Counterfeit U.S. Cash Floods Crime Forums

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/08/counterfeit-u-s-cash-floods-crime-forums/

by denwer • 12 years ago

86 57 12 years ago

bequanna2• 12 years ago

'MrMouse says his single-ply bills do not have magnetic ink, and so they won’t pass machines designed to look for the presence of this feature.'

Clever tip for detecting counterfeits, found in comments:

'A good strong, neodynmium cylindrical magnet stuck to the side of something is a great way to check US currency. Just hold a bill by the corner and dangle it close to the magnet. The bill will show a slight, but very observable attraction. Easy and fast.'

Justsignedup2• 12 years ago

nevertheless, I can hit my local CVS and pay with my $100. They will just check the security strip. Easy peasy.

iancarroll2• 12 years ago

I think the point was that these bills have said security strip.

ejr• 12 years ago

This is a key point. Detection by human is fairly limited as they only use their own, easily fooled, eyes and a detection pen, which can be fooled if starch-free paper was used by the counterfeiter [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfeit_banknote_detection...

deciplex• 12 years ago

And all you need to do is keep a potentially deadly piece of consistently underestimated hardware in heavily-trafficked areas!

Justsignedup2• 12 years ago

The primary question: How the hell do you get this to your door? If I was to order it to a physical box, I face major felony charges as the government has a website to hack, and I am not confident in some random dude's ability to secure his website with every known security hole patched.

fiatmoney• 12 years ago

Typically you ship to some drop address (e.g., a house you know is empty, or somewhere where they'll leave the package somewhere easy to surveil and pick up). There was a DC-area mayor who had drugs shipped to him in this kind of scheme (he was uninvolved) and had his house shot up by a SWAT team as a result.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor'...

bequanna2• 12 years ago

In this case, wasn't a shipping employee involved?

I seem to recall that the package (drugs, etc) was addressed to the Mayor's home but was intercepted at the distribution center by the shipping employee (involved in the scheme) before being delivered.

kourt• 12 years ago

who had drugs shipped to him...(he was uninvolved)

"had drugs shipped" is a little ambiguous: someone shipped drugs using the mayor's house as the destination; Mayor Calvo had no knowledge or involvement in this. Despite his lack of involvement, the SWAT teams shot both of his Labrador retrievers, including one that was fleeing.

Photo of the mayor and the deceased: http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2009/09...

anigbrowl• 12 years ago

You don't. That's what minions are for :)

Seriously, most people would order this for delivery outside the US (where it's even less likely to be detected if passed at a bank or bureau de change). If they want to use it in the US, order it for delivery elsewhere and tehn smuggle it in.

Ordering for delivery by the USPS would be insanely stupid unless you had a very clearly document legitimate purpose. I'm a bit surprised Krebs didn't order some for himself - with his public standing as a security expert I'm sure his lawyer could work out a way for him to obtain some and then turn it over to law enforcment after assessing it.

Of course, it's quite likely that this is some sort of honey trap designed to attract less astute buyers from the world of organized crime/terrorism.

samstave• 12 years ago

"I ordered $100,000 in fake bills to assess their forge quality."

"As soon as I am done assessing the fake $75,000 I'll turn all $50,000 of it over to the cops. I wouldn't want to have $25,000 in fake bills lying around where someone might find them and wind up spending $10,000 in fake bills."

It would be a real problem if this $1,000 in fake money got out into the wild"

ck24• 12 years ago

Do all bills have magnetic ink?

I cannot seem to find a list.

fredgrott• 12 years ago

One dollars do not as of yet

ck24• 12 years ago

But what about old $20 bills. Strange I cannot find a list. Kinda worried.

jrjr• 12 years ago

they always did have a magnetic area under the 'united states of america' for bill readers.

Guvante• 12 years ago

No one has found a way to make convincing one dollar bills for less than a dollar.

Heck washing dollar bills is a way to get base paper for higher denominations. (one of the incentives for moving away from consistently colored currency)

grecy• 12 years ago

I lived in Ecuador for 5 months, which uses the US Dollar.

A couple of local guys that worked for me had a lot of fun testing my abilities to detect fake bills, which are plentiful in Ecuador. Even when they gave me two bills and told me one was real and one was fake, I couldn't discern any difference after 5 months of them showing me all the tricks of the trade.

The copies are extremely good, and I suspect not many people in the US are going to spend the time to check if a $10 or $20 is fake.

justin663• 12 years ago

The copies are extremely good, and I suspect not many people in the US are going to spend the time to check if a $10 or $20 is fake.

Many places will at least use the marker test on a $20.

crazypyro• 12 years ago

From the article, the seller claims that the bills will pass the pen test, so that wouldn't help.

dsl2• 12 years ago

Note that Krebs hasn't verified that any orders have been received (fake "reviews" in underground forums are very common). Lots of people have claimed to sell fake currency in these marketplaces and are almost always a scam. This looks like one too.

iancarroll2• 12 years ago

(fake "reviews" in underground forums are very common)

Do you have any references for that? Besides the top layer of these sites, I was under the impression that if you go down your "vouchers" go down with you.

dsl2• 12 years ago

10+ years of being involved in fighting cybercrime. He is mostly advertising on low end forums that don't have the established social networks that would punish false reviews.

larrys4• 12 years ago

"Lots of people have claimed to sell fake currency in these marketplaces"

It's actually possible to print realistic currency as long as it doesn't match (in certain ways) real currency. When I was in the graphics industry we would get memos from the secret service. I don't remember the specifics but one was the size of the bill. IIRC it doesn't have as much to do (as you would think) with an exact copy.

