#681 - Ex-Counterfeiter Arthur Williams Jr.

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Yeah, it's a partial lunar today. Yeah, well, they're like, go look at the moon, you know? And I feel like it's, I wonder if like the moon feels embarrassed because like everybody's looking at it at the same time. That's what I start to think, you know? Like if everybody was looking at me at the same time, like I would just feel so embarrassed, I feel like. Yeah, well, sometimes it feels like that. Yeah. But I look at the moon like a mirror. Yeah? Yeah, reflection, right? Even last night in the room that you got me. Hey, that room is dope. I got the dopest city view. Oh, nice, dude. I woke up at like two in the morning and the moon was just looking at me. Dang. Wow. Oh, that's a peeping Tom, man. Yeah, it was peeping on me. Yeah. The moon was a peeping Tom last night. Because the curtains were open, right? And it was just sitting right there looking down. I'm like, whoa. I don't blame it, man. Art Williams, dude. Yeah. We met in Chicago at the Gibson's restaurant. Yeah, we met at the Viagra Triangle. Yeah, dude. But there we are. Yeah, there we are. But dude, yeah, thanks so much for coming in. So just for our listeners who don't know, so in a past life, you were a counterfeiter. Yeah, printing money. Printing money. Not for the feds either. No. No, yeah, for yourself. For myself. Yeah, that's what I like, bro. Hey, we need more of that. Yeah, for sure now, right? Oh, dude. I think especially, look, if the government's just going to print it for themselves. Yeah, well, now they're going digital. They're going to print it through the digital coin, which is going to be even more trippy. Right. And I think, yeah. And we're going to get into some of that, dude. I want to talk about some of those things. But yeah, no, I printed money, man. When the $1,996 bill came out, they said that it was impossible to replicate. And I was about, I don't know, I was probably like 24, 25. And so I said, man, I'm going to replicate it. I think I could. And my story goes back a little further because I grew up in the south side of Chicago. Yeah, take me there. Like, looking back, are you able to see any things that made you think, okay, I'm going to head in this direction kind of? Oh, yeah. Like, was you doing early crime or whatever? I was doing a lot of crimes. Yeah, early. You know, so when my dad- Early bird gets the wallet. And that's true, though. Well, we get the coins because I'd hit the meters. Oh, you would? Yeah, the meters on the side of Hostess Street. So that was like my first crime. When my dad left us, my mom was, she dealt with mental illness. She was diagnosed bipolar. So she, you know, she had to take lithium, you know, and she didn't take it. Well, once a year, she would go into the hospital, right? And they'd have to get the levels back up and they put us in foster home, right? So my youth growing, so when my dad took off and we ended up homeless and then ended up in the projects on the south side, right by White Sox Park, you know, it was, I remember, because we, you know, you're on welfare, my mom was on welfare. She wasn't working. For us, it was, I came home from school. It was cold. I come into the house and my mom's in the kitchen smoking. Would she smoke them Dorals or whatever? She used to roll her own. Yeah. My mom used to buy big bags of tobacco and she'd be there all day. Midwestern, she's a hard worker. Oh yeah. No, my mom just rolled, but, but she was there smoking and she was crying and she go, and I asked why she was crying. She said, we have no food in the house. So I opened up the fridge and it was empty. Right. I was about 12 at that time. We had probably been living there almost maybe like nine months to a year. So I've already got a taste of the streets, you know? And so I grabbed my brother, my little brother, we ran outside and while, while I'm walking down Halston Street and I was right on 31st and Halston, that's where the projects that I grew up in. So that's like South side, they call it the low end. Okay. Anything like under 55th is like the low end. These are just all Chicago street terms. I'm telling you right now. Got it. Right. Yeah. And maybe I'll take you over there one day. