I was able to sit in a class taught by a treasury agent. The fakes, he showed us a real bill beside a fake $100, are actually better in the sense of the artwork and finishing. They are also printed on the same type of presses. Amazing.
@@marekstanek112 i would assume the counterfeiters try a little too hard in a sense when designing and manufacturing the money which makes the fake money seem better quality.
@@littlegoobiedespite asking the correct question, you’ll never get an answer as that would give away “methods and apparatus” of state sponsored counterfeiters.
I work as a retail cashier. I’d say 1 out of 10 or so people make jokes about how they printed it themselves whenever I examine a $50 or $100. “I just printed it this morning!” “Careful, the ink’s not dry!” etc. It’s right up there with “If it doesn’t scan it’s free!”
@Bandrik they are pleasant, saying the most mundane joke ever isn't a sense of humor, if anything it's the opposite, I do appreciate anyone in a good mood though
If I were trying to printing money, I'd try using thick air instead of that thin stuff everybody talks about. Thin air NEVER works! You'd think people would quit trying to pull stuff out of it by now, but I guess not.
Why would anyone counterfeit U.S. money when it has so little value? Everyone who has a printer has tried it.. Kim Jung Un's 100's are probably better than ours.
What’s so funny about the attempt to undermine the greatest economy in world? The world standard is the US dollar. It’s not the Euro or the Yen or Chinese Yuan.
I don't understand how introduction of new notes with more sophisticated security features is a blow to counterfeiters unless old notes are declared as no longer valid and removed from circulation
It's partly theatric, partly practical. The theatric part is to ensure the mass don't freak out and tank the economy. The practical part is to make it more expensive to produce and distribute large amounts of old notes. When the old notes get to the bank, it's most likely sent to the feds to issue new notes (probably not in any physical sense). It's a win-win for both of them so there's no reason not to do it. Eventually, people will run out of old bills and it would be incredibly hard to distribute the bills at scale. Like sure, if you're cashing in like 10 bills, that's fine. But it would be too expensive to distribute anything meaningful to a government like North Korea. I don't know the exact number but let's say you need to wash $10,000 per person. If you want to wash just $100M, you'd need at least 10,000 people. It's near impossible to have that many people in on an illegal operation this risky without someone messing it up. Even if everyone has a 99% chance of success (which is highly unlikely considering anyone with that many old bills are gonna be audited, or one person might be a snitch, etc), it's still astronomical odds, around 0.(40 zeroes)22% chance of success. So it is pretty effective.
@@FakeReal007 I've heard of people who hold a note with both hands and "snap" it quickly. They can hear the difference. It's down to minute paper thickness differences.
I think what's more reassuring is the rapid digitization of monetary transactions as time goes by. We have well passed the threshold of counterfeiting becoming unsustainable.
@@alanheah7221 You'd be surprised. When I worked at McDonald's there were crew members who would go off at people for trying to pay with counterfeits. They were making $7.25 an hour for a multi-billion dollar company and acted like it was their own.
The editing and graphics are well done and the topic of counterfeit notes is interesting. Keep up the good work, hope to see more videos from you in the future
@@TrentAdam The fact that you don't know about it proves how successful they are! You only hear about the people getting caught, not the people who actually succeeded.
Why do governments base their currency printing on Swiss based hardware? Wouldn't be more secure to self produce all these critical assets? I am clearly ignorant over this topic, but maybe someone can clarify it.
@@DaveOlesenMore so the have a monopoly on a very niche industry but due to their policy of quasi neutrality most dont see a problem with buying from the Swiss rather than invest in developing their own. Its like building lithography machines. Some countries have a monopoly on it
I didn't know about the 100 dollar bills. A few hours ago I googled Mystic Paint Ford Cobra because someone mentioned it in a comment in a car group on FB. Now I read your comment on a video that was suggested to me that I've never seen before and on a channel that I'm not a subscriber.
Yeah worked a case where there were large amounts order slowly over along span if time from a Ford dealership in the bay area and that was exactly what they were looking for ... color change prism paint for the stang cobra touch up paint...same same as the bills numbers ... Counterfeit has been a big thing in Cali and Minnesota where the Hmmong came. They usually run those ops ... Cup foods anyone...
Fun fact: the best counterfeited US dollars in the late 80s were made in a city next to my hometown (now merged to it). There is a legend that some of the printing plates are still missing. But I have not seen the police report to give a definitive answer for this one. I actually ordered the yearbook from one perpetrator's son's printing press and he was working there at then late stage of the sentence. They claim that there was no ancle bracelet in Finland back then, but the guy was clearly sporting one. Maybe US officials made him to use it somehow? I was offered a job by the father/inmate (clearly running the show), but I politely declined as I had figured out the situation, already.
I'm glad I found this profile! Hopefully you will get some sponsors to your videos soon as they are really captivating and you deserve to earn well on them. Subscribed!
There was a film about a guy counterfeiting us bills with an ink jet printer and some cans of spray paint, and it took years to catch him. In the UK the notes are made from plastic and have many security features. Despite the fact that the new King Charles £20 notes have just been released, almost perfect counterfeits are already circulating. Criminals don't bother with the £50 notes anymore as no shops accept them due to crime.
american bills i feel the use of a laminated cotton-paper blend might be part of why it's so difficult to counterfeit. it's extremely hard to fake, and any significant deviation in paper quality could be detectable. plastic largely feels the same regardless of quality, so that signal doesn't exist
I saw someone pay with a 50 in B&M bargains last week. the cashier put it under the UV, it was ok so accepted it. Customer was a pub barmaid paid in cash. as you say the gangs don't bother with 50s any more so it's gone back to being seen as legit
Maybe this is a stupid question, but why didn't North Korea keep printing the old versions of USD banknotes? It's not like every time a new security feature is introduced, all of the older notes are taken out of circulation. So wouldn't it be easier to print the old versions without such elaborate security measures?
