5 Successful Counterfeiters

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to meeting dot com slash stuff. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. This is Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. This is Stuff you Should Know. He to Live and Die in. Yes, Chuck just did a little Um, I don't even know. That's foreshadowing. I am really off my game today, So you're not, Yeah, yeah, I am? Uh what Chuck brought up? See listen, listen to me what Chuck brought up um to live in? I want to get through this sentence what Chuck brought up to live in?

Diane l a for is because we're talking about counterfeiting today, and that's the best counterfeit movie in history. It is. It is, and we've talked about it before, but I think it's worth talking about again. Like you just did. It's great, Thank you, You're welcome. Moving on, So, Chuck, counterfeiting, as you may or may not know, is a dying crime,

a lost art. It really is. And actually this is one of those old school types of criminal activity that, um, people who are good at it have the respect of law enforcement. I was reading an article about this bust of some counterfeiting ring and it amounted just some guy with an inkjet printer who was printing off you know, terrible, terrible currency on fiber paper, right, and um, this secret service guy, who's like a twenty two year vet was just shook his head and discussed and he's like, it's

a dying art. Like you just you don't see good paper any longer. Yeah, it's definitely a lost art. And um, I kind of I know this sounds goofy, but I kind of like the idea of since it doesn't have that much anymore, I can say this of counterfeiting like instead of a thief, anyone can throw a wind a chair through a window and go like break into a cash register at night. But to think like I'll print money, that's so believable that you can pass it. Yeah, it's

like it was artistry for sure. It is. And um, when researching this article, there was a common theme among these great counterfeitters, these five most successful counterfeitters. Uh that they all were just they had tremendous guts. They were they tried to break out of jail at every turn. Um. And they were just really admirable criminals. Yeah, and must of them wrote books about it, which is interesting. It's well,

it's a good way to make some money afterwards. You don't write a book about my life as a as a flat screen TV thief, No, And if you do, no one reads it. It's self published. So Chuck, let's get into this all right, all right, Now we're gonna talk about some of these successful counterfeiters, and we should also add a caveat here. Successful doesn't mean that they never got caught, we don't. We don't know about those

counterfeit exactly right. The ones who got caught but still had these tremendous careers are the ones we're going to talk about. And we're gonna do it chronologically, buddy, Starting with a guy named Stephen Burrows Steve. He was born in New Hampshire, Josh in the seventeen hundreds, late sept mid seventeen hundreds, and uh was raised throughout the United States. And I think that you have one of the best sendences you've ever written in this article, which one from

an early age. He showed distinct signs of a cute chicanery. What did you read that like, Anthony Hopkins? Oh that was Anthony Hopkins. Yeah, oh, he said, why did I Yeah, that wasn't supposed to be anything. That is my news, real voice. That was good, thank you? And he was He was a little mischievous guy all his life, it sounds like, apparently gained a reputation as the worst boy

in town. At a very young age. Um, he stole a bunch of watermelons from a local farmer, and he joined the search party to find the thief that chause he's smart and I think at age fourteen he ran away, um, joined the merchant navy, ended up basically being the de

facto ship doctor. Well, he deserted, that's right. He went to the army, and the army deserted the army, then went to college, bailed on college, and then became like a de facto doctor on the boat, which led him to say, you know what, I could probably get away posing his stuff. His father was a clergyman, so he decided that he was going to pose as the leader of a church, which he did successful least first six months,

led the congregation like mass everything. Um. And he probably could have done that indefinitely because you know, people aren't that suspicious of preachers usually. Um. But he got busted passing some counterfeit money in Concorde, right Springfield, close enough, Yes, And then he was sent to jail. And then he thought, I bet a good way to escape from jail would be to set the jail on fire. Yeah, and it worked. He successfully escaped. Yeah, he fled to Canada actually, and um,

he I think he did. He get caught again. Well, that's where he led. The most serious counterfeiting ring was when he went to Canada, right. So he was in Canada, um, and he led this ring for years and then suddenly he just decided to reform himself. He gave up crime, started supporting himself by tutoring wealthy Canadian children or the children of wealthy Canadians. I should say. Yes, he founded a library and that what he said. Yeah, he became

