MIKE-9820

Mar 02, 2006 6:37 pm - OMG! THATS TO MUCH TEXT I CANT READ THAT MUCH -------------------- -------------------------- -- Alright, there’s several ways you can try to fool a change machine. If you don’t have a pop machine or a change machine you can practice on safely, i’d just not try, seriously. the new machines can read really well, so xerox copies (even from the business copiers) don’t really work as well as they did in the 1980’s. Why? Here’s why... Plus, I should add, this is an ongoing project for me. I keep running into more reasons why my fakies don’t work (and still don’t work) in machines. These are the ones I’ve figured out so far. Some of them I know the solution to, but it’s tricky to get things just right when it is so damn impossible to try them out over and over while keeping my prints off everything in case one works (because no human in their right freaking mind would think the stuff I do to fool machines is real). 1. Now they use UV to read chemical content. What are they checking for? Starch. Most over the counter white bond paper doesn’t have a lot of starch, but real bucks do. The solution? Add starch to the paper with a brush. They sell it for ironing. Experiment to see how much you have to put on... You can get your own UV bulb and use it to see how dark it makes the paper reflect and compare that with a real dollar. Try it out and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Print up your best fake and take a real Washington and put them both under UV. That’s just what the machines are doing. 2. Paper thickness. Crumpling is the best cure for this that I know of. Start with a resume paper with cotton/linen rag content. The government prints on special paper it is illegal to sell to the public. Paper with ’invisible perforation’ works pretty good, as does cotton resume paper. To test whether you have a good paper match, run a real dollar and a slip of your paper of the same size through the drier. See if they survived, shrunk, or whatever. The linen content is what keeps dollars from being vaporized in your pockets when it is washed, so use the washer and drier to compare. If your paper is easily turned to lint, you have a problem. The thickness you can compare with a microscope too... i guess... but to be honest this is one of my long-term struggles because no way can I figure out how to read paper thickness as well as those machines without having one to toy with all the time. 3. Major lines. Surprisingly, this doesn’t matter as much as you might think, but it DOES matter. Think of all those marked up dollars you’ve sent through a change machine and it worked. To find the features a machine is looking for, try blacking out parts of a perfectly straight dollar and see what has an effect. It seems to me like it is just the general outline, the color placement (because of the UV detectors in the ones that have it), and the outside lines that matter. This is NOT the case on the ones that have to tell the different denominations of bills. They usually have an electronic eye of some kind, even if it is basic. I don’t actually fool with those. I’ve stuck with Coke machines on the theory that they don’t have as much security. You might try blacking out some portions on dollars in the multi-denomination bills to see what happens. There’s an idea for this below... 4. Magnetic content. Yeah, the damn government has been putting a little magnetism into the dollars for YEARS and machines can read it. This one is hard to fake, and short of putting little shards of metal onto your paper with a thin coat of glue and magnetizing them I can’t figure it out. Luckily, a lot of machines don’t do this. They either have Ultraviolet OR this, not both usually. SOME GOOD THEORIES YOU CAN TRY AND LET ME KNOW: 1. You can’t reliably bleach out a low denomination bill and print a new one of higher value on top. I’ve tried and can’t. If you know the chemical that’ll do it, tell me. The government uses intaglio printing and several different kinds of ink and that makes it hard to remove, especially when you have to keep the paper in one piece. BUT, you might fool a machine with a THIN coat of whiteout on a really worn dollar bill and print the correct features of a TWENTY over the top... you can learn the correct features by fooling around and marking out some on your good twenties (the worst that happens there is you get a LOT of quarters or have to go trade in a twenty at the bank because it ’got marked on’). Then white out the features it identifies twenties with and try to print them on. Remember that thickness is an issue... size does matter! I hear Canadian Tire Money (promotional crap worthless money a Canadian company... Canadian Tire... prints up to sell their product) is about right for American bills, but I don’t know. If it is, it’d be perfect because it’s cheaper than a dollar and maybe you COULD bleach it out. You Canuck brothas are gonna have to let me know. 2. The little security stripes they put in new bills are placed differently and give off different colors under a UV light. I’m betting that soon they will start using this in machines to identify bills (as one of several strategies). So you might have to black/white-and-re-green that out and add a different stripe. The great thing about machines is they can’t tell if the color is drawn on the bill or is coming from the thread inside the bill like a human can. Black out the old one (if there is one) and put on a new one... or if you’re using one dollar bills (duh, use one dollar bills) just draw on the new one. The only reason you might use a five to make a twenty is because the new fives are arranged more like the new twenties than the dollar bills... but my bet is that if you use a dollar to fake an OLD STYLE twenty you’ll be ok and make 4 more bucks than you would using a five spot. 3. Try this: Get the serial # and the service phone # off the side of a change machine in a laundry somewhere and learn the manager’s name at the laundry. Call up the company that sold the machine and tell them you’ve been finding counterfeits in it and you want an explanation. They should give you the # of the manufacturer, and if they don’t, ask for it. Then talk to the manufacturer... what you will find out real quick is EXACTLY what your machine there can’t read, assuming they have one of those technical assistant guys sitting around for you to talk to. Essentially, what you do is tell them their security isn’t working and ask what you can do and HOW these fakes are getting by the machine. They’ll tell you, then you go try to DO IT to beat their machine. They might ask what the counterfeits look like, so you tell them what kind of fake bill you’re thinking about trying and say you found it in the machine. That way you weed out what definitely won’t work up front. Remember that the Secret Service gets involved in counterfeiting allegations, so you better use a pay phone. If they don’t have a tech guy, hang up and call back. Say you are going into the change machine distribution business and need to know about the security features of their products. The next best thing to a tech guy anxious to show his knowledge is a salesman anxious to sell a product and get a fat ass commission. =\