@@santiagoalmiron9596actually they are. That's why with years you see less and less of the old bills. The way it's done if an old note, gets deposited into a Bank. The bank takes it out of the circulation, sends it to Federal Reserve mint, and the Federal Reserve replaces it with a new bill.
It's hard to get away with depositing large amounts of older design but brand new notes. Older designs get taken out of circulation and replaced pretty frequently... so the obvious question is "Where did you get this?"
I was impressed by the quality of the video, subscribed to the channel and saw there are 7 videos. Keep up the good work, this channel is definitely out of ordinary
If the "fake" money can be spent basically everywhere and almost everyone will accept it, and our currency is based on whether we believe it is real, is the money really "fake?"
Money equals debt, and it's illegal in any jurisdiction to fabricate someone else's debt out of thin air. Banks fabricate money by taking in third parties' debt. Then these third parties must work, hunt that money and give it back to the bank in order for their debt to be erased.
@@thealkymyst…wait …. Just a piece of paper the doesn’t represent any real value…. Wait… kinda Reminds of real money that is not counterfeit printed by the federal reserve. I’m going to blow my head off now.
It's real, it's just counterfeit. But both are fraudulent because the US performs the same type of operations with their currency as their counterfiters do
That was good. I worked in security printing in two different industries and for a major printing machine manufacturer during the time the notes in the video were produced and detected. I was not allowed to talk about my work until new notes surpassed what I had worked on. I don't think the NK forgeries are gone. It's not just banknotes, there are plenty of documents that are worth more than $100 they could be printing.
1:10 hold up. It took the feds a detailed analysis to find Two Small flaws, but the bank teller just thought something was off about the bill? That does not add up.
Maybe he went there because of the serial number, most of the times the serial numbers in these bills are repeated or by the feel of the note, wonder how probable it is to have pristine feeling bills in an asian bank? Particularly of bills abroad...
Probably some cover up to hide the real way they discovered the fake bills. They don't want to expose how they check so counterfeiters don't learn how to work around it.
If the two details on the first bill mentioned were so slightly off, what was it about the bill that made the lady who marked it as a potential fake that she saw ?
As someone who collects currency, I can attest that it’s a matter of practice. While you cannot always say what precisely is incorrect on a coin or bill immediately, you have a feeling that it is fake. I compare it to the uncanny valley where you have an instinct telling you it is incorrect. It was also likely a feeling that noted the teller, as experience tells you what money should feel like. Since the paper for actual currency is highly restricted, a fake can only use extremely similar paper, meaning there is a slight difference that is hard to quantify.
@@matthewwren2830once knew someone who printed banknotes legitimately for various countries. Every sheet of paper was closely controlled and the employees were subject to random checks at any time 😮
Fun fact: there were pirated Microsoft products being sold in Asia that were such high quality that even Microsoft's head of anti-piracy didn't spot it. Never underestimate criminals.
My theory is that the teller "noticing" something wrong with the bills, is in fact just a cover story. The person depositing the money was probably on a federal watchlist. The money was set aside and sent away for analysis.
@@travelinkevin5130 Malcom Gladwell wrote about this phenomenon in his book "Blink: the power of thinking without thinking". The human subconscious can process a tremendous amount of information in the background and experts in certain fields often get a 'feeling' about something before their conscious awareness realizes what was wrong.
@@travelinkevin5130 Yeah maybe the cotton & linen blend did not FEEL perfectly accurate. For bank staff who handle lots of cash, that might be the easiest tell.
What an amazing video. What was the ROI on it? Who paid for this to be aired? Where did you get all this gripping cinematic info. Are you a student and your teacher had you all do this topic? Or do you work for a content producing company?
There’s one thing i don’t understand, whenever the usa updates its currency what’s stopping the north koreans to just continue printing the old designs? They still are accepted as good, right?… i don’t understand
That worker at the beginning was full of crap, no way he eyeballed something experts needed crazy advanced technology for the 80s to figure it out! Pollyanna just trying to look diligent to the boss cause if he's wrong there's no down side😂
As another comment mentioned, I believe that the worker saying something was off about the bill was a lie and it was probably the person depositing / using the bills that tipped them off with their behavior.
If you handle something that you have to meticulously check in large quantities everyday for years, you actually notice that "something off" about something but you don't know what it is exactly. People who handled the dollar in escalation all definitely eyeballed this "something off" themselves or they would have brushed off the report and probably said to the worker "nah you're just tired, get a day off or two" Also, people who work with a ton of money are diligent and mistakes are harshly penalized. Imagine if bank people are like you and just brush it off because there's no down side then more people will make more fake money, and before you knew it your country's economy has inflated so much you're six figure salary mean nothing when the price of a can of Spam balloons up to $200
@aLwE17 first of all the Secret Service couldn't find anything wrong and their whole job is to find fakes so don't give me this "it feels wrong" bs ESPECIALLY considering the technology back then. Secondly I have some bad news for you: the money that's printed today is already fiat so it has no actual value anyway since it's not backed by anything. Just printed out of thin air. Last but not least some more bad news, the world is already FULL of fake bills being used in circulation RIGHT NOW! It's like those cornucopia of fake paintings, as long as everyone think it's authentic, then it's authentic.
My girlfriend's sister made money for various countries. She got bored and concealed the word "SEX" in the bills of the Seychelles. You can find it online. I myself once applied to a bank note company in Bronx NY to draw banknotes, but they didn't hire me.
That's cool. I used to do design and prepress work for consumer product packaging (things like bags, boxes, and labels). After a couple years, I started incorporating my initials into "complex" designs (ones with a lot of small details in something like an illustration or photo). There were billions of products sold with my initials on them.
If the USA used the Australian polymer banknote technology, they would not have this problem. Many countries use the Australian technology, including the UK, Romania, Canada, New Zealand, Russia, Israel, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Mexico, Singapore, Malaysia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Libya, the Philippines, Egypt, and many many more. The USA twice tried to develop polymer banknote technology and failed, which is an indication of how hard it must be to *copy* these notes if even making something *similar* proved to be impossible with all the resources of the USA.
