting wet. So if it rained or any moisture got on them, that was it. Right.

Even humidity sometimes. That's why I kept them in the plastic cases, like, or the little sleeves. Right. Because, like, if it was a real humid area or humid day, they would, you know, start to separate. Start bleeding. Yeah, they're not. And that's the other thing why you don't really want to, like, stockpile them is because it is, like, you know, they don't last forever. You know, in their fake bills.

So it's like, you know, if they get wet or humidity, they might start to peel. eventually like if you handle it too much that Matt Lacker starts to kind of fade away or whatever so yeah that's a big reason why it was like print 5,000 spend 5,000 print 5 you know just do it like that right but so this guy it got wet um and at the time I was renting a house in Knoxville and I come home like it's kind of a long story but like I was living with this girl like she's like a roommate type deal. And she was actually buying the heroin from him. Like I was in the car with her.

She knew they're fake. She was one of the people that broke them for me. So I'd go to these other addicts and be like, if you know a plug, like, I'll give you the money. You get it. We'll split the profit or dope or whatever. So she was buying the shit from him through me, basically. But we live together. So I guess when he found out they were fake, he went.

to her house to confront her about it, not knowing that, like, I'm the one making them. You know what I mean? So I, like, pull up in my driveway. And he's, like, yelling at her in the front of the driveway. So I was like, God damn it. Like, this is going to be a problem.

Like, at the time, I was, like, carrying pistols and shit. Like, I had a gun. I was thinking, like, this is going to be a situation. But he didn't know who I was. He didn't know I was making him all that. So I just, like, got out of the car and, you know, He was like, who the fuck is this? And she was like, oh, it's just my roommate.

Don't worry about it. So I just kind of walk by and go into the house. But as I'm walking by, I hear him be like, listen, I'm not even mad. Like, I just want to know where the fuck you got him from. Like, I want more of them. So I, like, heard that. And I was like, okay. So then I, you know, the next day I talked to her and I'm like, give me his number.

I'll just call him. You know what I mean? And I did. And basically, at first he was kind of, you know, acting tough about it, pissed off. and I was like, listen, bro, like, you sell fucking fentanyl, dude. Like, shut up. You're out, and you're not even out money, dude. Like, you were able to spend, I've been giving you these bills for a month,

and you just found out, like, so you're not out money. You know, I think I ended up giving him a free thousand, like 10 bills just to like smooth the water or whatever. But basically, I was like, you know, if you want to start buying them from me, like, that's fine, you know what I mean? So he started, you know, he'd go up to Cleveland. most of these drug dealers would go up to their city once a month. They'd go up to Cleveland, Detroit.

They'd buy a brick or two bricks and then come back to Knoxville. Get them off. Sell for a month and then do it again. So I told him, I was like, you know, next time you go up to Cleveland, if you want, you know, 10 bands or whatever, just hit me, give me a few days notice and I'll sell it to you for $2,500. So he started, we started doing that for a while. and eventually, like, we were doing business, so we ended up renting a house together, me and this dude from Cleveland.

So basically, I was supposed to go up to Cleveland with him because, like, I'd go with some of the dudes to their city to break bills because I was traveling anyway. They were going up there to re-up, so it was just like, let's go together. And, you know, so I was supposed to go up with him this trip. and I ended up getting pulled over and arrested on like a expired license or some petty traffic ticket shit. It was like a warrant thing.

I went to jail, bonded right out, got out. But, you know, it was like a Friday. We were supposed to leave in a few hours and I get arrested. So he just went on to Cleveland without me. So like I sit in jail for a few hours, bond out. I go back to the house we're sharing. And one of his little runner chicks, the chick that was like selling dope for him.

She was there. And I was like, you know, where's E? Did he leave? He went up to Cleveland? She's like, yeah, I went up to Cleveland. So I was like, well, fuck it. Whatever. The next day, I come out of the room and she's sitting there and she's like,

he told me not to tell anybody, but I just thought I'd let you know he got arrested up in Cleveland. So instantly, I, you know, I knew, like, why would he say, don't tell anybody? Like not a good sign. You know. So she, luckily she fucking warned me about that shit.

But, and there's a lot of stuff I found out later, like in discovery and stuff. So, but at the time, I was just thinking, like, that's sketchy.

I'm packing all my shit and leaving. So I packed everything up, went to a hotel. Maybe a day or two later, he calls me. And we never talked on the phone, like, about anything.

bad. You know what I mean? So like, he called me and was like, oh, I met up with the maintenance man up at hotel here. I got some Bibles for you. And I was like, okay, I shouldn't even answer the phone in retrospect. But I figured like, I'll just deny everything and just, you know, answer the phone and just whatever, you know what I mean? Not incriminate myself. They've got no evidence, you know, whatever. I assumed he was cooperating. But again, I shouldn't even answered. But you talked about Bibles. I was like, okay, cool, whatever. So why were we? you talking to him if you knew that he was informing? See, well, I didn't know. That's, that's why. But like, I had suspicions. You know what I mean?

