The Ultimate Counterfeiter Isn’t a Crook — He’s an Artist | Hacker News Reader

The Ultimate Counterfeiter Isn’t a Crook — He’s an Artist

wired.com

153 pointsasicboy80 comments

Does anyone else have difficulties reading articles written this way - structured as Hollywood movies, with artificially built-up suspense and all? I feel patronized all the time, trying to get to the "meat" of the article, just finding "next page" link instead.

I feel the same. I don't care about the biography of the person being investigated, I just want to know the stuff related to the meat of the article. For instance, I don't want to know about this man's passion for Andy Warhol. Or that previous article about a woman who stood up against Citibank: I really didn't care about her love for horses and that she's a cowgirl or whatever.

But that's just a pointless rant, and I only share it because you raised the question. The appropriate way to deal with this would be to identify authors who tend to write in this style, and avoid reading them. I don't pretend they're bad, it's just their style doesn't fit my tastes.

Eh. I think there's value in making people cognizant of this style by discussing the way it works. It certainly took my a few years before I could pinpoint exactly why I disliked this stuff.

Also, there's so many magazine authors out there that keeping track of their individual styles it pretty hopeless for me. The best I can do is remember that Wired is written like this.

I think a great part of that frustration is down to long-form magazine features being ported to wired.com, where brevity is better suited to the web-page form.

Personally, I think almost all of the writing in Wired is excellent - well crafted and edited and laid out within interesting designs. Yes, while there are pretty common 'paint a picture' set-ups and more detail about the actual people involved than you'd get in news (for sure) and non-US feature writing (my view), that's part of the reason I keep buying the US print copy of Wired (even in the UK), and enjoy settling down to read it.

I have the exact same revulsion to this style writing when I see it in print. The only upside is that, in print, it's easier for me to skip through the article and get to the actual content.

See the think you are doing here is being completely and utterly disingenuous. What you are talking about as content is a list of facts of the event. What you are pissed about is a list of facts about the person involved. I like the facts about the person involved, the circumstance and some speculation about their mindset. I like that, if you want facts about the sequence of events, read a crime report. Or even better, don't read the article, you don't have to just because it is there. If you have revulsion, find a medium that works for you, they exist, don't complain.

Agree 100%. I'm saying this all the time. Please, writer, just get to the point! I don't want to learn a zillion details about everything you saw.

Do you complain that movies take too long with the plot when you haven't seen the villain vanquished by the 5-minute mark?

No. Movies are there primarily to entertain. News stories are there to inform. If I wanted the dramatic, drawn-out version, I'd see the "based on a true story!" version.

There are lots of events I could be learning about in a day, and I'd like to be able to get the important stuff out of a new story and go on to the other stuff. In contrast, you can't similarly shorten a movie while sticking to its purpose (usually).

Who said it was a news story? It's not about an especially current event, and Wired is not a news magazine (for that, see Newsweek, Time, or any number of others); they're a tech/nerd culture periodical. They've has always had a major focus on long-form journalism.

Then don't read stories from sources that are known to contextualize rather than report the facts. It's like you keep touching a hot stove, and complain how it keeps burning you.

Who said I did? Of course I ignore such stories, or skim past the first 15 paragraphs to get to the meat.

If I want a page turner, I'll get a novel. For news stories, I just want the information. Time spent learning about the color of the subjects coat is time I could spend reading another story, learning something useful, or entertaining myself through a medium actually optimized for that.

Oh right. I forgot you are the sole arbiter of what is entertaining or useful to learn. My bad, I'll go figure out how to stop being entertained by long-form journalism stories like this. My bad.

No. Long-form journalism is about keeping the reader engaged in a story they didn't know they wanted to hear. You wouldn't write fiction with a strict focus on the sequence of events, why should this be any different? While you're feeling patronized I find that I enjoy the engagement. Frankly, your way sounds boring.

I'm glad to know that at least someone enjoys this style, because I am with jablan; I hate it. To me, it suggests that the author doesn't expect me to find the content interesting, and that instead this content has to be packaged with (predictable) human-interest intrigue just to get me to read it.