I don't think they want it to be too too hard to counterfeit because that will erode its reserve status. They want it to be easy to use in all settings. Bit of a balancing act.
@@kellymoses8566 If that was an issue, then why did the USA twice try to develop polymer banknotes? They even printed 40,000 test notes for evaluation.
@@kellymoses8566 This can't be true. There could be a transition period where both types of notes circulate, and eventually the old ones will be phased out.
11:18 - the 3D security ribbon is detectable with a wire or paperclip: you slightly fold the bill along the length of the ribbon, and then you can slide the wire under the small strip of the paper that overlaps the ribbon. It’s an easy way to check authenticity of these new bills - at least until the counterfeiters figure out how to replicate that feature.
The US prints money at a rate so fast that the tiny amount that North Korea prints is barely a rounding error on the 6th digit after the decimal place.
That is so utterly absurd that I find it hard to grasp that ANYONE could believe it, and yet at this point 39 people have already given it a thumbs up. FRIGHTENING!!!
US M1 money supply increased from ~ 4 trillion dollars to about 20 trillion in 2020. The Irish guy was caught with 25 million worth of fakes, wich is ~1/1000000 of this. So this seems to be in the right ballpark. Note that most of this money is not printed, it only exists in the computer systems of banks. What is frightening is that people do zero research before running their mouth.
@@ZBB0001from 2020-2023 the US printed roughly 15 trillion USD. 0.000009 of that equals 135 million USD. How much did the DPRK print during those same years?
Even a small amount of such currency is worth a lot to a country like nk, which is both small and willing to use nearly all of that on military projects.
@@willemm Can Switzerland trade with North Korea legally? ChatGPT: Switzerland can trade with North Korea but must adhere to international sanctions imposed by the UN and the specific restrictions of the Swiss government, which limit certain goods such as weapons and luxury items, to ensure compliance with these international obligations.
The average person can't detect them. But even more concerning is the possibility that NK is now producing notes so good even the experts can't detect them.
Very informative and interesting. One tip I would give is that when you mention amounts of money, a nice addition would be if you would give a number that's adjusted for inflation, because money is way less worth now than in the early 2000's.
@@erikwigelandiestad2270Yes. Hegemon allready started to collapse. 36TRILION of national debt. Not at all counting firms and ordinary people debts. Check the facts, bot.
At Christmas 83 i took what appeared to be a $100 bill that appeared faded like it been thru the wash. After the crowds subsided & i was dropping cash & took time to look closely then had doubts. The next day i took it to our bank & 3 tellers said it was good but two sad it was counterfeit. I called the local fibbies & they came out, looked at the bill then tucked it away & said it's counterfeit & left with it. My boss actually said to me-"You should have taken it down the mall & passed it off to a fellow retailer." To say the least i was disappointed with her shitty selfish attitude.
How in the hell did some random normal person notice those extremely tiny discrepancies and decide to send it to the FBI for analysis? That honestly seems too far-fetched to be real.
To improve controls add custom variable DNA into Ink, UV & paper elements used. Mix this via in house teams after base production products arrive. Some will have already tested this old idea.
@@brandonnesfanexactly. This would create mass problem, as basically once the bills get in circulation, they would end up from one to another place, to another, and so on. At the end, a every second legit business would be considered counterfeit maker, because they would have some part unknowingly of counterfeits and create mass problem and probably. This on global scale can result in the downfall of the currency. Just Imagine what would happen with the currency when literally staggering part is fake and people become aware of it. Also governments still rely on hard cash, when it is about making not very white deals if we can say it this way. Deals that should go off record and in physical currency. That is why gold is so valuable and for example country like Russia has massive amounts of it, although their currency is not exactly considered strong.
There was a similar case in the last decade in Denmark where a fake bill was actually "more real" than the real bills. The original 500 DKK bills were supposed to be a specific shade of blue, but the color was deemed too difficult to achieve consistently in the printing press and therefore too expensive. Another shade of blue was selected for the official bills. And then suddenly a few fakes came along in the last decade, or so, which had that originally intended shade of blue, which was the only reason they got noticed.
@kierentuohey9650 No. Out of the top 10 most traded currencies in the world, only 3 are still "paper". US, China and Hong Kong (so pretty much just China and the US)
@@kaydog890 you missed the point, my point is anything can be money. A piece of paper by itself isn’t worth $100 but because we print the number 100 on it that somehow gives it more value. A hundred dollar note doesn’t mean shit to any other animal. So the concept of fake money kinda sounds pretty redundant.
Kim Jong Il and his family lived there while he was at school. There is even a rumour that he has another older child (a son) who is abroad under a false name - that son has never really been seen or mentioned in official state media, so nobody really knows who he is.
At 01:35 the narrator refers to the investigators determining the bill's ''PROVIDENCE. The captioning confirms that spelling based upon his pronunciation. That's a malapropism; the use of a similar sounding word to the one actually meant by the context. ''PROVENCE'' refers to an item's source or origin, so that is what was actually meant. 'Courtesy of the grammar and syntax police! 🚔 🙄 🤣 😑 🚔 🇨🇦 🍁 🇨🇦 🇺🇸 🌎 🇺🇲 💵 💴 🇺🇸 🌎 🇺🇲 🇨🇦 🍁 🇨🇦
I worked in a money center back then, and we noticed them too. The paper is normally a give away, but not for those super notes, they were printed on the correct paper. When you are counting tons of money all day long for a few years you can feel the average fake straight away. There is a second super fake with slightly different errors. A guy at work noticed it and we spent all day studying it and arguing. In the end it was sent off and we were later told we'd found a super fake. They had to go check the plates to make sure. Was a boring job most of the time. 🙃
Cambodia uses dual currencies. The Riel and USD. North Korea still brings counterfeit USD of all denominations into Phnom Phen. They exchange them on the street for 80% face value. As the notes get captured by local banks and handed in to the National Bank, they are recirculated and redistributed around Asia.