Because all the girl said was he got arrested up in Cleveland. He told me. Right. You know, he told me not to tell anybody, but, you know, he got arrested. I'm letting you know. So that was sketchy. But like, I wasn't really sure, you know, like, I don't know. And I was doing a lot of business. I was living in a house with this dude. Like, I don't know. I should know. I should have just ghosted him from there on now. But like, you know, we were doing a lot of business together. Like, so I answered the phone. I just figured I wouldn't talk about anything. If he brings something up, completely deny it. Whatever. So yeah, he's like, yeah, I got some Bibles for you. And I was thinking, like, well, that's not incriminating necessarily. Like, whatever. But then he was like, he was acting weird. So I basically said, I'm like, dude, Summer told me you got arrested up in Cleveland. Like, that's fucking sketchy. Why didn't, why is that not the first thing you said to me? And he was like,

oh, it was just some petty shit. I bonded out. You know what I mean? But he's like, but I couldn't re-up because I had to bond out or whatever. And so he's like, I couldn't re-up. I'm on my way back to Knoxville. Can you get me 700 grams of heroin from like one of your other people over the phone? So like that was, as soon as he said that, I was like, bro, I'm like, you're the drug dealer.

You know I'm not a drug dealer. Like, why would you even ask me for that? the phone or any in person anything like you you sell drugs i don't you know i don't sell drugs and he was like yeah i know you don't but i figured you could help me out and i was like no dude like i'm not getting involved in that shit and hang up so i thought i think it myself i'm like that conversation went all right he even admitted on the phone that i didn't sell drugs so they were trying to get him to they were trying to get him to rope you into a drug charge yeah yeah because he he told and again like later I found out because I listened to the interrogation tapes after I was arrested.

And like he said, he told on me right away. You know what I mean? So basically they got him with, I think, 15,000 in real money and 5,000 in fake bills. How did they arrest him? Was it in like a drug bust? No. See, it's all long stories. But basically, in a nutshell, like he bought a car from that.

this junkie from some dude who's selling it. He was like, this was like 2018, and I think it was like a 2015 charger with like rims on it. Like it looked like a nice new car. And he was like, yeah, I bought this from this dude for 500 bucks and an eight ball. And I was like, dude, that's stolen, bro. It's a stolen car. 100%. He's like, no, he had the title and everything. Like, it's all good. And I was like, bro, it's a fucking stolen car. Like, there's no way, why would anyone do that? Like it runs. He's like, yeah, it runs. It runs. It runs. Great. I'm like, it's a stolen car. it's got to be.

He's like, no, I got the title. It's all good. I was like, whatever, dude, like, you know. So the car was stolen. So he was driving. They pull him over with a stolen car. They find like a little Louis Vuitton bag with a bunch of money in it. You know, he's a 25-year-old black kid, you know,

in a car with Knoxville plates going to Cleveland, Ohio with fucking $25, $20 grand on him or whatever. So it didn't look good. You know, I mean, they'd seize the money assume he's a drug dealer. And this is all just bad luck, him getting pulled over. Well, he was driving a stolen car. No, but I'm saying like they didn't know it was stolen until they pulled him over. Oh, yeah. They probably just ran his plates.

Yeah. Yeah. Pulled him over, found the money and whatever. But so the police arrest him on, I guess, I don't know what his original charge. The stolen car, I think, just originally. But then they seize his money, like assuming it's drug money, come to find out they'd go deposit it. And they're like seized funds bank account or whatever. Yeah.

And the bank comes back and is like. like, 5,000 of this is counterfeit money. So then the Secret Service get involved, interrogate him. And of course, he's like, yeah, we, like, this is Jeff Turner is making him. Like, he lives in Knoxville. You know, we're living, we're sharing a house right now. I can bring you right to him, you know, all this. And he even tried.

He was like, but all my drugs are in the house. So like, can you let me tip off my people first? And they're like, no. Like, what's fucking talking about? They're like, hey, you haven't done this before. You obviously don't know what we do. He wasn't very bright, dude. But why would they try to have him set you up on a drug buy if it was the Secret Service

trying to get to your counterfeit operation? Because he'd never admitted to being a drug dealer at first. And then they were like, cooperate. You got to be honest. If we think you're lying. No cooperation. Blah, blah, blah. So then he told on me, this dude's counterfeiting it.

And of course, they were like, you remember, you got to be honest if you're going to cooperate about everything. And they were like, so tell us the truth. you're a drug dealer like where'd this money come from not only five of it's fake like you got another 15 um so he basically admitted he's like yeah i you know i sell heroin and drive it you know selling knoxville from cleveland you know he told him the whole thing that he was doing um so then they start talking about me and the counterfeit money and and of course he's like he says he's like well he doesn't just know me though he deals with a lot of big drug dealers from all over like

Detroit and Atlanta and all this. So then I guess they just saw another opportunity trying to set me up with drugs as well. Um, so yeah, but okay. So he calls you, but you don't go for it. No. Okay. So what happens after that? Um, basically like I just hang up and I thought I was in the clear. You know what I mean? Like I didn't really say, I mean, I figured it wasn't good. You know what I mean? Just because he never, like he said he got arrested, but like I still wasn't certain he was cooperating, but I was, you know, had strong suspicion. But I was in a hotel room on the other side of town. The hotel room wasn't in my name.

My car wasn't in my name. You know what I mean? I figured like I'm safe at the moment. I was probably like I was thinking like I probably need to get out of town. You know what I mean? But like I didn't think they were going to kick my door in the next morning. You know what I mean? Wow.