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's cool. So anyway, yeah. So that was, so we're hitting the, I'm hitting the meters, walking down Halston and I'm hitting the meters. But as I'm an angry kid, not thinking about, you know, like, I don't know what to do, but as I'm hitting them, I can hear the change ringing. And so I figured there was money in there. So you're just walking down the street, hitting them with a stick or something? No, with my fist. You know how you just snap, you know, hitting it every, cause there's a meter like every 20 feet. Right. For sure. So I'm just cracking it, you know, just like as a little kid, man, you know? But then I started hearing the jingling, jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle, you know, like it's money, right? Bing, like the little thing goes off. And uh, and so I start playing with it. So this is, this is what God gave me. The gift he gave me is to figure things out. Okay. Puzzles, money. Yeah. Meters, you know. Right. Whatever's going on, you're going to figure it out. Art. Right. Whatever the, whatever it is, my brain just like, it wants to dissect it. Right. Just, but early on, it was just the meters. I wanted to get into the meter. Right. So, so I went in the alley, I made, I made this little metal piece that allowed me to, to, to twist the little pins. There were two little pins on it. And if you could get them to go straight up, you could pop it out. And there was always, it's maybe like 10, $15 of quarters in it. So you'd hit like five or six and all of a sudden you got a hundred and a hundred back then was something. Yeah. It's a lot of money. I still love a hundred, right? Like the hundred's my number, man. You know what I'm saying? A hundred. Yeah. But so, so we hit it. I, we hit it for like me and my bro hit for like 87. We went to Tony supermarket and, uh, me and my, me and my bro were just, just putting stuff in. We're all excited. Right. Oh yeah. And we get up there and the big tiny looks down. He's like, you guys got money? We're kids, man. Like, and we had a bag, it was in a bag. It was a little jewels bag or something. We just said this, we got money. And he looked the change. He goes, yeah, that's money. Right. And so he started counting. It was 80, it was like 86 bucks. We get home. This is what was awesome. When we walked in the door, my mom was still, you know, kind of in her depressed mode. She hadn't really moved yet. But when she seen the groceries, she lit up, ran and hugged us. She's like, where'd you get these? She probably thought some church gave it to us or something, you know? Yeah. And I'm like, um, I'm like, we got it, mom. You know, she goes, well, how'd you get the money? I said, out of the meters. She was like, well, how'd you get it out of the meters? I said, well, we broke into them. She was in that and she was go up to your room right now. So she, she, her, her demeanor went from happy to pissed like that, you know, like in heart, like real quick. So me and my brother go upstairs, she comes up after that. And she's like, um, she's like, look, I don't want you stealing for money. God will provide the way I said, God did provide the way he showed me how to open it. Right. Cause I'll, I believe there's divineness in what I do. Like whatever my mind is able to do, there's, there's, there's, there's a creative, there's something outside of me. That I could tap into that. That gives me a force. I call it force field. Right. I got it. Well, at that time, did you feel like you were doing it for a good cause too? For my mom, for my brother, for my sister, man, they got to eat, you know, like, and that started it. Right. Then once, once that happened and it didn't stop, I'd hit the meters whenever I needed it, you know, then, then I started hanging out with the gang. So like in Chicago, the gang violence was real strong at that point. Yeah. It's like mid eighties, early nineties, guns are hitting the street. Right. It went from, it went from. Uh, like at first it was like, uh, dance crews like break dancing. Yeah. And so the break dancers turned into the gangs pretty much. Right. So you had the break dancing moments in Chicago and probably New York and LA, probably everywhere. And then when the break dancing kind of faded out, all those cats turned into Latin Kings or disciples, or, I mean, GDs have always been there. Right. It was GDs gang's disciples. Yeah. They've always been before, you know, and all these gangs have been there forever, but the break dancing, when it broke out, that's when a lot. A lot of numbers filled it. You know, what do you think caused that break dancing to kind of dissipate over there? I don't, I don't, I think, cause they started fighting. Right. So at first it was just like, ah, right. You know, grab my nuts and put it in your face. Right. And then they started beefing. And then when they started beefing, you