kind of like got um cultural benefactor up there. Even though people were aware of who he was, they still respected him because the stuff he did, um, it was just so respectable. They're like, he printed some funny bills. He built us a library. Yeah, he built a library. And he died in eighteen forty. But before that he wrote a book, like you said, a lot of them do, called Memoirs of my Own Life. That's the best memoir title in memoir history, Memoirs of my Own Life. So

it's still in print. Apparently I haven't read it. I haven't either. Well. Moving on. Number four is drum roll the Lavender Hill Mob, which I found out was a movie from nineteen fifty one with Alec Guinness. We try researching them. I know that's all you see is the movie, but it's unrelated, not related at all. Instead, the Lavender Hill Mob actually are a fairly recent origin. They were um upper in in the nineties in Great Britain around Lavender Hill. I would imagine they were founded by this

guy named Stephen Jury. And this guy was awesome. He was what they call an old school rogue and that's a quote. And uh another guy named Kenneth Mainstone who's a retired printer, and Jury recruited Mainstone to come up with some counterfeiting plates, right right, and they did very successfully. And by the way, Jury is widely credited as establishing

the knockoff perfume market. Yeah. I found he um actually bribed a perfumer to get recipes and by the time it was all said and done, had bottled five million phony Chanelle number five. That a factory in Acapulco making stuff if you love Georgio or if you like Georgio, you love La Lah and like the little spray Arissault kid. Yeah. Yeah, And when it was the last time you were cologne. Oh it's been a long time. Yeah, I work alone. When I was like seventeen, I think was the last time.

That's it's about it for me. You know. It's funny. When I lived in you my Arizona. All those dudes work alone. Yeah, because everybody's sweaty out there. Well, I don't know, there's just kind of this there's a different culture and they're like, you don't work alone, and they're like because they have like Gill in there here. Okay, I know the culture you're speaking, the Jersey short type of thing. Yeah, okay, So the Leavener Hill mob, right,

they were very successful. They printed about fifty million pounds worth of fake notes, and not pounds by weight, but pound by you know, the currency currency. They also sold

fake stamps, which I thought was sort of ingenious. It is, but at the same time, it's like, look, you just made fifty million pounds of fake currency, and and one way to get rid of um, counterfeit money is not to just passive, but you can actually sell it for you know, pennies on the dollar to people who know that it's counterfeit or you're going to go past with themselves. But um, even for pennies on the dollar, it's still many millions of pounds, and these guys are making stamps

on the side. Yeah, it was a little i'd Apparently the first bills didn't work out, so great though. You hear about that that the Queen of England looked like she had a beard, and so that maybe that's why they were making stamps until they perfected the note making, which they did because they fooled UV detectors. They got so good at it. Yeah, and actually they got good enough that the um the Bank of England actually changed their design for their twenty pound note because of the

Lavender Bob's activities and success. Pretty awesome, it is. And he wrote a book Joy did before he died. Just died a couple of years ago, didn't he two thousand six He had center two titles. The first one was called Funny Money Decent. The second one was great. Second one was called loads of Money. And that's one word, loads of loads of Money, the true story of the world's lawest ever counterfeiting ring Colin and there is. Well, yeah, it kind of classes up your book when you have

a colon in there, loads of Money. We should write a movie about that guy. Alright, chuck onto the Nazis. Yeah, I didn't know this. Most people think of the Nazis as like the worst fascist state to ever emerge in the history of humanity, not the worst state. Ever, not first worst because Mussolini wasn't all that successful. Um, you know, they they directly murdered ten million marginalized people, um, including Jews, Roman Catholics, homosexuals and others. They invaded Poland and France

and other countries. But they also ran arguably the most successful counterfeiting ring in the history of humanity. There were a lot of in the history of humanities with Nazis, almost all of them were horrible. Actually, all of them were horrible. This is the least horrible thing they've ever done, probably, but it was going to pan out pretty bad in