Yeah. So I guess through that phone call, they, you know, pinged my phone. Like GPS tracked it. Like, they knew which hotel I was in through the cell phone call. They didn't know which room. You didn't dump your phone, obviously. No.

Were you working off burner phones? Yeah. I used to buy a new phone. Like, I'd go get the little simple mobile at Dollar General, like the prepaid cards. Like, every week, I'd change my number and, you know, the people I wanted to continue doing business with and just text them and say, this is my new number, you know. They can still ping your phone, though, even if. if it's a burner. They have the number.

Of course. But, but, you know, they didn't know which room I was in. They just saw this is the area. Like, he's right here. He's probably at this hotel. Wow.

So you went to the hotel. You got all your things on you? You have all your printing material on you? I was in the hotel room with my wife and this other girl. And so the next morning, my wife and this girl, Dylan, decide to go shopping. You know what I mean?

Like I give them some kind of money and they're going to go shopping. I'm supposed to make, like, I think it was 54, 5,600 for this guy from Detroit. So I start printing, you know what I mean?

So they leave to go shopping, I assume. But I guess the feds were staking out the hotel. Like they had a description of, you know, my wife or whatever and all this. So when they saw her

get into the car, they pull her over immediately, arrest her, find the hotel room key. And then, so that's how they found out which room I was in. And then, yeah, I'm just sitting there printing, you know what I mean? And I hear a knock on the door. And so I go look through the peephole and it's just like black. Like somebody's thumb was over it or something. So like I was thinking at first, you know what I mean?

At the moment, you don't really know what the thing. Like I thought I was maybe getting to somebody who's trying to rob me. something. Because I figured, like, this room isn't in my name. You know, like, how would anyone know where I was at? Was it in your wife's name? No. No.

It was in the other girl that was staying with us had a fake ID. And she would, because she was, like, selling dope for the Detroit people that I was making the money for. This is all long story shit. Did anyone try to rob you for your fake money? No. Was that ever a concern of yours? No.

I was only really dealing with like people that had money, like big drug dealers, like moving bricks and stuff. So like, I mean, I guess they could have tried. But I mean, you know, were you going to rob me for $10,000 and fake money and lose the connect to your fake money to make, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. That never happened. But I mean, there were some people that I'd rip off and they found out and they were kind of pissed. Like they're probably looking for me, but I just, you know, fucking, the feds can't find me. You're not going to find me.

You know what I'm like? I'm just stop hopping out of hotels and keeping myself. So I just ghost them if they, you know, got all aggressive. So, yeah, basically the peephole was blacked out. And I like look through the little window and I see like just the shoulder of like a Knox County Sheriff, patch. You know what I mean? So at that point I was like, fuck.

You know what I mean? I tried to flush this money down the toilet. And like I flushed a few grand or whatever, flush it, throw a few more in there. But like I assume they shut the water off because it like the water just didn't, wasn't there. I don't know if they thought I had like fucking kilos of heroin or something because a dude, what dude was selling them or whatever. But either way, there was like kind of for money in the toilet, like printers, everything. Like it's in a hotel room. At that point, I was just like, yeah.

it's, jig is out. Like, what the fuck am I gonna do? You know what I mean? So I just sit down and like, like, after about like five minutes. Like the door at the hotel was like steel reinforced.

Like they were hitting it with the battering ramp for like five solid minutes. And you're just sitting there. Fucking panic attack like fuck, like smoking a cigarette like he was waiting for him. You know what the fuck else do you do? That's such a funny scene to picture in my mind. You're just sitting there smoking your last cigarette. Yeah.

I knew. Yeah, I was like, fuck, I'm going. Banging a battering in prison. Like, so, yeah. Okay, so they finally get the door down. Are there guns drawn? Oh, fuck, yeah. Yeah, there was Cleveland Secret Service, Knoxville Secret Service, organized crime unit, drug task force,

Knox County Sheriff's. Okay. Yeah, there's probably like 30 or 40 people. So they brought you in, what were your charges? So I knew the feds were going to pick it up because like the Secret Service was there. Like multiple districts of the Secret Service. But originally they had me on state charges of criminal simulation over 60,000. And that's the benchmark for like.

Well, there's like, yeah, it's like 10,000, whatever it is, 30,000, 60,000, 100,000. You know, there's different like levels. That's interesting. I didn't even know there were state statutes. It's criminal. They call it criminal simulation. It's basically just like the state charge for fraud or like, but they falls in counterfeiting and fraud and check fraud, whatever.

So like that was, you know, I go in on criminal simulation. And it took a, like my lawyer told me, they're like, yeah, like the feds are probably going to pick this up, but most likely they need to get a warrant. just go through your computer and all that stuff. So, like, there would probably be a little bit, but they're most likely going to pick it up. Are you sitting in jail or do you bail out? No, I was sitting in jail.