To let you know how little the super dollar really meant. It's estimated only about 45 million dollars of super notes were printed. The Americam government itself prints half a billion dollars a day. This means all super notes combined is less than 10% of what US prints in a single day
Not entirely true, Vast majority of those bills printed by the government are to replace the ones being destroyed. Of course, the US economy is so large that even then, the supernotes barely impacted the economy if at all.
Wouldn’t it be smarter and more secure. That the USA would make their own proprietary printing machine and not use a company who can sell the same printer to any country?
It is critisized that all values of banknotes are all of the same grey-green colour. In most countries, every value is associated with a specific colour, which makes them easy to distinguish before we take a banknote out of our wallet
I was able to sit in a class taught by a treasury agent. The fakes, he showed us a real bill beside a fake $100, are actually better in the sense of the artwork and finishing. They are also printed on the same type of presses. Amazing.
So you mean the US Dollars that look like taken from Monopoly are the real ones, and the ones that look like real money are counterfeit.
@@marekstanek112 i would assume the counterfeiters try a little too hard in a sense when designing and manufacturing the money which makes the fake money seem better quality.
@@kailencummings3554 I'm sure the authentic bill presses see a lot more use, and are thus more worn out, hence the lower definition
what was the problem with those fakes that gave it away?
@@littlegoobiedespite asking the correct question, you’ll never get an answer as that would give away “methods and apparatus” of state sponsored counterfeiters.
I'm a journeyman Pressman, master printer. When I shop using $100, most check it. I then say "it's good...I've printed for 37 years"😂
Same joke every normie every does
As someone who's worked at the local town print shop for a few years, I appreciated this :)
I work as a retail cashier. I’d say 1 out of 10 or so people make jokes about how they printed it themselves whenever I examine a $50 or $100. “I just printed it this morning!” “Careful, the ink’s not dry!” etc.
It’s right up there with “If it doesn’t scan it’s free!”
@josephatthecoop At least those folks have a sense of humor. I'd take that over a Karen any day
@Bandrik they are pleasant, saying the most mundane joke ever isn't a sense of humor, if anything it's the opposite, I do appreciate anyone in a good mood though
Haha. Printing money out of thin air! Only the Fed is allowed to do that!
If I were trying to printing money, I'd try using thick air instead of that thin stuff everybody talks about. Thin air NEVER works! You'd think people would quit trying to pull stuff out of it by now, but I guess not.
Why would anyone counterfeit U.S. money when it has so little value? Everyone who has a printer has tried it.. Kim Jung Un's 100's are probably better than ours.
@@BeeFunKnee🫨
What’s so funny about the attempt to undermine the greatest economy in world? The world standard is the US dollar. It’s not the Euro or the Yen or Chinese Yuan.
@@davidperry3257Greatest economy? In terms of debt so high that it is mathematically impossible to be settled, ever.
I don't understand how introduction of new notes with more sophisticated security features is a blow to counterfeiters unless old notes are declared as no longer valid and removed from circulation
@@SameDifferentDay average person wouldn't have neither new or old counterfeited bills. That doesn't really answer my question
It's partly theatric, partly practical. The theatric part is to ensure the mass don't freak out and tank the economy. The practical part is to make it more expensive to produce and distribute large amounts of old notes. When the old notes get to the bank, it's most likely sent to the feds to issue new notes (probably not in any physical sense). It's a win-win for both of them so there's no reason not to do it. Eventually, people will run out of old bills and it would be incredibly hard to distribute the bills at scale. Like sure, if you're cashing in like 10 bills, that's fine. But it would be too expensive to distribute anything meaningful to a government like North Korea. I don't know the exact number but let's say you need to wash $10,000 per person. If you want to wash just $100M, you'd need at least 10,000 people. It's near impossible to have that many people in on an illegal operation this risky without someone messing it up. Even if everyone has a 99% chance of success (which is highly unlikely considering anyone with that many old bills are gonna be audited, or one person might be a snitch, etc), it's still astronomical odds, around 0.(40 zeroes)22% chance of success. So it is pretty effective.
@@ALEXFVHS Once the differentiating flaw is found, the software in bill scanners is updated to check for that.
They are removed by banks as they receive them. Seriously last time you seen a 20 pre security?
There is a constant process of taking old bills out of circulation for destruction. That's why we only really see modern 20's, 50's and 100's.
so a normal worker noticed these 2 flaws??? wish i had this eyesite and knowledge.
Consider how long this note was circulating BEFORE it was noticed by this worker...
Also by the feel. If it feels fuzzy or thick like printer paper its fake. You can also wet the seal and rub your finger. If it smudges it's fake.
@@MikodoHizosuper notes don’t smudge. It’s probably the paper material though yea.
@@FakeReal007 I've heard of people who hold a note with both hands and "snap" it quickly. They can hear the difference. It's down to minute paper thickness differences.
What the heck is 'eyesite?' LOL
No new supernotes have been discovered, well that’s reassuring isn’t it.
Yes and no. Yes if the counterfeiters cannot produce them, no if they can …
Well you think a lowly bsnk teller would care if it was counterfeit
I think what's more reassuring is the rapid digitization of monetary transactions as time goes by. We have well passed the threshold of counterfeiting becoming unsustainable.
@@alanheah7221 You'd be surprised. When I worked at McDonald's there were crew members who would go off at people for trying to pay with counterfeits. They were making $7.25 an hour for a multi-billion dollar company and acted like it was their own.
😂
The production value on this is insane! Love it. Please post more!
I couldn’t agree more….fascinating video & the tonal quality of narrator’s voice also is superb
@@andyischillin6724 I am so glad he didn't use ai voice!
The editing and graphics are well done and the topic of counterfeit notes is interesting. Keep up the good work, hope to see more videos from you in the future
To be fair, the US dollar note looks ridiculously easy to counterfeit. It looks like a piece of paper from the 1800s lmao
You’d be surprised, there’s a ton of markings on it
I dunno if that were true there would be a lot more successful operations
@@TrentAdam The fact that you don't know about it proves how successful they are! You only hear about the people getting caught, not the people who actually succeeded.
