Genuine Fake Money
Remember all that fake money I was talking about coming into Scotland?
I finally saw some up close.
I was waiting in line at a local cafe and the woman in front of me tried to pay with a fake £20 note.
I listened in as she explained she’d just come from the bank and had been stopped by a man on the way.
“He said he owed his mate a tenner and want to know if I had two tens for his twenty. ”
Since this was the only money she had, she was now in a position where she couldn’t pay for her lunch.
So I did what any self respecting honest con man would do and bought the £20 off of her.
Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t an act of chivalry on my part. I just really wanted a fake 20!
At first, she wouldn’t sell it to me, not realizing that I was prepared to pay £20, probably more, for a genuine fake note. She thought I was just being nice.
I had to explain the whole ‘honest con man’ thing, giving her my website and explain that I travel the world, collecting swindles.
Eventually, she capitulated and sold me the £20 for £15.
As I type, the note sits on the cafe table in front of me. (different cafe…I drink a lot of coffee)
The paper stock is much to thick to be a real note but close enough to fly past a casual examination.
The design has obviously been scanned in a computer and then printed out on an inkjet printer. The image is too low res and a lot of the detail is missing.
The scammer is obviously a bit lazy but was clever enough to use an obscure Scottish note that most people would not have handled before.
My old friend Pablo suggested I try to sell it on ebay to a collector. Maybe make a profit.
Or I could sell real £20 notes and pretend they are genuine fake money.
Fake fake money.
3 Comments to
how does the paperstock feel apart from thick. Does it have that funny cottony feel?
Did you hear about that US fraudster recently, who made counterfeits of US bills? The paper in the US bills have this thing where, if you use a special pen on them, the ink shows up yellow. He worked out that toilet paper did the same thing… clever (but he still got caught).
Victor Lustig did a “fake fake money” scam with the money making box. In goes a real bill and a sheet of paper, out comes two real bills. The victim is then encouraged to take them to a bank with assurances that the bank won’t be able to tell that they aren’t real… because they are real!