So then the question becomes if you try to sell fake currency that isn't really even the right type of fake it's fraud. Same as if you sell any good online that isn't represented the way you describe it. And goes by the fraud laws.

But here's the thing. Nobody is going to turn you in if you scammed them on buying fake dollar bills.

larrys4• 12 years ago

My question was "is buying counterfeit money but not using it a crime". According to this, it's not:

http://www.secretservice.gov/money_law.shtml

"Possession of counterfeit United States obligations with fraudulent intent is a violation"

Specifically, at least on that page, it would not appear to be a crime to buy counterfeit money as long as a) you didn't use it and b) you didn't try to sell it.

ck24• 12 years ago

Police raiding your home might be fatal, so crime or not they don't have to prosecute you to solve their problem.

larrys4• 12 years ago

Police/prosecutors will generally try to build a case before they decide to simply bust into someone's house. And they work on that case for a long time because it needs to hold up in court. I'm not saying that it isn't possible (and of course depends on where you are) but if in fact the law specifically states that you have to either sell [1] or use the money (and not possess it - which was my hypothetical question) then I can't seem them breaking in w/o proof that that is the case. That's the "if".

[1] Edit: Add manufacture as well...

amalcon• 12 years ago

I'd be careful. I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice, but that page only refers to posession. I seem to recall things existing that are legal to have, but illegal to purchase.

larrys4• 12 years ago

I have no intention of buying the money I was just curious specifically about the law surrounding the issue. If I did intend to buy it (for whatever reason) I certainly would check further. I just found the language on the page interesting I didn't expect it to discuss the issue in that way.

ableal• 12 years ago

It's funny that no one is checking serial numbers. Nowadays it would not be too hard to look up in a database if the number was issued, is in use elsewhere, or belongs to a destroyed note.

Privacy, cost and protocol issues left as an exercise.

mschuster91• 12 years ago

Why not make the serial numbers also a EC digital signature?!

jbermudes• 12 years ago

Wouldn't it still be susceptible to replay attacks?

kordless• 12 years ago

in use elsewhere

Nope. No way to do that reliably with a piece of paper.

sjtrny2• 12 years ago

A lot of this concern would be removed if the US switched to polymer notes. Visiting the US last year I was surprised to see people immediately suspicious of $50 notes that I gave them. I've never seen that happen in Australia, even with $100 note.

barrkel• 12 years ago

You're attributing one thing - suspicion of a particular denomination - to something which it may not be related to. It may simply be due to how common a particular denomination is used in the cash economy.

In the Eurozone, €50 notes are very frequently used - it would be unusual to be specifically suspicious of that denomination - while €100 notes are far more rare.

mlvljr• 12 years ago

I had my subconsciousness ping me I'd better buy something with that 500 Euro bill in the duty free shop when going to Europe last year :)

sjtrny2• 12 years ago

You could be correct although I saw many other people paying for things with $50 notes too. I didn't think they were rare. Maybe it is store policy to do the counterfeit checks on $50/100 notes?

sliverstorm• 12 years ago

To support this, I almost never see $50's. The dominant bill in the US is the $20, followed perhaps by $1, $5, $10, $100 in roughly that order. (that's my own estimation though)

Edit: Some data - http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/coin_data.htm#v...

prawn2• 12 years ago

Yeah, it amazed me too. Not to mention the durability and quicker recognition by colour. And that $1 notes and the low coins still exist.

If the population is too immersed in tradition, win them over with the coolest notes ever. Something using dark blue and dark red with white/silver could look awesome. Rather than what we have in Australia, Canada and Europe where there are 5-6 completely different colours used, one for each note.

I wondered if it's something to do with patents? Australia's RBA has a subsidiary that prints notes for various countries. Maybe there's a competing technology that Canada is using?

claudius• 12 years ago

Europe where there are 5-6 completely different colours used, one for each note.

I quite like that and never really understood why US bills are only green. If I look for 50€ in my wallet, I’m going to skip over the blues and greens and essentially directly pick the right orang-y one.

I’ve also never seen anyone suspicious of 50€, people sometimes look funny if they see 100€, but even that happens rarely.

colanderman• 12 years ago

Polymer notes have issues with shrinking and tearing: http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/new-canadian-polymer-100-bill-shr...

lostlogin• 12 years ago

This post reminded me of this. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Diaries

The Robert Harris account is excellent and there is a great quote from the forger along the lines of "A document isn't real or fake, it's efficient of inefficient". I highly recommend reading the book.

lazyeye• 12 years ago

Related..I thought maybe you could claim it as prop money for the movies but no dice.

"As it turns out, the Feds have strict laws about the production of fake currency. According to the Counterfeit Detection Act of 1992, a reproduced bill must be: a.) either less than 75% or more than 150% the size of a real bill, b.) one-sided, and c.) made with only one color (so as to discourage the reproduction of identifying factors). "

http://priceonomics.com/the-business-of-fake-hollywood-money...

Counterfeit U.S. Cash Floods Crime Forums

Related Stories