They, like, they seized my cars, all my money. My wife was arrested, like, so. Right. So what do they seize? Like how much in fake cash? I only had, I was printing, like, 50, 54, 5,600 or whatever for these dudes. And I probably had another five grand. So it was like

That's not that much $10,000 of counterfeit money Well what fucked me was the computer Because on each bill I changed the serial number So all the serial numbers were different So like on the digital layers Each serial number

I'd just copy and paste and mix them up You know what I mean? So they were all different But so I had like 25 to 40 templates files With different serial numbers So I'd print one So all the bills were different serial numbers

But that then linked me every counterfeit bill with that serial number they could just you know link back to me they can trace all of those bills oh yeah how do they do that the secret service like when they file

when they get a counterfeit bill and like put it in their file or whatever they you know write down you know they've got a database of like what the serial number was certain counterfeiting methods paper used all this stuff but I'm saying if you printed how many fake bills do you think you printed lifetime that you had to go in and use, you know,

alter the serial number on. So like, like I said, I had probably had 25 to 40 templates of different serial numbers. So basically every 40 bills, which is like every 4,000

would all have different serial numbers. But then I'd, you know, every day, all the money I had had different serial numbers. But then tomorrow I'd print the same serial numbers.

Right. It would just be, you know, so basically they could link me. But yeah, overall, it was probably, I mean,

I mean, it's hard to say, but two to five thousand a day for two years, you know what I mean, a million, over a million and a half. A million fake bills. Yeah. So, but how are they able to prove that? How is the government able to prove that? Because they found files on my computer. And like when you zoom in, like, I edit, you know how I said I deleted the blur of the. So like they're a little imperfection. You know what I mean? Like, oh, maybe there's a couple gray pixels here, but they're on every bill they seized. And with the serial numbers they found on my computer. But right.

they just right i'm just curious because like i'm just thinking about a defense for you i'm thinking like a lawyer here there's no way they could have seized a million bills so how do they track how are they able to put that on you um how does they probably do seize i mean all so counter for bills like when you go spend them out of store right it they accepted they put it in the drawer at the end of the night they go put in the safe at the end of the week an armor car picks up the deposit takes it to the bank. When the bank gets it, the bank will know it's fake. And then they call the Secret Service. They call the store. They say, hey, we found 500 encounter for bills in your deposit. We contact the Secret Service, blah, blah, blah. So now, I mean, the Secret Service seized

every bill at this point, probably that I made. I see. Unless there's some floating around in the black market, you know, underworld. I see. So that's, so the bank, there's no getting by the bank once these make it there. I mean, at least my bills. Like I've heard there's like super notes. that are like the North Korean government are like printing exact replicas. You know what I mean? But even then, the Federal Reserve

sees bills, even real bills, to destroy them and reprint them. You know what I mean? So it's like they have a record of every serial number. So if they see duplicates, even if it's a North Korean supernote,

they get, they realize, oh, well, there's two real bills with the same serial number. They can't be real. one of them came right you know what I mean so like eventually they they find all of them okay so all of those serial numbers of every fake bill were registered with the secret service before they even knew who you

were yeah yeah yeah and so it was just a matter of time after you got pinched that they took those seized serial numbers from a computer yeah and linked them up with the counterfeit bills that were registered I sat in jail on state charges for three months before the feds picked it up so like they had to build the case. They didn't know who I was until he told them like the day before I got arrested. So like yeah, they had to get warrants for the computer. Yeah. Build a case on me, whatever. And once they had, you know, enough evidence or whatever, they served in. What was your bail? Did they give you a bail? Um, well, not in the feds. In, in the state, I forget what it was. Too much. I didn't have. It was like 200,000 or something like that.

I don't remember, but. Uh-huh. So you couldn't make bail. No. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, And then the feds, you know, I'd go to court and on the state charges and they like drop all charges, which I already knew why. Yeah, exactly. I was like, everyone's like, oh, fuck yeah, dude. I'm like, no. Yeah, but the real OGs are like, nah, you don't celebrate yet. The state drops the charges. Yeah, and then they, in Knoxville, it's like the federal courthouses across the street.

So it's like, that's what they say. Like, oh, you walk across the street. You're walking across the street, you know what I mean? what happened? Walk us through how it became federal. Like how you found out? Well, my lawyer tipped me off. She's like, yeah, they're going to drop all charges

and most likely she already knew like the feds are going to pick it up. So I was like, I already expected that, you know what I mean? So they have to bring you into state court and then the DA says we're dropping these? Yeah, exactly. You know, so they drop

all charges and then immediately put me in the little van, drive me across the street, take me to the U.S. Marshall Building. Yeah. And now you're serving the indictment. Yeah. Change my clothes out,

you know, to the tan, federal, whatever. And then... Are you in the same jail when you're in the being charged with state?

Yeah. Okay. Which, like, normally in Knoxville area, the Blunt County is like the federal hold facility, which is like the county right next to Knox County. But in less, like in my case, I was arrested and already housed in Knox County.

So when they went to federal, like there's federal inmates in Knox County as well, but you have to be charged in Knoxville to stay there. Otherwise, like, everybody goes to Blunt County. What was your wife charged with? Well, her charges were dropped. That was like a part of my plea agreement. But I think at first it was criminal simulation. I think they didn't have a whole lot of.

evidence against her. They had that Bolo was me and her at the register. So I think it was like her bail wasn't a lot because they only really had her and they didn't even arrest her in the hotel room. Like she got in the car and they pulled her over.

I think she maybe had possession of counterfeit money and like spending one or two bills but like it was under a thousand. The feds weren't really interested in her. Okay so she was out she was out while you were in their fighting case. Yeah. Okay. So she got to see the kids didn't get

Seeds or anything. The kids were with like my parents for a week And then she got out and you know So you coming down off heroin in the county jail? That sucks. Damn, dude. I was around a lot of that. That's brutal.

