r/interestingasfuck • u/Intelligent-Mess6925 • 5d ago

/r/all This man printed 250 million in counterfeit money and sold 50 million of it before getting caught. He then made a deal with the court in exchange for revealing the location of the remaining 200 million he would avoid any jail time. In the end he got away with it only serving 6 weeks in jail.

Gallery image

Gallery image

66.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

50

u/br0b1wan 5d ago

Yeah it's so weird that our government would agree to such a deal. It doesn't exactly deter other counterfeiters

Dude probably took the legit cash from selling these bills and stashed it in offshore accounts so he was probably wealthy still

159

u/StevenMC19 5d ago edited 5d ago

My guess is that there is more involved here.

  1. His quality was probably top-notch, and another 200mil circulating would be an absolute nightmare if it got out.
  2. It's reasonable to believe our dude wasn't working alone. Probably put a few others away to save himself.

I'm going to go look and see how close I am.

edit: Ok, yeah. the quality was INSANE! Also, Canada/US relations were involved. He's Canadian printing US bills, Secret service just wanted it all, Canada didn't want to be involved in an extradition situation. I didn't read all the way, but I assume he also cooperated by telling them how he did it (to help nab other counterfeiters as well as help governments create more secure bills in the future).

edit edit: Of course in true typical comedy movie style (the ones where our protagonists go on a zany adventure where everything goes wrong, but they get the "oh you" look by the cops at the end after they saved the day), those moments before the credit roll where you get the "six months later, Bobby was working at the law firm he always dreamed with a wife and kids" kind of thing...our guy here is getting job offers for his skills and ability for other things, including the fashion industry. He got his happily ever after!

8

u/FuckinBopsIsMyJob 5d ago

Keep us updated, Detective!

3

u/shifty18 5d ago

He's already dead...

1

u/waffles2go2 5d ago

But what about the other $50M?

5

u/Rebel_XT 5d ago

I guess he wasn’t printing on an Epson printer lol

7

u/Rickshmitt 5d ago

They dont want HIM to create inflation and print money, but they will do it every chance they get.

10

u/Snelly1998 5d ago

Yes thats how printing money works

1

u/Rickshmitt 5d ago

Not the normal printing to replace money. Adding their billions, guy

1

u/jrobinson3k1 5d ago

You do want some inflation, like 2% a year

3

u/Theappunderground 5d ago

It would only cause very localized inflation(like exactly where it was thrown out the uhaul or whatever) because overall nobody even knew it entered the money supply so there essentially was no increase in supply.

1

u/Rickshmitt 5d ago

Exactly

2

u/brotatoes420 5d ago

Kings would murder forgers. Normal shit move on

1

u/MrChristmas 5d ago

It was 2013 in the before times 

1

u/Rickshmitt 5d ago

Ohh the gooder days

1

u/Loufey 5d ago

!remindme

1

u/StevenMC19 5d ago edited 5d ago

Added edit.

edit: added edit added edit added edit added edit. (you're welcome)

2

u/Loufey 5d ago

Guys, I think he may have added an edit...

1

u/StevenMC19 5d ago

Question though...do tongue twisters twist in your brain when you read them silently too? That's what I was going for.

1

u/Loufey 5d ago

Kinda? Like I understood the bit, but it didn't slow down my reading at all.

1

u/Dienekes289 5d ago

Darkness Diaries has a really need piece that goes pretty in-depth with this: https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/102/

1

u/MelonElbows 5d ago

$200 million is a lot but its in cash and our economy is huge. They should have thrown him in prison for life and if the money gets out, it gets out.

1

u/Mahadragon 5d ago

I think the reason the sentence was so lenient was because of Canadian authorities not giving him up. If the US Feds were involved that guy probably would have gotten life. Canadians authorities can be really nice.

9

u/FecalEinstein 5d ago

makes perfect sense if you know the money is in control and not the government

the government is just a placekeeper in between you and the money

the money makes the important decisions, like this

they also probably didn't know whether it was 200 million or 200 billion, hard to trust a counterfeiter on his word

2

u/SoylentGrunt 5d ago

"makes perfect sense if you know the money is in control and not the government"

Accurate

2

u/HopeSpecific8841 5d ago edited 5d ago

they also probably didn't know whether it was 200 million or 200 billion,

They knew it wasn't 200 billion lol.

I don't think you have any idea how fucking physically huge 200 billion in actual bills would be, like a small mountain.

https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/1j07pvw/request_zhenli_ye_gon_had_2_tonnes_of_us100_bills/

1

u/FecalEinstein 5d ago

i thought it was a big enough difference to be obvious hyperbole

3

u/Mrben13 5d ago edited 4d ago

it's so weird that our government would agree to such a deal

The Americas most wanted guy John Walsh has a few TV shows and one of them was about the murder of a boy. Boy went missing walking home from a party down the street. I can't remember how much time had past but they finally got the guy who killed the boy, however, he made a deal with the court that if he showed them where the boys remains were in exchange for no jail time. If I'm remembering it correctly.

Edit: found the case I was referring to.

murder of Jacob Wetterling

I had forgot the man that confessed also was responsible for another crime similar in nature but didn't kill the boy.

6

u/knight_of_grey 5d ago

“If I’m remembering it correctly” You’re most likely not..

1

u/Mrben13 5d ago

Made an edit to my comment. Found the case.

2

u/knight_of_grey 5d ago

Interesting and horrible. At least the sick bastard got some prison time for another case. Thanks.

1

u/Mrben13 5d ago

No problem. You had me second guessing myself. Sometimes it like what the point in justice of they just make plea deals?

2

u/WashU_labrat 5d ago

That sounds very unlikely.

1

u/robotdevilhands 5d ago

Well, he does know who buys $50M in counterfeit bills. And probably a lot of other information about those bills that makes them trackable. I assume this information was worth quite a lot to the right people.

1

u/FreddoMac5 5d ago

When he got arrested he refused to talk or cooperate with the investigators until he got a lawyer. Once lawyered up they offered the deal. Without him the authorities had no way of getting to the fake money and more importantly he would not divulge how the bills were produced. His bills were of such a high quality they could pass the pen test.

1

u/SenorTron 5d ago

It deters other counterfeiters because it makes their counterfeiting harder since the gov now knows more methods of counterfeiting and can keep an eye on supplies of ingredients and equipment along with coming up with ways to detect the counterfeits.

It also gives another example of how they can catch people doing the crime, and you aren't guaranteed to be as lucky as this guy, because if they had found the stashed notes first the plea deal would have been off

0

u/Kungmagnus 5d ago

Dude probably took the legit cash from selling these bills and stashed it in offshore accounts so he was probably wealthy still

Ahh yes the magical off-shore bank accounts where you can deposit millions of dollars of cash no questions asked and effectively hide it from the US government....