@@MultiSciGeekjust like the cameras in your walls that I keep. You know they’re successful because you haven’t found them!
Well then, try to replicate it. And you will very easily see that looks can be deceiving
Why do governments base their currency printing on Swiss based hardware? Wouldn't be more secure to self produce all these critical assets? I am clearly ignorant over this topic, but maybe someone can clarify it.
@@raulbeienheimer had a friend who worked for a company producing genuine bank notes for foreign governments . In Manchester
My guess is that it's for the same reason that Swiss watches are so prized. They're insanely precise systems. do!
They had the best stuff for doing it. It's the "no need to re-invent the wheel if you can buy it from the Swiss" policy.
often its just cheaper and more efficient.
@@DaveOlesenMore so the have a monopoly on a very niche industry but due to their policy of quasi neutrality most dont see a problem with buying from the Swiss rather than invest in developing their own. Its like building lithography machines. Some countries have a monopoly on it
Fun fact. The prisms used in the the $100 bill were also used in the Mystic paint for the 90s Ford Mustang Cobra.
Make TOYOTA Supra Great Again 😎 Scotty Kilmer
For a Mustang? So, the fake money isn't only fake, it's really gay too?
I didn't know about the 100 dollar bills. A few hours ago I googled Mystic Paint Ford Cobra because someone mentioned it in a comment in a car group on FB. Now I read your comment on a video that was suggested to me that I've never seen before and on a channel that I'm not a subscriber.
Yeah worked a case where there were large amounts order slowly over along span if time from a Ford dealership in the bay area and that was exactly what they were looking for ... color change prism paint for the stang cobra touch up paint...same same as the bills numbers ...
Counterfeit has been a big thing in Cali and Minnesota where the Hmmong came. They usually run those ops ...
Cup foods anyone...
Ah, verhly interesting-uhyu, plreeze-uh direhct me tou where’rr we may’uh-u recceeve-uh-u ford cobra 1990, fellou American.
Excellent presentation! Calming and straightforward. 😊
Amazingly produced and absolutely riveting. Had absolutely no idea that N Korea was once into counterfeiting.
Keep up the great work!!
Yeah they are still into it.. Most certainly
"Was once" oh no no. they got good at this shit
I guess the "great work" applies to the video and not the counterfeiting?
@@willemm😂
They still are but instead of exchanging dollars they would counterfeit rupees/dirhams or pesos and then exchange them for dollars/euros
Banger videos man please dont stop top shelf stuff
Slava HYUNDAI 🦾 Heroyam Samsung Galaxy 🤳
Fantastic production! Well done Sir!
I wish this channel had more videos. They are put together well and informative.
Fun fact: the best counterfeited US dollars in the late 80s were made in a city next to my hometown (now merged to it). There is a legend that some of the printing plates are still missing. But I have not seen the police report to give a definitive answer for this one.
I actually ordered the yearbook from one perpetrator's son's printing press and he was working there at then late stage of the sentence. They claim that there was no ancle bracelet in Finland back then, but the guy was clearly sporting one. Maybe US officials made him to use it somehow? I was offered a job by the father/inmate (clearly running the show), but I politely declined as I had figured out the situation, already.
A friend used to get 200 fake for 40 real. He'd go to carwashes, exchange for change and take rolls of them to convert at the bank.
That wasn't fun
Mika,
Where in Finland were the counterfeits made, I’ve never heard of this?
I'm glad I found this profile! Hopefully you will get some sponsors to your videos soon as they are really captivating and you deserve to earn well on them.
Subscribed!
There was a film about a guy counterfeiting us bills with an ink jet printer and some cans of spray paint, and it took years to catch him. In the UK the notes are made from plastic and have many security features. Despite the fact that the new King Charles £20 notes have just been released, almost perfect counterfeits are already circulating. Criminals don't bother with the £50 notes anymore as no shops accept them due to crime.
american bills i feel the use of a laminated cotton-paper blend might be part of why it's so difficult to counterfeit. it's extremely hard to fake, and any significant deviation in paper quality could be detectable. plastic largely feels the same regardless of quality, so that signal doesn't exist
I saw someone pay with a 50 in B&M bargains last week. the cashier put it under the UV, it was ok so accepted it. Customer was a pub barmaid paid in cash. as you say the gangs don't bother with 50s any more so it's gone back to being seen as legit
Maybe this is a stupid question, but why didn't North Korea keep printing the old versions of USD banknotes? It's not like every time a new security feature is introduced, all of the older notes are taken out of circulation. So wouldn't it be easier to print the old versions without such elaborate security measures?
Exchange offices are no longer accepting old notes around the globe. Some may accept them by a big fee
@@santiagoalmiron9596actually they are. That's why with years you see less and less of the old bills. The way it's done if an old note, gets deposited into a Bank. The bank takes it out of the circulation, sends it to Federal Reserve mint, and the Federal Reserve replaces it with a new bill.
It's hard to get away with depositing large amounts of older design but brand new notes. Older designs get taken out of circulation and replaced pretty frequently... so the obvious question is "Where did you get this?"
yeah sure print a 20 year old design in mint condition nobody would ever suspect it
@@helper_bot who doesn't have $130 million in cash in a safety deposit box?
This video made feel in some secret mission briefing. Nice job
I was impressed by the quality of the video, subscribed to the channel and saw there are 7 videos. Keep up the good work, this channel is definitely out of ordinary
Mad love to your videos all the way from New Zealand ❤
If the "fake" money can be spent basically everywhere and almost everyone will accept it, and our currency is based on whether we believe it is real, is the money really "fake?"
Deep man.....😉
Yeah, but its just a piece of paper that doesn't represent any real value... wait...
Money equals debt, and it's illegal in any jurisdiction to fabricate someone else's debt out of thin air. Banks fabricate money by taking in third parties' debt. Then these third parties must work, hunt that money and give it back to the bank in order for their debt to be erased.