You think it's bad for you. Yeah. I'm a bystander like me just trying to get some sleep. No, I know. I've been in jail sober and not sober. So I get it. Yeah. Sucks.

But yeah. So like After they serving the indictment, um maybe like a month or so later i get out on pretrial release um and you know basically like a condition is uh i have to go to rehab i got to go to a halfway house until but then COVID hit so all the courts were shut down so i was out on pretrial for like two years right what was a maximum you were facing so originally it was like about three years. years. Like, the feds is like a range.

You weren't federal, right? You were in state. But, like, so there's sentencing guidelines. It goes by, like, your criminal history and, like, the point, there's a point system about what your charges were or whatever, and it graphs out. Right. So, but, like, in my case, it was kind of weird because with counterfeit money, there's enhancements, along with, like, security features

that you attempt to fraudulently make or whatever. you know what I mean? So like if somebody just printed, photocopied a $100 bill, their points would be less than me who, you know, took multiple steps to fraudulently make it. Yeah, you had a computer, you were more sophisticated. Yeah, but basically I was only looking at like three years because I only had a point on my criminal history. Yeah. What was your first point from? Well, I, let's see. I got arrested when I was 16. with like a weed pipe, but I was a minor, so that didn't go against me.

My first felony, I was 19. I got caught with like a half pound of weed and a DUI. So, but that was adjudication with hell because it was my first felony as an adult. So that wasn't on my points. Okay. And then I had like a larceny charge.

So that was my only thing that the feds could like hold against me in the point system. So like really, with such a low criminal history, I was only looking at like three years. So this sounds like a great crime to do. I mean, I don't recommend it, but yeah.

White collar crimes are definitely better than selling heroin. We would never recommend this to anyone. But if somebody were to do a white collar crime, I mean, what is three years in a federal camp? Yeah. Do you want to play tennis for three years? Yeah. And eat ice cream?

Read some books. You know, it was good for me, really. I mean, I'm sober. Yeah. You know, doing all these podcasts now writing a book. So it's like, there's potential for the future, I guess. Were there any complications with your case or does it seem pretty cut and dry? You know, they caught you red-handed.

Yeah. Not a lot of mitigating circumstances. Yeah, there was no trial for me. I would not. You know, they got me for sure. There was, you know, informants that were obviously willing to testify against me. Oh, so they found the drug dealers that you were selling. No, no, just that guy,

E from Cleveland. But, I mean, you know, they've got me... Dead to rights. Like, phone conversations, which I didn't really admit to something, but like he said he had a box of Bibles to give me. Like, it didn't look good.

And then they find computers and files and printers and counterfeit currency, like the bills that I was making at the time, not all of them were even glued together yet. So it was like, you know, I mean, I couldn't even necessarily say that I got those from someone. Like it was,

yeah, there was no defense. I didn't think. So is you, a million bills, a million plus bills you printed? Is there like a range of sentencing? Like if you had printed like 10 million or how does that work?

So, well, the Secret Service really fucked with me hard. They were, they were good to me actually after like after. So like the plea, the deal they offered me basically was like, um,

if you plead guilty, and explained us how you made them. Like every step, he's like, we want to make a video to train future Secret Service agents. So, like, you basically, like, make bills, explain the whole process on film and plead guilty. We won't charge your wife with anything. We'll keep basically, like, the restitution amount,

which is the range that gets enhanced. So, like, I think the range is, like, 100,000 and up is added. time. Like a million and up is at a time, all this. So they were like, at the time, they were like, we, we've got 800,000 that we can link to you. Like, he was like, I'm sure there's more, but only you know, he's like, how much did,

you know, you print? And I was like, dude, I don't, I don't know. You know what I mean? I didn't keep books. Like, what are the sentencing guidelines if it's over a million? Well, it depends on the criminal history. It's all like a graph. Right.

But what's the max? Do you like? Oh, I think 20 years. If you printed like 10 million and you have a criminal history, like, yeah, probably 20 years. Throw the book at you. Yeah. But so in this case, he basically said,

we won't charge your wife and we'll keep, we'll lower that amount from the 800,000 that it's currently at to under 100,000. It's like 96,000. Oh, wow. Gave me a huge and like cooperating as far as making the video. There was no one to even really snitch on because, like, my only co-defendant set me up. Yeah.

You know what I mean? But it basically like with the cooperation credit and the lower restitution put me in like a shorter range. So it was basically 10 to 16 months was the new range. It was like 28 to 36. Oh, I should have been a counterfeiter. Should have been a counterfeiter. Still got time. Yeah. So, so what, but I can't even draw you like look at my handwriting. Like this is, I went to college and graduated in four years and you can't read. read a thing on there. I have no artistic ability. I have, I mean, ask this guy, I didn't even know how to use Zoom on the computer yesterday. You know, you just have that mind for it. So you basically, like, you were like, uh, that movie Catch Me If You Can. You showed them exactly.

Yeah. How it's done. Did they have they offered to like you employment? Have the feds? No. I joked about that. And like the, the dude's. Special agent Greg Watson was like, you know, he was like, oh, maybe finish, finish your sentence first.