MIKE-9820

Mar 02, 2006 6:38 pm - OMG! THATS TO MUCH TEXT I CANT READ THAT MUCH -------------------- -------------------------- -- Alright, there’s several ways you can try to fool a change machine. If you don’t have a pop machine or a change machine you can practice on safely, i’d just not try, seriously. the new machines can read really well, so xerox copies (even from the business copiers) don’t really work as well as they did in the 1980’s. Why? Here’s why... Plus, I should add, this is an ongoing project for me. I keep running into more reasons why my fakies don’t work (and still don’t work) in machines. These are the ones I’ve figured out so far. Some of them I know the solution to, but it’s tricky to get things just right when it is so damn impossible to try them out over and over while keeping my prints off everything in case one works (because no human in their right freaking mind would think the stuff I do to fool machines is real). 1. Now they use UV to read chemical content. What are they checking for? Starch. Most over the counter white bond paper doesn’t have a lot of starch, but real bucks do. The solution? Add starch to the paper with a brush. They sell it for ironing. Experiment to see how much you have to put on... You can get your own UV bulb and use it to see how dark it makes the paper reflect and compare that with a real dollar. Try it out and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Print up your best fake and take a real Washington and put them both under UV. That’s just what the machines are doing. 2. Paper thickness. Crumpling is the best cure for this that I know of. Start with a resume paper with cotton/linen rag content. The government prints on special paper it is illegal to sell to the public. Paper with ’invisible perforation’ works pretty good, as does cotton resume paper. To test whether you have a good paper match, run a real dollar and a slip of your paper of the same size through the drier. See if they survived, shrunk, or whatever. The linen content is what keeps dollars from being vaporized in your pockets when it is washed, so use the washer and drier to compare. If your paper is easily turned to lint, you have a problem. The thickness you can compare with a microscope too... i guess... but to be honest this is one of my long-term struggles because no way can I figure out how to read paper thickness as well as those machines without having one to toy with all the time. 3. Major lines. Surprisingly, this doesn’t matter as much as you might think, but it DOES matter. Think of all those marked up dollars you’ve sent through a change machine and it worked. To find the features a machine is looking for, try blacking out parts of a perfectly straight dollar and see what has an effect. It seems to me like it is just the general outline, the color placement (because of the UV detectors in the ones that have it), and the outside lines that matter. This is NOT the case on the ones that have to tell the different denominations of bills. They usually have an electronic eye of some kind, even if it is basic. I don’t actually fool with those. I’ve stuck with Coke machines on the theory that they don’t have as much security. You might try blacking out some portions on dollars in the multi-denomination bills to see what happens. There’s an idea for this below... 4. Magnetic content. Yeah, the damn government has been putting a little magnetism into the dollars for YEARS and machines can read it. This one is hard to fake, and short of putting little shards of metal onto your paper with a thin coat of glue and magnetizing them I can’t figure it out. Luckily, a lot of machines don’t do this. They either have Ultraviolet OR this, not both usually. SOME GOOD THEORIES YOU CAN TRY AND LET ME KNOW: 1. You can’t reliably bleach out a low denomination bill and print a new one of higher value on top. I’ve tried and can’t. If you know the chemical that’ll do it, tell me. The government uses intaglio printing and several different kinds of ink and that makes it hard to remove, especially when you have to keep the paper in one piece. BUT, you might fool a machine with a THIN coat of whiteout on a really worn dollar bill and print the correct features of a TWENTY over the top... you can learn the correct features by fooling around and marking out some on your good twenties (the worst that happens there is you get a LOT of quarters or have to go trade in a twenty at the bank because it ’got marked on’). Then white out the features it identifies twenties with and try to print them on. Remember that thickness is an issue... size does matter! I hear Canadian Tire Money (promotional crap worthless money a Canadian company... Canadian Tire... prints up to sell their product) is about right for American bills, but I don’t know. If it is, it’d be perfect because it’s cheaper than a dollar and maybe you COULD bleach it out. You Canuck brothas are gonna have to let me know. 2. The little security stripes they put in new bills are placed differently and give off different colors under a UV light. I’m betting that soon they will start using this in machines to identify bills (as one of several strategies). So you might have to black/white-and-re-green that out and add a different stripe. The great thing about machines is they can’t tell if the color is drawn on the bill or is coming from the thread inside the bill like a human can. Black out the old one (if there is one) and put on a new one... or if you’re using one dollar bills (duh, use one dollar bills) just draw on the new one. The only reason you might use a five to make a twenty is because the new fives are arranged more like the new twenties than the dollar bills... but my bet is that if you use a dollar to fake an OLD STYLE twenty you’ll be ok and make 4 more bucks than you would using a five spot. 3. Try this: Get the serial # and the service phone # off the side of a change machine in a laundry somewhere and learn the manager’s name at the laundry. Call up the company that sold the machine and tell them you’ve been finding counterfeits in it and you want an explanation. They should give you the # of the manufacturer, and if they don’t, ask for it. Then talk to the manufacturer... what you will find out real quick is EXACTLY what your machine there can’t read, assuming they have one of those technical assistant guys sitting around for you to talk to. Essentially, what you do is tell them their security isn’t working and ask what you can do and HOW these fakes are getting by the machine. They’ll tell you, then you go try to DO IT to beat their machine. They might ask what the counterfeits look like, so you tell them what kind of fake bill you’re thinking about trying and say you found it in the machine. That way you weed out what definitely won’t work up front. Remember that the Secret Service gets involved in counterfeiting allegations, so you better use a pay phone. If they don’t have a tech guy, hang up and call back. Say you are going into the change machine distribution business and need to know about the security features of their products. The next best thing to a tech guy anxious to show his knowledge is a salesman anxious to sell a product and get a fat ass commission. =\\