Hacker News Reader

Comment by kennywinker | Hacker News Reader

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?

View on HN

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com