You know what I mean? But, yeah, I doubt they want to hire me. I don't think. It doesn't seem like there's enough of a demand for it. Like, if counterfeiting was a bigger deal, a bigger problem, they might hire a guy like you as an expert. He said, and like, like I said, they were really cool once I pleaded guilty. Like, he basically said, like, he was really, like, complimentary, I guess. Like he was saying, like, I spend a lot of time dealing with this prop money and these bullshit calls for this garbage counterfeit.

He was like, he was like, your bills are the best I've seen in 25 years. And like, it's not all the time that we, I get to investigate like a professional counterfeiter and blah, blah, blah. So like he was really nice about it after I agreed to plead guilty. He made his job fun too. Yeah, for sure. So they flew. And I didn't even know I was going to do this. my lawyer, I mean, I agreed to the video thing, but like, I didn't know that they didn't give me a date or anything like that.

So, like, I was supposed to meet with my lawyer. I go downtown and she's like, oh, we got to go to the Secret Service building. And I was like, oh, damn, okay. I walk in there and, like, yeah, there's like a film crew and lights and, like, they mic me up. Like, on the spot. I was like, oh, damn, like, I was like, what do you want to know? Are we podcasting? Yeah, and they were like, everything.

Just make, make two bills, explain the process, explain how you. you learned it, you know, all this stuff. I told them basically what, you know, I'm telling you, like about Google patents, fly eye lenticular lens arrays.

There was, I don't even know if they still exist, but years ago it was a company called microlux, DP lenticulars that sell the film that you can make the strip. The strips on the new hundreds. And they didn't even know I was using Bible paper. Wow. They were like,

they asked me like, what kind of paper did you use? So I thought they had like labs and, And I figured they already knew. Like that's why I went to bookstores instead of just ordering it online because I was like, I don't want to order a fucking pallet, a Bible paper

to Knoxville, Tennessee when I'm, you know, but they didn't even know what I was using. So like I answered all those questions. I used the iridescent green eye shadow to replicate the color shifting ink. Wow. It took like, it's basically like a pigment and made. So you would go buy like ladies eye shadow at the store?

Yeah, red-lon, holographic green eyeshadow. Wow. Wow. what other thing blew their mind that did they didn't know uh well i i feel like the fly island the blue strip like explaining one how i learned that just through google patents he was like god damn like i didn't even think that that that you know is public record um and like you know the eye shadow and bible paper thing like i think those he said those are very um like unique counterfeiting methods that they've never seen before yeah so a lot of people use nail polish to make the color shifting ink.

But he said he's never seen eye shadow like making my own stuff out of that pigment. Yeah. And people say like spray kind of for bills with hair spray to, so the pens work on them. But I found that it dries like glossy. It looks glossy.

So that's how I learned the mat lacquer was trying the hairspr because I read that online. I did it and I was like, this looks fucking glossy. So then I was like, you know, thought to get a flat mat. Right. you know, spray can.

See, the feds could have known all this if they had just Googled. Yeah. Like sometimes it's just sitting right in front of your nose. Yeah, like all these, like most of the methods I use, like I'd read and Google like some forum or some asshole says, use airspray, it works.

And then like I'd take that and try it and it didn't really work very well. So then I'd like expand on it. You know what I mean? Right. And like the Invisible Inc. UV pens are like, they're marketed for like little girl. as diaries. You know what I mean? Like a girl can write in her diary and it's invisible so no one can

read her diary, but then it's got a black light on the cap so then you can see it. So when I saw that, I was like, that's what I need. And I found it in red ink and it's, you just draw a line over the strip, but it's invisible until you shine a black light on it and then it glows red. So it's like, you know, yeah. Everything got better as I went along. One cashier like went to scratch the shirt, you know what I'm talking about? Like feel the texture. Right. And she like didn't feel it. And she still accepted the bill. She just took a double look at it and was like, yeah, it must be real. It's just weird. I don't feel.

So I knew I needed to do something with that. I went to like a hobby lobby and found a fine tip, invisible glue pen for like embossing. And then just drew little lines. And then when you'd scratch it, you'd feel this little texture. You know what I mean? It all progressively,

you know, they got better and better as. What do you, when you look back on it? Like, what do you wish you had done differently in terms of like trying to get away with it or trying to try to print more? Like what did you wish you would have done during your run?

I wish I would have gotten off drugs sooner, for sure. Yeah. I would have, I probably wouldn't have been, I wouldn't have dealt with certain people. You know what I mean? If I wasn't on heroin and I,

you know, obviously I would have saved a lot more money and probably been smarter about stuff. I mean, I was a pretty high functioning addict. I'd like to think, but still it didn't help the situation. You know what I mean?

And like my kids, like not. You know, I should have just like, I mean, they weren't involved, but like they probably didn't, you know, it wasn't good for them. Me getting arrested. Yeah. Their mom getting arrested. You know, all this shit. Yeah.

So definitely some regrets or things I would have done differently. Do you wish you would have done it bigger? I mean, I've thought about it. Like, you know what I mean? Like, should have just went to a cabin in the woods somewhere and printing out a million. Mm-hmm. And then, but that was the thing. I couldn't really do that because of the dope problem.

So it was like I had to be in the city. And, you know, I mean, what am I going to buy a kilo and go sit in a cabin? Like that probably wouldn't end well either. So it's like, you know. But yeah, I mean, I thought about just like the couple guys that wanted like $500,000. I was like wrecking my brain. Like, how am I going to produce? Where am I going to get that much paper?