@@thealkymyst…wait …. Just a piece of paper the doesn’t represent any real value…. Wait… kinda Reminds of real money that is not counterfeit printed by the federal reserve. I’m going to blow my head off now.
It's real, it's just counterfeit. But both are fraudulent because the US performs the same type of operations with their currency as their counterfiters do
I was able to tell that it was fake by the korean man on the bill. That thumbnail can't fool me! 😎
Slava KIMCHI 🍛 Heroyam Bulgogi 🍚
Reminds me of the story of the guy who for Halloween printed fake dollars with Obama's face on them.
That was good. I worked in security printing in two different industries and for a major printing machine manufacturer during the time the notes in the video were produced and detected. I was not allowed to talk about my work until new notes surpassed what I had worked on. I don't think the NK forgeries are gone. It's not just banknotes, there are plenty of documents that are worth more than $100 they could be printing.
Switch to Australian Polymer notes. Yet to be successfully counterfeited.
“Secret Service agent James Carter… got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it Lee?”
1:10 hold up. It took the feds a detailed analysis to find Two Small flaws, but the bank teller just thought something was off about the bill? That does not add up.
Maybe he went there because of the serial number, most of the times the serial numbers in these bills are repeated or by the feel of the note, wonder how probable it is to have pristine feeling bills in an asian bank? Particularly of bills abroad...
@carddamom188 maybe you're grasping at straws. Nowhere did it say anything about the serial number. Shut up.
Probably some cover up to hide the real way they discovered the fake bills. They don't want to expose how they check so counterfeiters don't learn how to work around it.
as one other commented said, he was probably more suspicious of the depositor than the money itself
@vidanimated6850 more daydreams and bs. Again, not mentioned once. Y'all love your little theories tho huh?
No new super notes discovered.... that we know of. Maybe they just got better xD
The guy in the Philippe who recognised it was a fake need a raise lol
Well detailed post. Subscribed.
Coming up with a new note design is nuts. They don't recall and cancel the old design so they're still good.
Amazing video and channel. Very happy I came across it ❤
Imagine how fun it is working in the “crimes in other countries” department
Excellent video. Impressive research and presentation. Well done!
If the two details on the first bill mentioned were so slightly off, what was it about the bill that made the lady who marked it as a potential fake that she saw ?
As someone who collects currency, I can attest that it’s a matter of practice. While you cannot always say what precisely is incorrect on a coin or bill immediately, you have a feeling that it is fake. I compare it to the uncanny valley where you have an instinct telling you it is incorrect. It was also likely a feeling that noted the teller, as experience tells you what money should feel like. Since the paper for actual currency is highly restricted, a fake can only use extremely similar paper, meaning there is a slight difference that is hard to quantify.
@@matthewwren2830once knew someone who printed banknotes legitimately for various countries. Every sheet of paper was closely controlled and the employees were subject to random checks at any time 😮
Crispiness, hardness, friction, smell, sound, weight
Fun fact: there were pirated Microsoft products being sold in Asia that were such high quality that even Microsoft's head of anti-piracy didn't spot it. Never underestimate criminals.
My theory is that the teller "noticing" something wrong with the bills, is in fact just a cover story. The person depositing the money was probably on a federal watchlist. The money was set aside and sent away for analysis.
The graphics and voice are amazing
It couldn't be that good of a fake if a bank manager thought it "didn't look right"
Original claim was that "it didn't *_feel_* right".
@@travelinkevin5130 Malcom Gladwell wrote about this phenomenon in his book "Blink: the power of thinking without thinking". The human subconscious can process a tremendous amount of information in the background and experts in certain fields often get a 'feeling' about something before their conscious awareness realizes what was wrong.
I wonder if it wasn’t all in bundles like that….they would have gotten away with it….
@@travelinkevin5130 Yeah maybe the cotton & linen blend did not FEEL perfectly accurate. For bank staff who handle lots of cash, that might be the easiest tell.
@@travelinkevin5130 real currency also smells a certain way.
Really well presented please do money Counterfeiting from around the world series one of the best videos i have seen for a long time
Wow - fascinating, and excellent production!
What an amazing video. What was the ROI on it? Who paid for this to be aired? Where did you get all this gripping cinematic info. Are you a student and your teacher had you all do this topic? Or do you work for a content producing company?
Christ these are so well produced
Yeah the notes are crazy, video is pretty good too tho
WOner of channel his name is Chris?
You know him?
Nice to point out the mistakes in the fake bills I bet this info will end up in nk
This channel will blow up.
There’s one thing i don’t understand, whenever the usa updates its currency what’s stopping the north koreans to just continue printing the old designs? They still are accepted as good, right?… i don’t understand
Someone is employed to make the fakes look like used notes 😂
The amount of them in rotation. Looks sketchy having stacks and stacks of old hundreds when you haven’t seen one for years
Counterfeiters have even managed to do the plastic bills used in Australia and New zealand really well.
Production quality goes brrr
Korean money printer go brrr
Incredible channel, very good video❤
That worker at the beginning was full of crap, no way he eyeballed something experts needed crazy advanced technology for the 80s to figure it out! Pollyanna just trying to look diligent to the boss cause if he's wrong there's no down side😂
As another comment mentioned, I believe that the worker saying something was off about the bill was a lie and it was probably the person depositing / using the bills that tipped them off with their behavior.
maybe something didn't feel right
i'm sure when someone spends a lot of time handling money they know very well how they are supposed to feel
If you handle something that you have to meticulously check in large quantities everyday for years, you actually notice that "something off" about something but you don't know what it is exactly.
People who handled the dollar in escalation all definitely eyeballed this "something off" themselves or they would have brushed off the report and probably said to the worker "nah you're just tired, get a day off or two"
Also, people who work with a ton of money are diligent and mistakes are harshly penalized. Imagine if bank people are like you and just brush it off because there's no down side then more people will make more fake money, and before you knew it your country's economy has inflated so much you're six figure salary mean nothing when the price of a can of Spam balloons up to $200
@aLwE17 first of all the Secret Service couldn't find anything wrong and their whole job is to find fakes so don't give me this "it feels wrong" bs ESPECIALLY considering the technology back then.