To me, it's very analogous to trying to teach students math with colorful, picture-laden textbooks: it might be necessary for students who will never learn much math in order to just get them to pass the grade, but insofar as it works such students are not getting deep appreciation for the concepts.

But, this isn't math! It's a story, with characters and a plot. The intrigue is baked-in because it makes for an enjoyable read. Sure, the details are interesting, but there's nothing wrong with telling an interesting story with interesting details in an interesting way. "First this happened and then this happened and then this happened..." is not how you tell a story, regardless of whether or not the story happens to be factual.

If I want an artistic short story in magazine form, I'll read the New Yorker. But this is Wired, and the material facts of this story are the only interesting part.

I guess it's possible that a gifted author could wrap these fact with a human-interest element in a way that is worthwhile while still communicating an essential idea ("The Last Question" by Asimov comes to mind). But, by experience, this just isn't within the abilities of most magazine writers. And it doesn't need to be, because the material facts are plenty interesting on their own.

Edit: I can't reply to vacri, so I'll follow up to his comment here. Vacri: human interest pieces have been around for decades. Furthermore, the newspaper format of most journalism (one sentence paragraphs, most important facts at the top regardless of sensible narrative order, negligible artistic flourishes) were set a century ago. I'm pretty young (26), but I've read newspapers from before the internet and they did plenty of bad human-interest stories. I'm pretty skeptical that the internet had much of an impact in this respect. Maybe you have a more specific source, or I misunderstand your claim?

Edit 2, reply to fiatpandas: I think the distinction between an AP-style newspaper article and a human-interest short story is a false dichotomy. Instead, there is a middle option of a fact-focused piece designed to clearly communicate the essential ideas without relying on artistic/narrative devices to keep the reader's attention. (See my reply to jablan http://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=4203567) Wired can choose whatever style it wants, (and I certainly have no doubt they've done this plenty in the past) but my claim is that the human-interest style is almost always poorly executed. If the facts are interesting enough, then it's unnecessary, and if they aren't, then it's a waste.

This was the format that a lot of good journalism used to be in, before the internet chopped up everyone's attention span into bite-sized bits.

>But this is Wired

You make it seem like these long-form narrative articles are a totally foreign concept to Wired, like this is a one-off piece that somehow slipped past the Wired editors who want brief pieces for the internet generation. Not true at all.

This article is nothing compared to a piece Neal Stephenson wrote about a trans-Atlantic fiber optic cable. It's hilariously long and pretty epic. I guess in your case I wouldn't recommend it, though.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html

I don't know, man. I'm all for AP-length news stories about current events (I don't want to read artistic prose about every little news event), but sometimes it's fun and interesting to transcend the typical format. I'm one year younger than you, by the way, just so you don't think this is a generational issue.

the material facts of this story are the only interesting part.

The facts are simple:

1. some guy made good counterfeit money

2. he got caught through a series of mistakes

a. sloppy waste disposal

b. over trusting

This is the same pattern as for most crimes. Seriously, minus the murder bit, it's a law and order episode. What I want to know, is not the predictable sequence of events, but who would do this, why would they do this, tell me the thought process that leads to these actions.

> This is the same pattern as for most crimes. Seriously, minus the murder bit, it's a law and order episode.

I guess that's why the original Law & Order is one of the few TV shows I like.

> What I want to know, is not the predictable sequence of events, but who would do this, why would they do this, tell me the thought process that leads to these actions.

I also want to know all this, so I think you may have misunderstood my position. (This applies to your other comment where you call me disingenuous for no good reason.) What I don't want is stuff like "Tourists milled about the platz in front of the cathedral, Germany’s most visited landmark, craning their necks to snap pictures of the impossibly intricate spires jutting toward the heavens.", nor do I want teaser paragraphs endings to keep me hooked on the article as if I would stop reading it without them.

Perhaps you have a perfect geographical understanding of the world, but I would have no idea what this alternative sentence would mean (which i constructed by my best understanding of what you claim to want):

A meeting was arranged in near the Cathedral in Cologne.