You know what I mean? You have to, like I'd go through every day. I'd go through a couple cans of matte lacquer spray. Right. A can of gorilla glue spray. probably $80 worth of printer ink. Yeah. Every day.

Every day. Yeah. So I had to at least go buy supplies. I have access to it. Yeah. And so, you know, it is where it is, though. Yeah. So you finally plead out.

Where do they send you? So, yeah, after COVID, all this shit, I end up getting sentenced to 10 months. It was the low end of the 10 to 16. which is cool. And then I went to FMC Lexington, which is like it was a federal medical center. But after COVID, they stopped transferring patients from like two medical centers or something.

I guess they just started taking into the hospital. So they basically just turned FMC, Lexington, into like a low security prison for whatever. So I did my 10 months there. Who's in the federal lows? Shit, a lot of people. I mean. A lot of people, of course.

but like what kind of, is it mostly like white collar criminals? There's a lot of that. And it's like usually, you know, in the feds, as your time, like, you know, you'll go to a USP if you have a violent crime in 20 years. And then once you get your sentence down to 10 years or whatever, I think you go to a medium. Or I think even lows, you can have 10 years under. Okay. So it could be people coming off big stretches. Yeah, it's a lot of people that have two years left on their 20 year sentence.

And they're, you know, it's not very violent in the low. You know what I mean? It's just people trying to do their time. Yeah. You know, there's like fights and shit, but people weren't stabbing each other and killing each other because everybody's almost out the door. Trying to get home. But yeah, so I mean, it wasn't.

Did you mean any other counterfeiters in there? No. No. There was one dude who claimed to do checks, counterfeit checks. I'm pretty sure he was a fucking chomo just saying that because I asked him about it And I was like, you don't know anything about kind of fitting checks, Steve. Well, maybe it was a chomo who printed checks. Maybe.

You know? Yeah. There's a lot of them in Lowe's and, or maybe not camps, but, like, lows. That's where they put a lot of chamos. And they just, they can't walk the yard and they're stuck. Even in Lowe's, they can't walk the yard. Yeah. Wow.

They'll get beat up. I mean, yeah, for the most part. Just, like most of them, you don't even really have to beat them up. It's just you intimidate them. Like, get the fuck out of here. you know, and then they just get scared and go play Dungeons and Dragons some shit. Yeah, of course.

Something a kid would do. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So where were, you were in Oregon? I was in Oregon, right? Yeah, a lot of Chomas. Was it really?

I mean, of course. Like, there's chomos everywhere, bro. It's crazy. Like, if we put in where the sex offenders are right now, I mean, this whole area would probably come up red. Yeah. You know, I guess so. It's just, it's what it seems like.

I don't know. Yeah, I was in Oregon. I was in a maximum security. There weren't as many in the max, but then, yeah, when you get to a lower security level, there are quite a few. Or like, it's a lot of DUIs. It's a lot of like working class. Yeah, a lot of working.

You got five DUIs or something. Yeah, exactly. In Oregon, now, if you get three DUIs in one year, it's a felony, you go to prison. What it's like, let's be reasonable. I mean, you still got two DUIs. They still, that's a two, one too many DUIs. Yeah, yeah. You get three dewees in a year.

I mean, it's kind of obviously, you're not learning a lesson, but yeah. But yeah, I don't know if that's a. So you knew that you couldn't get back in the game. What did you do with your time? Like, were you just sobering up? Did you have to go to like 12-step meetings or anything like that? I mean, I did when I was on pretrial. Because that was like, you know, and I wanted to get clean.

I'm glad I did. Absolutely. But that was a court-ordered thing. Like, I had to go to a month rehab thing. And then, like, this halfway house that's basically like a sober halfway house type thing where they got N.A. programs and stuff. Yeah. But by the time I was sentenced to prison, like, I was over the drugs.

You know what I mean? And then I just did my time, worked out, read a bunch of books. Did anybody try to get you to contact them? Like, knowing that you're, you know, knowing that you're this kind of unique, brilliant counterfeiter, did anybody in prison try to hook up with you on the outside to get back in the game? No, there were some people while I was in there that have time left, or maybe they're out now, I don't know, but like they wanted to do business when they got out.

You know what I mean? There's one dude, like, I guess he was from Detroit and sold a bunch of heroin, and like kind of got away with it. Like he had like $30, $40 million from selling heroin. and then bought a bunch of dispensaries and like got out of the dope game. Wow. And but for some reason he was saying like

the feds got him for like a money long, like something about to do with money. And then I guess he tried to bribe a judge. And then they charged him with that too. And like he was talking all about he wanted to, you know, launder my counterfeit money through his sneaker stores throughout the country.

That seems hot. Yeah. That seems hot, bro. I'm like, I'm trying to just stay straight. It is pretty unbelievable when you talk to some of those cats in the feds, though. They are some really unique, successful criminals. Absolutely.

You know, like black guys who have made that kind of money selling dope. Yeah. I mean, it's very rare that you're able to stay out long enough to be able to make 50 million dollars selling dope and not get killed or locked up. And those are the kind of people you meet when you're in the feds. So it's really interesting. And usually the big time people, you know, don't necessarily have a reputation for it. Like, they're quiet about it until you one-on-one talk to them.