Secondly I have some bad news for you: the money that's printed today is already fiat so it has no actual value anyway since it's not backed by anything. Just printed out of thin air.
Last but not least some more bad news, the world is already FULL of fake bills being used in circulation RIGHT NOW! It's like those cornucopia of fake paintings, as long as everyone think it's authentic, then it's authentic.
Swapping the fakes for real notes most likely then felt the pressure
This was excellent, thank you.
My boy is back, this channel its a hidden gem
Fascinating stuff, great work in this
My girlfriend's sister made money for various countries. She got bored and concealed the word "SEX" in the bills of the Seychelles. You can find it online. I myself once applied to a bank note company in Bronx NY to draw banknotes, but they didn't hire me.
That's cool. I used to do design and prepress work for consumer product packaging (things like bags, boxes, and labels). After a couple years, I started incorporating my initials into "complex" designs (ones with a lot of small details in something like an illustration or photo). There were billions of products sold with my initials on them.
@@LucidDreamer54321 Ha ha. She hid it in the palm trees on the bills. You don't notice it at first.
you don't have a GF this is a made up story
2:52 So that's why N. Korea looks like it's stuck in 1974.
If the USA used the Australian polymer banknote technology, they would not have this problem. Many countries use the Australian technology, including the UK, Romania, Canada, New Zealand, Russia, Israel, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Mexico, Singapore, Malaysia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Libya, the Philippines, Egypt, and many many more.
The USA twice tried to develop polymer banknote technology and failed, which is an indication of how hard it must be to *copy* these notes if even making something *similar* proved to be impossible with all the resources of the USA.
I don't think they want it to be too too hard to counterfeit because that will erode its reserve status. They want it to be easy to use in all settings. Bit of a balancing act.
@@vladimus9749 WTF?!
It would be very hard to switch US currency to polymer notes because of how they are used globally.
@@kellymoses8566 If that was an issue, then why did the USA twice try to develop polymer banknotes? They even printed 40,000 test notes for evaluation.
@@kellymoses8566 This can't be true. There could be a transition period where both types of notes circulate, and eventually the old ones will be phased out.
11:18 - the 3D security ribbon is detectable with a wire or paperclip: you slightly fold the bill along the length of the ribbon, and then you can slide the wire under the small strip of the paper that overlaps the ribbon. It’s an easy way to check authenticity of these new bills - at least until the counterfeiters figure out how to replicate that feature.
Informative 🙂 crazy how that graph drops off about the same time crypto takes off lol
So well made, thx and subbed. Pls make more
The US prints money at a rate so fast that the tiny amount that North Korea prints is barely a rounding error on the 6th digit after the decimal place.
That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard in at least 30 years.
Congratulations.
That is so utterly absurd that I find it hard to grasp that ANYONE could believe it, and yet at this point 39 people have already given it a thumbs up. FRIGHTENING!!!
US M1 money supply increased from ~ 4 trillion dollars to about 20 trillion in 2020. The Irish guy was caught with 25 million worth of fakes, wich is ~1/1000000 of this. So this seems to be in the right ballpark. Note that most of this money is not printed, it only exists in the computer systems of banks. What is frightening is that people do zero research before running their mouth.
@@ZBB0001from 2020-2023 the US printed roughly 15 trillion USD. 0.000009 of that equals 135 million USD. How much did the DPRK print during those same years?
Even a small amount of such currency is worth a lot to a country like nk, which is both small and willing to use nearly all of that on military projects.
The Chinese invented paper money.
They punished counterfeiting so severely, there were no repeat offenders
You've got a great narrators voice and audio quality. Don't change whatever mic settings you're using :)
Kind of scary and mind blowing if u think about how well these counterfeit bills actually are. How many are actually in circulation at this point.
If Swiss companies are happily ignoring the trade embargo it might be time to put an embargo on Switzerland too...
Is there an embargo on inks?
@@eadweard. any trade with North Korea - except essential medical supplies, food etc.
not ink...
@@willemm Can Switzerland trade with North Korea legally?
ChatGPT: Switzerland can trade with North Korea but must adhere to international sanctions imposed by the UN and the specific restrictions of the Swiss government, which limit certain goods such as weapons and luxury items, to ensure compliance with these international obligations.
@@eadweard. you use ChatGPT as source????
Great video, you immediately made me subscribe
If the bills were perfect they wouldn’t be detectable
They don't need to be perfect, they just have to be good enough.
The average person can't detect them. But even more concerning is the possibility that NK is now producing notes so good even the experts can't detect them.
I think that they wanted to get found out
most counterfeits have small anomalies included so that the people distributing them can know which notes they have are genuine.
If my aunt had wheels she'd be a bike
Good that you mention Sicpa.
You can always count on the Swiss to assist criminals.
Thank you for making this informative and very impressive video.
Very informative and interesting. One tip I would give is that when you mention amounts of money, a nice addition would be if you would give a number that's adjusted for inflation, because money is way less worth now than in the early 2000's.
How did the teller notice it immediately and the only differences were 2 almost invisible lines
You can feel the difference
How did the teller notice?? By closing of the eyes and listing to wisdom.. that’s how.
Love all your videos!
America print more fiat currency than Nk could ever keep up with American printing has destroyed faith in the dollar as a reserve currency
No!
So true👍 now look at the USA bots starting to write that isnt true😉
Hegemon will fall.
@@erikwigelandiestad2270Yes. Hegemon allready started to collapse. 36TRILION of national debt. Not at all counting firms and ordinary people debts. Check the facts, bot.
Cool you’re so confident in your thoroughly misinformed opinions.