the end. Yeah. They made about six hundred and fifty million pound notes, which would be about seven billion bucks today, right, which was about of the currency in circulation in Great Britain at the time. And their brilliant idea was to fly over England and drop cash money from planes. They actually figured out and this was called Operation Bernard after Bernard, who was an s S officer who's in charge of this operation. The head of the operation named the operation

after himself. Basically, what they did was they went around and figured out what nearly dead people in their camps used to be printers in the time before the war, and they identified them and drafted them to work in what was called the Devil's Workshop, which is like a secret printing press or printing office. And uh, what is it you you you speak to Irman? What camp? Uh?

Saskatchewan now? Uh Shauschenhausen. Nice chuck. So they had some guys there, all assembled to crack the English currency and and they did successfully, leading to the six fifty million pound notes. Yeah, and they well they didn't drop her from the plane though they laundered it use some of that money to like import things. And this isn't factually backed up, but there is a rumor that they actually used that money to pay for the rescue of Mussolini.

Did they really? Yeah, well, they apparently made a bunch of cats. They gave the money to a German businessman who served as a front form to launder it, and he bought anything of value that he could get his hands on with this money. And apparently it wasn't a secret like Uh. England had known since like nineteen thirty nine that this was going on, and they tried to close their borders to income and currency, but it didn't really work. They finally cracked the American hundred dollar bill.

Just as their camp was liberated and they they the Nazis and these guys were coming. So they took all the printing prayer by these guys, the Allies. They took the printing stuff and threw it in the lakes, blew stuff up with explosives. I don't know why they were trying to cover this aspect of the Holocaust up, you know, um, and they were about to execute everybody who was involved,

and the Allies showed up and save the day. Yeah, And I think we should point out the idea but behind all of this was to undermine the economies of England and the United States, or do not point that out, which is that's a pretty important part. That was the plan. They weren't just like, oh, we'll get English money and didn't would buy things because you know, if you have a sudden influx of cash, a lot of cash on

the on the market leads to inflation. Yeah. Yeah, indeed. Uh. There was a BBC TV show Josh about this in called Private Shorts. And then one of the Jewish um prisoners forced to do this was named Adolf Burger, and he later wrote a book, and that book was turned into a movie that won Best Foreign Language Film in two thousand eight. H The Counterfeiters in English, don't ask me, it was in German. Let's check it out. Yeah, moving on, Chuck,

Moving on to number two. Charles Ulric. Yes, not related to Robert Urick as far as I know, because there's two different names. Now. This guy was another um, kind of dashing counterfeitter, filled with daring do and he was also a ladies man, actually do. I couldn't help There's no other better way to describe it. A cute chicanery. Yeah, he was a ladies man, right, Yeah, it actually led to his downfall, right. He was a polygamist, uh, and he wasn't shy about it. He was like Bill Paxston

for goodness, say right. And this was in the eighteen sixties in New York. He and like most of these uh counter fitters, he was a gifted engraver of plates. Right. So the local mob figures out that this guy is a gifted engraver of plates, and the corral um to try to get him in well working for them, and he does, and he ends up getting in trouble and ends up forming his own mob, his own gang, and with all the women included. Right. Um, he finally gets

caught in eighteen sixty eight and stands trial. He was in Cincinnati, and he got twelve years in the federal pokey uh and by his own estimation, he printed about eighty thousand dollars worth of um phony bills a lot of deb back then, which is equal to about one

point three million in two thousand eight dollars. Right, but what was his downfall, Chuck, I said, women, but specifically what well like you said, he was a just sort of a blatant polygamous, made no bones about it, and he engaged, moved all around, engaged in relationships and never broke off the old ones. Eventually he moved his wife and to live with he and his girlfriend and a third woman, and one of them finally said, you know what,