To me, that leaves a ton of questions:

How busy is this place? What are the odds a meeting would seem out of place? What is the tenor of the crowd? Who would be paying attention to a meeting and noticing?

Further, I would be curious, but not frustratingly so, about what the setting in general looked like. I'm a visual person, I like when an author helps me, visualize what I'm reading, it makes my comprehension easier.

I maintain that you are being disingenuous, because you are refusing to accept that others may find this stuff useful, because you don't and therefore suggest all things be done to your preference. Like I said, don't read something from a source known to do this. Find the AP feed instead, because some of us actually get better understanding from articles written like this.

In response to your reply to me:

I think we're both arguing with emotion here. You said you hated the style and it's rarely done well. I happen to think that Wired isn't a scholarly journal, and fact + emotional narrative can be really enjoyable to read if used appropriately (and I happened to enjoy reading the article). I guess I'm objecting to how you evaluated an entire genre of narrative style. There is irony in using your emotional response to a writing style to argue for a more objective or scientific approach to journalism.

TLDR: "It's not science"

I have an emotional response to crappy statistical analyses too (really), but that hardly negates any critique of such an analysis I would write.

I think the problem here is the motivation for reading. I enjoy reading fiction, love watching movies etc. But I clicked the link to the Wired article to learn something new. If I get entertained too, it's just a bonus, but it's entirely optional. Journalism even has a term for what I ask for, they call it "inverted pyramid"[1]. All the petty details intended to spice-up a story are welcome, but they should be placed appropriately, and should be easy to skim over. And this article is a perfect counter-example.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid

The concept of an inverted pyramid isn't quite what you're looking for here, is it? The inverted pyramid is the idea that a newspaper article leads with the most important facts first, followed by lesser and lesser details, so that one will always have read the most important facts for a given amount of reading no matter how long that amount of reading is.

But that's not really the problem with the Wired article. It's not in a newspaper, so it's legitimate to write it assuming the reader will read the whole thing. It's perfectly fine for the author to tell the story in chronological order (or whatever order is appropriate for communicating the important ideas).

Instead, I think the problem you and I have with it are the unnecessary artistic flourishes and the non-standard chronology designed to "pull" the reader into the article. Does anyone know what this aspect is called?

Edit: On second thought, maybe I'm just projecting. Do you really think that this article would have been better as a reverse pyramid?

Good at making counterfeits, bad at making counterfeiting work.

Saw a trashy Discovery channel doc on counterfeiters. They printed using laser printers, and had a good process for aging the money. That was all that was needed... people just don't look that closely at money most of the time. They got away with it for years, even though they were pretty foolish (spent their own fakes, used the same spot every time to print money, etc.)

I can't tell if all that means there are probably smart people getting away with it constantly because they don't slip up in these dumb ways?

I used to work at my dad's currency exchange. You know why they get away with it? Telling fakes from real requires WEEKS of training. We would get information from the US Mint, Treasury and the Secret Service. The capital investment required probably will outrun the training cost for most retailers.

Totally. A friend in I tried this (not in the US) using bills approximately $20 in value. We had a mediocre Epson printer and just did the approach of scan+print. We'd then handle the bills and throw them with dirt. Nothing fancy; just two kids playing around to get some extra beer money and also just to see if we could pull it off.

Out of the 10 times we tried using the fakes, we only were noticed once. It's very, very easy to do if you aren't trying to make a living at it.

I would imagine these days, it's even easier to pull off, _because_ of the high-tech protections. If you can replicate a single high-profile piece (like a hologram or something), then folks will probably just assume it's good. Most people don't know the tens of different protections, and anything flashy and difficult looking would work. They don't know the details - hell, I'd bet a bill with a holographic mark could be counterfeited using one of the holograms Microsoft uses on their products.

This sounds very fishy. Imaging and scaning software, along with printer drivers have built in currency detectors to prevent this.

Given that the poster said "not in the US," this seems plausible to me. The detectors probably detect dollars and Euro, and maybe a few other high-profile currencies like yen, UK pounds, etc. But do you really think Epson would bother including fingerprints for Lithuanian litas or whatever?