know, physical just always enhances even like wars. Yeah. There's an escalation. There's always escalation with your man. Right. So if it's a, you know, you step on my toe, then I smack you in the face and you punch me in mine and then boom, boom, boom, boom. Right. So yeah. That's always a way to do it. Yeah. So anyway, but that's what I think happened. I think once that, you know, there's just the beefs and, and, and then the guns, that was the thing that really, for me, that sticks in my memory harsher than anything, cause I've been shot and I've had friends killed one right, right there, you know, got shot in the head. With you? Yeah. We were all out there and we heard one shot and poof, hit him in the head and he dropped. Right. I got hit in the side. And were you out there like with the gang? Like, cause you were just out in the streets. Yeah. We all, everyone had their corner. Got it. We had 32nd and Luthwanica. The Italians, they had Armored Park, 33rd and Shields. Latin Kings had 33rd and Morgan. The Spanish chancellors had 29th and Wallace, right? Like- And who was your favorite gang looking back? I mean, the one I was with, right? Type shit. I was a disciple, man. Of course, man. Shit, bro. That's a good answer, bro. I ran the streets real hard from breaking into cars to garages, to stealing cars to just escalated. So you were into crime then? That was your thing. Well, it was to survive, right? Like I, I didn't, I didn't ever, I didn't, I didn't look at like crime in the sense and even even when I got older in a sense of like Like, I imagine that it would make me like a rich drug lord, right? Like, I never had that in my mind that stealing a car is going to, you know, cause me to have something great. Like, one day I'm going to have a dealership or something. Yeah, I'm not going to have a dealership. Exactly, right? So I always fought against wanting to do it, right? And then when the money came, though, so I ended up getting in trouble stealing a car. One of my mom's friends came up to get me because they could sign you out at the police station. And on the way back, he was just telling me, like, you know, what are you doing, man? You're smart in this. You know, I see how you are and you love your mama and, you know, what's going on? And he brought me into his world. Who was saying this? An older gentleman. I nicknamed him Pete, called him Pete DaVinci because, you know, he's telling me crazy stories about DaVinci. Wear a little hat, tying guy. Okay, got it. So we're walking back, me and Peter walking back, and he's just, you know, telling me. He goes, hey, listen, I'm going to take it. I'm going to show you how to make some money and be quiet about it, right? That was the thing. That was the difference. About what I was doing, it was loud. The gangs was loud. The guns, the stealing, the breaking windows, right, to get into cars, right? He wanted to show me how to be quiet and make money. And so for me, with my dad leaving, he was kind of like the first one, the first guy that, like, I felt like a father, you know, like a little bit of a fatherhood too, right? Oh, yeah, dude. When you're young, if somebody comes into your life and pays you some attention or, hey, this is another thing, hey, let me show you how to do something, that's a huge thing. I just didn't think it was going to be print money, right? Like, I didn't know. Oh, dude. I mean, I hate to say, look, I hate to say you got lucky because some guys are like, let me teach you how to play tennis, you know? Let me teach you how to touch yourself or whatever. But you got lucky, bro. I did. I really did. And my whole life has been kind of like that too. I get in places that people just don't get into. 100%. I really do, man. It's like Da Vinci hanging with the kings. I don't know how it happens, man. It's just, whoop, okay, here. Like, portaled in, you know? Right. And like, here we are into the next chapter of this fairy tale. I love it. I love it. That's what makes life alive, though, right? Oh, I agree. Yeah. I think it's so interesting that he's teaching you how to do something quiet. Quiet. That's what it was all about, right? And as a counterfeiter, you learn to become a ghost. I mean, even now, I'm still a ghost, you know? I still live like that just because it's how I was trained, you know? But yeah, so he takes me to his shop. He had a shop over by Armor Park. And I had one of them old elevators. It went down into the basement and stuff. And he had his printer over here. He had his light burner over here. He had his plate maker over here where he