I'm gonna turn you in, jerk. Actually all of them turned on him, but interesting, and they turned him in. And that's that's where the Cincinnati trial came from. Before that, he had been um incarcerated, and in the grand tradition of counterfeiters, he broke out and actually led the cops on a chase across the Niagara River. Like right at the falls and made it across actually into Canada and escaped and he was like, who's that lady in the barrel as he was going, And if that's not daring do,

I don't know what that's daring do? My friend, that's a cute chickenary. Can you really like that? That's just great? All right? The last one, buddy, And this guy's pretty familiar. Yeah, everyone's probably heard of Frank a Big Nail because the Stevie Spielberg movie Catch Me if you Can, Yeah, Tommy Hanks. It was made at a time when Spielberg unwittingly had a fake or a stolen Rockefeller in his collection. Yeah, I love this movie. Did you like it? I liked

it too. It was just I don't know. It was it when spielberget kind of put out some stinkers and everything was so serious, and then he just kind of did a fun, entertaining heist movie, right, And it's one of those movies you can lay on the couch and watch, like for the fiftieth time on like a Sunday. Did they never show it on TV? Yeah? That was I think it ran on like T and T for a while because I saw it. Yeah, I love this movie. Um.

Leo DiCaprio obviously played Frank and a funny story. When abcnail found out DiCaprio is going to portray him, he was worried because he didn't know if Leonardo DiCaprio would be able to be smooth enough to play him accurately. He's like the smoothest dude on the planet. He is smooth. He's like, oh, Leo, no, I don't think this guy cares. I don't think he thinks. Leo DiCaprio holds a candle to goodness me, you can land Gazelle. And then also

can Tom Brady. Well look at him, dude, stud quarterback. Yeah, but I mean chiseled out of stone. He's a quarterback. Shut up, all right. Uh. He did most of his work and his teens and twenties, which is the remarkable thing about his story. And he was a check forger, yes, as anybody who's seen the movie can tell you. Uh. And actually, between the ages of sixteen and twenty one, he cash more than two point five million dollars in

fake checks in all fifty states and twenty six countries. Yeah. Yeah, that's some serious work. And He was also a confidence man because he would not only write fake checks, but he would masquerade as as you saw in the film, like an airline pilot or a doctor or an attorney professor.

I think he did at one point and fooled everybody. Yeah, and he just forged whatever documents he needed to prove that he had the education or training or resume or whatever and get hired, which made him a good comment, which made him chuck smooth. He said, catch me if you can. Few things here, Josh, that are similar and different from real life and in the movie, because they always beef it up a little bit in the movies.

He did actually um pose as a federal agent when they busted in on him and kind of snuck out the back door. Said keep looking. Yeah, he ordered the fens who were looking for him to keep looking. He said he was like a treasury agent or something. Absolutely and yeah, and he was their first. Um he actually did escape from a moving plane taxing on the runway.

That's pretty seriously, that's awesome. That really happened. However, in real life he never saw his father again after he left home, and uh, he he had a real problem with his parents. Divorced. I mean, like more so than any kid I've ever heard. Like, he would fantasize about meeting his parents again and then being proud of him, and then getting back together because they were proud of his exploits weird. It's kind of like Ralphie dreaming that he was going to go blind from having to eat

soap for swearing. You remember it was so poisoning. Uh. He was one of four kids, and in the movie, I think he was an only child. Um Hannity the character hand Ratty, the character hand Ratty, Tom Hanks character. Yeah, it was actually got named Joe Shay. They changed his name. Yeah, I don't know why because they said in the original script it was Joe Shay and I could never find any reason why they changed it to hand Ready. Did they say anything about Captain America? Did he use the