FYI, the notes only need to include the EURion constellation; the software doesn't need a database of currencies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

Still the litas seems to be unprotected, as you said.

So in theory one could make a document un scanable by putting the EURion constellation in it?

This wasn't always the case.

Never ever do this, esp in the US, even as a joke. I know of cases in my college where students counterfeited $20 bills as a drunk joke: what they found out is that irrespective of the amount federal agents and the goddam CIA got involved and they got persecuted to the maximum degree. My prof was called as an expert witness in the case.

I read an article about it a long time ago. The minimum penalties are draconian. An example from the 80s was a kid who had been making photocopies of $1 bills and feeding them into a change machine for free candy. The minimum penalty at the time was something like $100,000. Today they are higher. You don't want to mess with them.

Governments take money seriously. For example everyone knows that Isaac Newton was a great scientist. Few know that he became Master of the Mint, and was responsible for enforcing the traditional penalty for undermining the currency - execution by drawing and quartering. (By all accounts he was very zealous in this task.)

Few know?

That's part of every grammar school boys education. Or was, in my day. Newton sending a couple of dozen men off to Tyburn to be hanged, drawn and quartered was quite memorable.

I live in the United States and grew up in Canada. It certainly is not in the curriculum here, and has been a surprise to everyone I've mentioned it to around here.

If you grew up somewhere else, it may be common knowledge there.

That's because world history in America is much the same as the world series - fully encompassing of the whole world, with countries as far afield as.... Canada :)

I should have mentioned I grew up and went to school in England, and learning the ins and outs of luminaries like Sir Issac Newton was part of history class.

To be fair, we only touched on American history, and obviously seen from the other side of the coin. We kicked out the religious pilgrims so we could get back to partying and starting the industrial revolution.

Actually the USA is more insular than that. Almost nobody here knows even basic historical facts about its neighbors such as, "The only reason that Canada exists is to not be part of the USA."

Provide references if you want to make huge claims like that.

Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Confederation#Influenc... and look at the #1 external cause. That doesn't say much about the history, but does confirm that fear of US invasion was important to Canada's formation. Sure, a lot more internal reasons are given, but that external one was by far the most important and drove the timeline.

Here is more background on that. The official policy of the USA was that it was their manifest destiny to expand/conquer/control a variously defined part of the world that always included Canada. In the 1840s the USA launched a fairly unprovoked war on Mexico and annexed half the country. Coming out of that war, the USA negotiated a treaty where they took a large chunk of British territory in the great plains. Then the USA fought the bloodiest war in history to that point. (The US Civil War.) Coming out of that war the USA was hostile to Canada with the Secretary of Defense making comments indicating that Canada was next. And the Fenian raids (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenian_raids for more) were being launched from US territory against Canadian targets.

2 years and a week after the ending of the Civil War, the act of Confederation created Canada as a single country. 3 years and 11 months after that, Canada had achieved approximately its current borders. (The USA did manage to take the Alaskan panhandle from BS, Newfoundland didn't join Confederation until after WW 2, but the country was recognizable.) And the #1 goal of the new country was to build a railroad across its southern border so that troops could be moved to meet any possible US invasion.

For more historical background, the original separation of Quebec into Upper Canada and Lower Canada (now Ontario and Quebec) was to accommodate refugees from the newly created USA who wished to remain British subjects. In the USA they are called "traitors". In Canada they are still called "loyalists".

And to this day Canada has no real national identity other than, "We're not Americans."

So there. Thank you for proving how little Americans know about Canada, and hopefully you learned something. If you have any follow-up questions I would suggest doing a Google search and reading appropriate Wikipedia articles first.

:sigh:

I was talking about the claim "Almost nobody here[the US] knows even basic historical facts about its neighbors".

Then go and ask Americans basic questions like the one above. Or see how many Canadian provinces they can name. Or Mexican states.

This is news to me and I am known for knowing obscure historical tidbits.

And you become very zealous when the penalty for not protecting the currency is your own painful death.

CIA? What exactly did they do?