did his ink, where he held his paper. I mean, it was just, it was fascinating as a kid. I'm like 15, 16, man, you know? Like Karen and I, we're an old gangster, you know? And as a kid in that neighborhood, because my neighborhood was where Mayor Daley was from, right? Bridgeport, they call it. Where Mayor Daley was from? Yeah, Mayor Daley. The old Daley. Richard Daley and all the Daley's. That's that neighborhood, you know? Got it. And so you have the Irish on 37th. You have the Italians on 31st. You got the Chinatown over on 22nd. You got Pilsen, which is over off 18th. And then where I lived was like the hush-push of everyone but poor, right? We were all just poor, right? But there was a little Puerto Rican, a little Thai, and a little mutt, you know? Like everything, right? So for a kid in the projects, to make it to the Italian side was huge. That was like a hand up, man. You know? Like that's what everybody wanted, you know? You didn't want to be a car thief, you know? You didn't want to. You wanted to be with them because you know what they did. Yeah, they at least were organized. They were organized, man. And so for me to be in the projects and be pulled out of it, that was like winning a lottery, man. You know? It was like winning a lottery. So, you know, he took me in. He started showing me. You know, I would help carry the piece. He was old. So he needed someone anyway because the paper's heavy, ink cans, you know, have to move the equipment around. You got to keep everything clean, right? And that ink is shit, man. I've had it on my hand and then went and took a piss. And, man, I'm burning my piece, you know? Really? Oh, that was crazy. My penis, man. It was like green. It was green for like a week and it wasn't gonorrhea. But it's heavy. Ah, it was ink! Yeah, it was not sand. But it's getting darker. Win some, lose some, cuz. I did, man. It was, you know, yeah, so. What was some of the machinery that Pete was using to make, to counterfeit? So at that time, it was still the little-faced hundred, right? There was a time when the hundred had a tiny face on it, right? Okay. We're going way back, 1985. So those were the ones he made. And they were a lot easier because there was no watermark. There was no shifting ink. There was. You just, just a visual. Okay. And so he was making those and he was using the old offset technology. So it was, he had AB Dick, he had AB Dick two-color, right? What is that? AB Dick two-color to paint? No, it's a press. It's a printing press. Okay. It's. Yeah, I gotta send you a picture. They're awesome, man. They're like. We'll bring one up right here. It's called AB Dick. Yeah, look at like a two-color AB Dick. Yeah, there you go, right? And so, so that's what he used. Wow. And that looks kind of advanced for the times, huh? Well, I mean, it was an offset press. Ben Franklin invented the press. Like look at Ben Franklin's press, his first one. Yeah, Ben Franklin's first press. He's the one who invented it. Ben Franklin invented all kinds of things. So there was different machines. You asked about the machines. So you had a machine to take a photo, right? You would take, put the bill up there. You take a photo of it, right? And then take it down. Then there was another machine. It was, it made the negatives, right? So you would go and you'd make the negatives with the bill. And we would always do three bills, right? 'Cause these offsets, they were best with like eight and a half by 11 paper. And you would take the photos of the bill. Of the bills. Of a real bill. Of a real bill. Okay, got it. Yeah. And then we would take it and we put it into a negative form and, you know, put through the machine that makes the negative. And then we, that's when you do your serial numbers. We take this red tape and we, we knock out the serial numbers. And because that was one of the hardest things to change, right? 'Cause the numbers is what get people caught back in the old days, right? So you'd, you'd, you'd mark out the numbers. And then you'd make the plate, you'd burn it. You'd put the negative in the machine and burn the plate. Then you put the plate onto the press and then you make the ink and then you run your paper, right? Like it's fascinating. I love it. I really do. I love it. Well, it's a piece of art. Yeah. And I still got a press, you know, and I sit there and I lay next to it and reminisce. But nevertheless, yeah, I'll show it to you one day. But so yeah, so, so that, that's that process. But with me, what happened. Just to interrupt you real quick. How long did that process take? Well, for