Captain America alias? No, I didn't notice. Uh. He was in the film actually as one of the French policemen that nabbed him. Yeah, he had a cameo, yeah, because he did a stint in the French jail, French prison, French prison. He uh is actually married married a woman as soon as he went straight. He married a woman, still married to her today. It's got three sons, and

one of his sons is a federal agent. And he did remain friends with Tom Hanks or not, but yeah, and he does, uh, he does consulting on like identity fraud and you know, bank security and stuff like that. Right. Yeah, everyone on your list wrote a book except for number two Charles or yeah, well in the Nazis Yeah, but the other the guy wrote actually one of the guys involved, Charles Ulrich was just too too involved with the ladies. I guess waste time write in a book. You should

write a book about that, Chuck. Do you want to finish this? Finish? You want to wrap this turkey up exactly? This episode of stuff you should know is brought to you by go to Meeting, the affordable way to meet with clients and colleagues for your free thirty day trial. Is it go to meeting dot com slash stuff. Okay, So if you want to see some pictures about the guys that we were just talking about, one I couldn't find,

so I used a picture of Dartmouth College. It is the best I could come up with, and I apologize for that. Sorry. You can type in counterfeitters CEO you A T E R F E I T E R S in the handy search part how stuff works dot Com, which leads us to the listener mail Thank the Lord, Josh, I'm gonna call this sinister, Eats wrote in Yeah, we got a bunch of them. We did schooled another out there being all weird. Uh this is uh three quickies. I edited them down, guys um first ones from Jonathan.

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

see words when I'm dreaming. As for the color, the best I can do is say that they are a generic Sands seraph aunt white, filled with black boarders. And he's a researcher at you see San Diego, he said, perhaps I should just ask Professor um Ramakan drawn next time, he's sitting across from me at Perk's Cafe, and that's like, dude, if you see that, Yeah, I'm glad that we could bring these two together. It's like the mom with her son who went off to college. That's right. So that's

from Jonathan. Here's the second one from Ben. When I was eight or nine years old, my best friend moved to another town that summer. After not hearing from him in a while, I decided to give him a call. Once I walked home from another friend's house. A couple of seconds later, my right wrist suddenly had an intense pain and throbbing for no apparent reason. I I sed my wrist. It made it feel better, and when I got home, I was still very confused why I happened.

I called my best friend to tell him about this weird thing, only to discover that he was also in pain, waiting for his mom to get him to the hospital. Seems See and his brother were playing Indiana Jones and the Escape from the Closing Garage Door when he landed the wrong way and busted his right wrist. I'm a pretty logical guy, but that is really creepy, and a true is that the work of neurons or a minor psychic event, who knows, who knows? And this last one

is from Jordan and New Zealand. He's at Kiwi. Would love New Zealand. I associate all numbers and letters with colors, and my mother and I also used to argue at times about what color a letter is, just like Navoco. Yeah, and they didn't know that they were sinnisty. It's state awesome police though, what a bad show that was. I thought it might also interest you to know that I experienced music as a projection of colors. I can only explain it as a sort of mixture of fireworks and

a fountain cool. Uh, stream of water shoots in the air, changes colors in the shape and relation to the music. Allowed beat is annoying because it's like a pulse ripple in the pond. It distracts and muddies the other tones. Although it's sometimes annoying, I find music distracting. Uh, it can get distracting, and I still find it very difficult to focus on a kind versation that there's too much background noise or music. But now it can actually mute

partially mute colors. So I can concentrate on music. While I still see no colors, I do see the explosions, so like a classical piano pieces, really intense, he says. He still sees Oh, I'm sorry. He still sees colors and explosions even though he's muted it, but he's lessened it to the point where he can actually listen to music and not go crazy. Goodness, I'm having an off

day two. Um wait, what do you mean too? If I'm talking to someone in music is playing in the background, I can focus on the speaker much easier than I was previously able, thanks to his new muting ability. So it's from Jordan and New Zealand's and we heard from other Synis seats and I just couldn't get them all in the air. So thanks. We heard from one guy who was like, wait, I thought everybody saw the date physically wrap around them, right. Yeah, this is pretty cool. Yeah.

Join us on Facebook and Twitter. Yes, please do at s Y s K podcast for Twitter and just look up stuff you should know. Um, website, I think it's called website on Facebook. Yeah, do those things? An email about anything at all? Right, Chuck, I've got nothing, so just send us an email. Will You That Stuff? Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works

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