Lololol
At Christmas 83 i took what appeared to be a $100 bill that appeared faded like it been thru the wash. After the crowds subsided & i was dropping cash & took time to look closely then had doubts. The next day i took it to our bank & 3 tellers said it was good but two sad it was counterfeit. I called the local fibbies & they came out, looked at the bill then tucked it away & said it's counterfeit & left with it. My boss actually said to me-"You should have taken it down the mall & passed it off to a fellow retailer." To say the least i was disappointed with her shitty selfish attitude.
Nah. The US makes a better counterfeit. That's why we use it.
I now understand the reason why many exchange shops and banks in Asia don't accept "old USD notes"
How in the hell did some random normal person notice those extremely tiny discrepancies and decide to send it to the FBI for analysis? That honestly seems too far-fetched to be real.
Maybe the story is counterfeit. mind blown.. counterfeit bills counterfeit information. Am I even real???
To improve controls add custom variable DNA into Ink, UV & paper elements used. Mix this via in house teams after base production products arrive. Some will have already tested this old idea.
$100 bills should include a cryptographic digital signature of the serial number. This would make it far more difficult to mass-produce counterfeits.
No it wouldn't, it'd just mean you couldn't deposit them in backs.
There's nothing stopping them from using from pure cash transactions.
@@brandonnesfanexactly. This would create mass problem, as basically once the bills get in circulation, they would end up from one to another place, to another, and so on. At the end, a every second legit business would be considered counterfeit maker, because they would have some part unknowingly of counterfeits and create mass problem and probably. This on global scale can result in the downfall of the currency. Just Imagine what would happen with the currency when literally staggering part is fake and people become aware of it. Also governments still rely on hard cash, when it is about making not very white deals if we can say it this way. Deals that should go off record and in physical currency. That is why gold is so valuable and for example country like Russia has massive amounts of it, although their currency is not exactly considered strong.
There was a similar case in the last decade in Denmark where a fake bill was actually "more real" than the real bills. The original 500 DKK bills were supposed to be a specific shade of blue, but the color was deemed too difficult to achieve consistently in the printing press and therefore too expensive. Another shade of blue was selected for the official bills. And then suddenly a few fakes came along in the last decade, or so, which had that originally intended shade of blue, which was the only reason they got noticed.
Isn't all money just paper? We all just agree it has value.
@kierentuohey9650
No. Out of the top 10 most traded currencies in the world, only 3 are still "paper".
US, China and Hong Kong (so pretty much just China and the US)
@@kaydog890 you missed the point, my point is anything can be money. A piece of paper by itself isn’t worth $100 but because we print the number 100 on it that somehow gives it more value. A hundred dollar note doesn’t mean shit to any other animal. So the concept of fake money kinda sounds pretty redundant.
Yes you’re right
@@kaydog890 US Dollars are not paper, they're made of linen and cotton.
Most currencies are now polymer notes.
In Europe debit cards, kredit cards, Google and Apple Pay have largely taken over rendering counterfeit physical currency irrelevant.
This will be a big video. Too good not to hit the algorithm
My dude. I would love the same documentary about how the fake Euro bills are being made and where they are from. I've seen more and more...
... so, the problem here is Switzerland....shocker
Kim Jong Il and his family lived there while he was at school. There is even a rumour that he has another older child (a son) who is abroad under a false name - that son has never really been seen or mentioned in official state media, so nobody really knows who he is.
Nope.
Bingo.
proper nice job, great video mate
At 01:35 the narrator refers to the investigators determining the bill's ''PROVIDENCE. The captioning confirms that spelling based upon his pronunciation.
That's a malapropism; the use of a similar sounding word to the one actually meant by the context.
''PROVENCE'' refers to an item's source or origin, so that is what was actually meant.
'Courtesy of the grammar and syntax police!
🚔 🙄 🤣 😑 🚔
🇨🇦 🍁 🇨🇦 🇺🇸 🌎 🇺🇲 💵 💴 🇺🇸 🌎 🇺🇲 🇨🇦 🍁 🇨🇦
Actually, the word you want is PROVENANCE, which is what the narrator said (IMHO).
Yeah I’m pretty sure he said provenance lol…
So the money supply is UNDER counted
I worked in a money center back then, and we noticed them too. The paper is normally a give away, but not for those super notes, they were printed on the correct paper. When you are counting tons of money all day long for a few years you can feel the average fake straight away. There is a second super fake with slightly different errors. A guy at work noticed it and we spent all day studying it and arguing. In the end it was sent off and we were later told we'd found a super fake. They had to go check the plates to make sure. Was a boring job most of the time. 🙃
Great topics and videos and flow but that narrator made my whole family fall asleep almost a steady whispering
Cambodia uses dual currencies. The Riel and USD. North Korea still brings counterfeit USD of all denominations into Phnom Phen. They exchange them on the street for 80% face value. As the notes get captured by local banks and handed in to the National Bank, they are recirculated and redistributed around Asia.
Paper Ballots should have ALL the security features found on the $100 bill. They only cost about 17¢ per note. Our elections are worth it.
To let you know how little the super dollar really meant. It's estimated only about 45 million dollars of super notes were printed. The Americam government itself prints half a billion dollars a day.
This means all super notes combined is less than 10% of what US prints in a single day
Not entirely true, Vast majority of those bills printed by the government are to replace the ones being destroyed. Of course, the US economy is so large that even then, the supernotes barely impacted the economy if at all.
@@randomghost1080 The main purpose was for the DPRK to fund its activities. In recent years, they've invested more effort into hacking.
$45 million dollars of goods for north Korea is $45 million more in goods than they had before
Sigpa selling the same ink to both US and NK at the same time is the most Swiss thing you can think of !!
Albert Talton's inkjet printed notes made it all over the world😂
Wouldn’t it be smarter and more secure. That the USA would make their own proprietary printing machine and not use a company who can sell the same printer to any country?
This was fascinating
this video has excellent animation
It is critisized that all values of banknotes are all of the same grey-green colour. In most countries, every value is associated with a specific colour, which makes them easy to distinguish before we take a banknote out of our wallet
Welp, subbed to channel now.
that note counter was a GOAT to notice it by just looking at them
Nice video