My boss the counterfeiter

I was working at a small commercial print shop in the early 90’s. I liked the place a lot and learned a lot there.

The boss’ wife was from the Phillipines. I was reading a book with a large section on traditional tribal tattooing there. I showed it to, let’s call her, Mary, and asked her if there was still any evidence of that sort of tattooing in the area she was from.
“Yes.”
“Really? Neat.”
“Yes. They are all bad.”
“What?”
“Yes. In the Puh-hillipines, you have tattoo, you are creemeenal.”
“No, I’m not talking about criminals with tattoos, I’m talking about traditional tribal groups and their distinctive style of tattooing.”
“They are all creemeenal. You have tattoo, you are creemeenal. You have tattoos, you must be creemeenal,” she said, laughing.
“I am not a criminal! You can check with the police. I do not have a criminal record. I’ve never been arrested.”
“Sure, sure, just don’t go to the Puh-hillipines. They will arrest you and put you in prison. They see your tattoos, they say, that guy creemeenal, they arrest you.” She walked away, giggling.

A few months later, we were sitting around at lunch time discussing about a job action being carried out by the Toronto Police. I can’t even remember all the details of what it was about, but they refused to wear their regular hats, and wore ball caps instead as a form of protest.
My boss, let’s call him, Bob, very nice, unassuming, mild mannered guy, mentions how the cops in Toronto are total assholes, along with the cops in a few other cities in Ontario. The police in certain other jurisdictions weren’t too bad. And the police in some places were downright nice and friendly. He rattled off all these different places, and spoke on the subject with some knowledge.
“Uh Bob, how the hell do you know all this?”
Our head pressman, let’s call him, Jim, started laughing.
“Well, uhm, I uhm, *cough*, I’m a, uhm, I’m a convicted uhm, felon.”
I think more than few seconds of disbelieving silence passed. He was one of the last people I knew I would ever assume had ever been in trouble with the law.
“Wow, okay. So...uhm, dare I ask what you did?”
“Well I, uhm, counterfeited American twenty dollar bills.”

Bob proceeded to tell me quite a tale.

It was the mid seventies, and he and a partner John had a print shop. They were discussing American money, and how easy it is to counterfeit. So, and the claim was made that it was a purely academic exercise, they decided to give it a whirl.

After a lot of goofing around with a stat camera, they ended up with workable plates, experimented with paper, ran it though a press with scuzz on the rollers to make it look more aged, tried various inks, and ended up with a pile of US $20s.

After the bright idea of counterfeiting US currency, now that they had a stack of “money”, they got the even brighter idea to pass it. They set out on a tour of Ontario, “buying” a few things and “paying” for them with their “bills.” The two of them went all around the province and managed to accumulate a tidy sum of real money in exchange for their ersatz money.

Their luck ran out in Windsor. John went in to a Woolco and purchased an inflatable beach ball, some washers and a chocolate bar. The cashier that he went to was the wife of a private detective. She had also seen a report come through on the telex that morning about two guys passing fake US $20 bills.
“There has been a lot of fluctuation in the exchange rate today. Let me just go and check what the most current rate is.”
At that point John should have beat feet, but he stood there, and a moment later was surrounded by three security guards.
Bob was back in the car and saw police cars arrive.
Given how long it had taken John to get back to the car, he figured something was amiss. He opened the door of the car and saw that he was right beside a grate. He took all the counterfeit money and shoved it down the grate. As the police were escorting John out of the store in handcuffs, Bob went over.
“Gee officer, why are you arresting my friend.” I guess hoping he could somehow convince them that this was all some misunderstanding.
They immediately took an interest in him. When they searched him and looked through his wallet, what did they find but an American $20 bill, with the exact same serial number as the one John had just tried to pass in the department store. Now, with one counterfeit bill it’s entirely conceivable that you are an unfortunate dupe, that you were unwittingly given a counterfeit bill. It’s happened to me. I’ve unknowingly given a cashier a fake $5 bill. But when two schmucks have two identical phony bills, they’re guilty as sin.

Sitting together in the back of a police cruiser, John realized that he still had a rolled Bank of John & Bob illegal tender in his back pocket that hadn’t been found. Two fake bills was bad, three would have been really bad. Still handcuffed, he managed to fish it out, and I guess they must have been left unattended for a bit, because he somehow managed to twist himself into a position where he could stuff this bill down into where the window emerges from the door.

The reason Bob knew about the attitudes and personalities of police in various jurisdictions is that they were charged in every place they passed one of their bills. When they were released from jail in Windsor, there was a cop from Amherstburg waiting to arrest them. When they were released from that jail, there was a cop from Leamington waiting to put them in a jail there. And so on down the line. All. Around. Ontario.

They opted to plead guilty if all the charges were dealt with in one court. Initially they were each sentenced to eight years in prison. Their lawyer filed an appeal on the basis of something the trial judge had said. On appeal their sentences were reduced to 3 years in prison.

In prison Bob was offered courses that he could take. He already knew how to do everything else, except for machining. He took a two year course and completed it in six months. Released early for good behaviour, he got a job at GM and made more money in a year then he had in the previous five years. Then he took the money and started another print shop.

“Do the cops ever just walk in here to see what you’re up to?”
“Once you’ve done your time, they have to assume you’re back on the up and up, and until they have cause to suspect you, they have to leave you alone.”
“So, uhm, how to put this delicately, have you been clean all this time? I mean, the cops aren’t going to burst in here and grill me about shenanigans I know nothing about?”
“Don’t worry. I’m legit now.”
“Well, there was that one time....” Jim spoke up.
“Oh yeah, we did prints for this artist, and we had, a few, you know, extras. So we decided to take some with us to Grand Bend and see if we could sell them. Make a little extra money.”
“Yeah, and who do you suppose walks past? The artist! Oh shit, he was pissed!” Jim chimes in.
I choked I was laughing so hard.
I gather there was some more legal difficulty for Bob over that, but nothing that caused him any more jail time or to lose the print shop.

“You are not going to believe what I found out today,” I said to my girlfriend when I got home that night.”
“What?! Bob went to prison for counterfeiting money? Bob? You’re joking? That’s as freaky as finding out your uncle is an on the lam Nazi war criminal.”

The next day, I had to have a stern chat with Mary.

“So… A while back you said something about me being a criminal because I have tattoos. Hhhmmmmhhh. You remember that? Well… Your husband doesn’t have any tattoos, right? But it appears that despite not having any tattoos...”

“Oh crap. You know.”

“Yes Mary, I know, and now I don’t want to hear any more nonsense from you about how people with tattoos are criminals. Okay?”
She walked off, giggling.