The previous comment is probably misremembering; the U.S. Secret Service is responsible for investigating counterfeiting, which seems pretty odd if you're only familiar with them as personal security for presidents.

You're right, it was the Secret Service rather than the CIA.

I find it somewhat interesting that the Secret Service protects bills issued by the Federal Reserve which is nominatively a "private" entity.

That is pretty interesting that the Secret Service deals with more than protecting VIPs. I googled a bit, a turns out they were originally created by Lincoln as a division of the Treasury to combat counterfeiting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secret_Service#Hi...

What happened?

I heard stories from an American student who went to my Canadian university...

Apparently he was back home partying it up with some of his home town friends... when the Secret Service kicked down the door in the middle of a party, immediately subdued his friend (the counterfeiter), and left abruptly.

Apparently he never saw that kid again.

The Secret Service is tasked with currency counterfeiting crimes, not the CIA.

TL;DR version: an after-the-fact account of how a man counterfeited millions all in the pursuit of "art". It makes for a romantic story, if nothing else -- although it certainly is not as sexy as the Leonardo DiCaprio/Tom Hanks Catch Me If You Can version.

The book by Frank Abagnale is a pageturner too. I've always liked reading those "social hacking" books, like Catch Me If You Can, or Kevin Mitnick's story The Art of Deception.

Considering that the central banks have conjured trillions of dollars and euros out of thin air, this story this seems sadly quaint...

Penultimate counterfeiter doesn't sound as good.

...seriously? On HN?

Nobody is printing money out of thin air. When they print more money, they value of the $20 that is in your pocket decreases slightly, but the value of your house increases substantially.

Everybody knows it's not wise to store 100% of your worth in cash.

All money is "conjured" to some extent. Cash has no intrinsic value (you can't eat it or use it to build a house); it only has value because we as a society accept that it does, and accept that governments have the power to print it. Counterfeiting as described in the article is a violation of that social contract. Perhaps you think that all money is counterfeit because banks print it, or something, and that we should instead operate on an economy built around trading shells or bison, but even if that's the case, societal expectations clearly differentiate between what banks do and what this guy did, so if "counterfeiting" is the wrong word to describe the latter and not the former, feel free to suggest a more precise term.

I am amazed that paper banknotes have remained even vaguely counterfeit-resistant for so long. It seems like a very difficult problem, given modern technology; the capital costs of an intaglio press and great plates are high, but some kind of CNC milling should be able to produce equivalents at some point.

The NK superbills are still as far as I know the best quality.

Crazy to think about NK as one of the most backward vile 3rd world despots, but so capable in certain areas.

I would think that EVERY tech innovation/resource/capability is really a proxy service of China, Russia, Iran, etc...

There is no way they would have the tools to do what hey do on a range of fronts if they were not used as a proxy by these other nations.

The superdollar article on Wikipedia is very interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar

I would also recommend the book The Art of Making Money : The Story Of A Master Counterfeiter by Jason Kerstan.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1052267...

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Making-Money-Counterfeiter/dp/...

Back in 1993, an interesting documentary titled "Money Man" was made about currency artist J.S.G. Boggs. I don't know if it's still available.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104909/

Here is a short YouTube clip from the film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEtKSqzpj0Q

Searching images for "jsg boggs art" returns some of his work.

Title is misleading. It's a great story however.

In Australia, we've had polymer notes for 20 years, and counterfeiting is a thing of the past, to the point where I was puzzled as to why someone in the US was marking my $50 note during a purchase while visiting. Paper notes feel nice, but polymer lasts longer and are effectively counterfeit-proof.

Prior to this, we had a woeful $100 note, which was black and white with a bit of subtle colour. Pretty, but a dumb idea for currency. It was not unknown for folks to photocopy one, scrunch it up, and wander into a convenience store in the early hours when the staffer was tired...

US currency isn't printed on paper.

That's not entirely correct. The paper that US Currency is printed on is a linen-cotton blend, but it's still considered a "paper", even though it doesn't come from trees.

There was a fascinating article about this on Planet Money a few weeks back, including an interview with the head of Crane's, the company that provides the source paper to the US Mint.