And like, you know, everyone's got paperwork in that and shit. So, like, you know they're not in state and like county jails and shit. Like, everybody's a kingpin, you know what I mean? But no one has paper. Like, they're charged with petty theft. but like I sell bricks of, you know, coke. But like in the feds, it's like, yeah, they got the paperwork to prove it, you know what I mean?

So it's definitely interesting. It's not, I don't think the feds was, it's not what I would have imagined, though. At least, like, because like you hear violence in prison and all this shit and like lows and even like mediums, some mediums aren't very violent. You know what I mean? Like people aren't necessarily inherently trying to kill each other. At least not in the lows, you know what I mean?

I only saw a few fist fights. Like some people walk out of the, the cell with like black eyes and shit but like everybody kept their violence and what was going on like for sure you know what yeah so it wasn't as uh you know violent as is is no we we ran we recommend federal prison pretty much everybody on this show especially a minimum you should go there absolutely you haven't been there it's great really yeah dude you're missing at it's like you haven't been on spring break um so yeah man so do you think now you're almost off paper you've been home you're running this great print shop which we can

give a shout out to by the way you made these stickers for us yeah uh what's next for you like you've been on every podcast you've you've you know you're kind of like this internet crime figure now um so what do you think you want to do with it um well i mean i've optioned uh my life rights to a film company um and they're writing the screenplay and all that, whether it gets picked up or not, you know, that's to be determined. I'm writing a book currently.

And, yeah, pretty much, I mean, I'm just going with the flow of things. Yeah, yeah, that's cool.

That's a good attitude to have. Yeah. Do you find it hard to stay off drugs or, you know, being back in Knoxville, do you like, do you ever get, I don't know,

tempted to relapse? Not really. You know, I have a drink here and there now, so it's like, I feel like that's my stress reliever, you know what I mean? But it's like go out on a weekend, you know what I mean? I'm too busy to even, dude, I work, you know, 730 to 6 every day travel for interviews and podcasts and writing my book. Like, I just stay busy. Yeah. The drugs are kind of glad it's a thing of the past for sure.

Yeah. You know, do they're kind of special? Do the feds have kind of your probation officer? Are there things you're not allowed to do with money, cash? Oh, yeah. So like they do a financial investigation every six months. Like I have to pay 10% of anything I make to restitution. So explain that.

Like how does that money supposedly go to the businesses that you? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure. And that's what I was kind of, I'm pretty sure the federal government just pockets it because technically you're stealing from the federal government. Right. So it's like,

but they took that counterfeit money from the businesses. They don't get it back. No. So it's really not restitution. I guess it's restitution to the federal government. They're making money. It's a tax. It's robbery.

Well, it is. No comment on that, but, you know, they want their money. They want their money. Feds,

fuck off, hide my money. Yeah. I don't even think I can can legally own my own business because they need to see pay stubs and stuff. So like I'm pretty sure that I was I can't own a business. Well, until you're off. Yeah.

Until I'm off paper. Yeah. But like I can't, uh, I can't spend money. That's why like people fly me out to interviews because like if I were to ask permission to my PO to like go on a vacation, he'd be like, no, you can't do that. Because you owe us money. If you've got an extra 10 grand to go on vacation, like we want 10% of it or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, he's like, he goes over my financials and like tries to basically like call out irresponsible spending because like or whatever. Hey, porn hub's free, dude. You don't need this $10 a month. Yeah. But yeah. At this point, you know, I think I've, I'm, they know I'm off drugs and not going to resort back to crime or whatever. So like it's mainly just a money thing at this point.

course. I've got like nine months left. Yeah. Great. Nine months to figure out how we could scale up this counterfeiting business. I'm just kidding. So great. Let's give a shout out to, well, is your book finished? Not, no, not yet. Okay. So let's plug what we can plug now, though, for the people that are watching. Yeah, basically, I managed production at a print shop called graphical warehouse.

And I'm getting into sales in that too. So if anybody wants stickers or prints or posters or signs or anything like that. Also graphic, digital graphic design you can do. Yeah, yeah, of course. Like you're going to help me do my, I'm going to pay Jeff to do my banner for my new YouTube channel. Yeah, yeah, I can design it or whatever, send you proofs. And, you know, once it's approved, manufacture it or whatever. Awesome.

But yeah, like basically, if, you know, for the people out there, like just hit me up on Instagram. and if you're serious, we can, I'll give you phone numbers. Yeah. What's the Instagram? Jay period Turner 727. Okay, cool. We got to maybe work on that Instagram handle. But yeah, yeah, we'll put the link in the description.

And yeah, definitely looking forward to that book coming out. You know, I hope they can do something with the movie. And yeah, I think also you got a YouTube channel too. Yeah, that's Jeffrey Patrick Turner. But I'm sure if you just search Jeff Turner. Yeah. My shit pops up. I think definitely like leaning into this, you know, content making.

Because you got a fascinating like it's your story as unique as the crime that you did. So definitely looking forward to it. And happy that you're you're back doing really well, man. You look great. You seem centered, grounded. Kids are happy. Yeah, they're great. Wife's okay.

we're separated but she's all right right okay all right well marriage is hard but um thank you so much for coming out here we're going to switch over to the patreon now do some bonus content uh but yeah that was a really that was an easy one easy one today thank you buddy thank you i appreciate you jeff all right you guys take care