Our old $100 note wasn't either. It was the colour scheme that was the problem. Nevertheless, if it's still common to use a pen to determine fake notes, your technology is miles behind.

This sounds like a path to getting hired by the FBI/CIA after you serve your jail time.

We need to be employing these sorts of lifehackers.

If you read this article and have a halfway decent model of the world in your head, you will realize that police entrapment was the proximate cause of this real, talented artist low on his money becoming a counterfeiter: i.e. they made him do it, and he wouldn't have done it without them, and a judge released him early on probation for this reason (from the article).

But the damage was done. Still without any money, this genuine artist (who had "refused to do two Warhol copies, including forged signatures", always signing his own name instead on homage pieces) now had a criminal skill that had no other applications.

The fact is most people here have had a time in their life when they had unhoned skills (e.g. software/hardware hacking) that, if they only landed the right internship, would become very valuable. When the police are the proximate cause to creating this "lucky" internship (lucky in that the guy had 0 experience with it, or even interest for that matter) to create skills that have only a criminal market [1], something is very wrong.

It would be great if Freakonomics covered entrapment some time, as it's very insidious - on the surface it seeems that if you do it you "would have done it anyway", but this example shows pretty obviously that this isn't true in any form whatsoever.

[1] EDIT: or not even a criminal market, as the case may be:

"The problem was, Kuhl and his partners couldn’t make a deal with anyone. It wasn’t for lack of trying—a sale brokered by a criminal-minded former cop fell through, and another transaction with a supposed buyer in Majorca fizzled. That was when Becker and his colleagues decided to help things along by providing an attractive buyer themselves."

I disagree. In the article Kuhl had a legitimate buyer who backed out. The bills where printed and Kuhl needed a buyer. The police decided to become the buyer but the counterfeit bills had already been created and the artist would have found a buyer eventually.

The reason I added that EDIT is because I actually hadn't read that far down yet - I was just referring to his first counterfeiting gig when I first posted the comment: inline search the article for "Kuhl’s counterfeiting career had begun a decade earlier" and read from there.

Of course you have no basis for your claim that he would have eventually found a buyer. This is a "manufactured criminal" and the police certainly got fed up with waiting for an actual market for his work to materialize. Entrapment is so insidious because when you turn a good guy, maybe there's no market for "good guy's evil works" anyway. (Who knows why, maybe he looks like an informant/plant/mole because he's a real artist and normal, genuine, good guy, who only got into 1 single crime - and no corresponding culture or connections, no other crimes, nothing - through an entrapment operation.)

Please read the article more carefully and you'll see exactly what I mean.

This is a very good point - because the costs of trusting the wrong person are so high (Jail, them stealing your money) then the most important thing for criminals is a solid understanding of the background of the other person.

This is why families and old school friends frequently figure together. And why jail makes for furure partners.

Perhaps we should start oldjailbuddy.com - networking for criminals

It's actually just one example of my point - we don't really need to speculate on whether there's a market or if not, why not.

It's like if entrapment convinces your performance-oriented daughter who's short on cash (to make this an analogy with the artist in this article) to have sex for money as a kind of performance (same convoluted logic as the artist's in the article).

If afterwards she tries again, there's no proof there's actually a criminal market for her and her criminal soliciting skills learned for the entrapment. But she may or may not know that. One entrapment operation can ruin your daughter's life, who perhaps had literally never given a single thought to prostitution, just as you and I have never thought of armed robbery. It's like a fucked-up internship offered by the government, only instead of setting you up for life with your newfound skills, it fucks you up for life, as in the case we've just read about.

Nerd brain recoiling in attempt to square first sentence of this comment with last one.

Reading carefully affords one the privilege of reading less.

Doubleplusgood. We have always been at war with Reddit.

I said Kuhl would eventually find a buyer because there is a market for his work and he's sold in the past. It is reasonable to assume he would have sold the bills he made.

Regardless, since just printing the counterfeit notes is illegal he became a criminal by creating them, not by selling them to the police. The entrapment did not create the crime, Kuhl did.

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