him, he could do it quick. So I had to learn because he never let me do it. Do some of the things like he never let me like, uh, take the photos. He didn't let me, you know, burn the plates. I would be there. I would move stuff for him or be cleaning, but there was a lot of things I didn't get to do. But because I got to see what he used, I replicated that part first. So when the bill came out, I went back and started thinking about all the things that he was doing. You mean when the 1996 one $100 bill came out when that came out, because that bill came out and they said that it was unable to be duplicated. Is that right? Yeah. They said that all the security features, there was a watermark, a strip, a fluorescence on it. There were a shifting ink. There was micro printing. You got the Mornay, the, so there's a moray, which if you try to scan it in a present scanner, the lines around his head will get real wavy, right? There's all kinds of neat things in there. Oh, really? So if you try to scan that in like a, just a scanner to like scan it over to just even send a picture to somebody, the lines get wavy and his lines get wavy in his head. It's called a moray. Right. Um, interesting. Yeah. No, there's a lot of cool things on it. It says here six features, uh, yeah, watermark, a second faint image of Benjamin Franklin to the right of the portrait visible when held to light, uh, embedded security thread, a vertical strip embedded in the paper visible when held to light. It reads USA 100. I remember when that came out, bro, UV reactive thread under ultraviolet light. The security thread glows red. So that's when you take the money to strip club and you throw it at the girl. And the line will glow yellow, red, or green, right? Got it. Whatever denomination it is. You want it to grow. I would want it to glow red, right? Red was the hundred. It was. Oh, I wanted to glow. What was green ones? Oh, well, no, I think that's twenties. I think. Okay. I'll do twenties. You can do twenties. Help the ladies out. Yeah. Ultraviolet light. They, the security thread glows red, uh, color shifting ink, the 100 in the lower right front corner shifts from green to black as you tilt it. And now, then now it's purple to gold. Got it. No one micro printing, micro printing, tiny USA, 100. Printing included on Franklin's lapel and in the lower left numeral area. And then fine line concentric line printing intricate lines around the portrait and on the reverse that ordinary copiers struggle to reproduce. Exactly. The ordinary copiers, it makes it the like wavy. Got it. But listen to this one, read that next line. The 1996 note does not have the blue 3d security ribbon or the color changing bell in the ink. Well, those arrived on the redesigned $100 note introduced later in 2015. You know why that bill was. Made because of me. I'm sitting next to him. It's called visual physics, right? You know, it's so funny. They let the bill out right when I got out of prison. Oh, I thought they were trying to rub it in my face. You do it on purpose. Oh yeah. They had to have, cause it, it was supposed to come out in 13 or no, it was supposed to come out like 11 or 10 somewhere around there. I got out in 13, 2013, but I'm watching it in the paper there. I'm the reading of the paper and Matt, you know, this new bill coming out. Right. And, and, uh, then when I got out and I seen that purple line, I just went, nah, it's I'm like, well, so what happened is they wrote a book about me called the art of making money. Like way back. It was like 2005. And so, and then they put me in rolling stone magazine, call me the best counterfeiter ever. Yeah. It was awesome. Right. I mean, I went to prison for seven years, so it wasn't too awesome, but it was still cool that I got recorded, you know, and, uh, but then everyone wanted to be like me. Oh, so you started having guys in California reading the book now. Granted, I only, there was 12 steps to the whole thing. I only gave them like five. Right. And so, for one, I would never give my recipe to anybody. I counterfeit yeah but when I was doing the book I was like you know if I give these five even if they tried to do it it would have come out like mine right because I don't want a bunch of people making money like me and then I'm getting in trouble right so I just left a lot of parts out but a lot of people tried and started creating their own money did anybody ever reach out to you and say hey do you want to get back in the game all they do now on my Facebook and Instagram man you know like I get a little weirded out you know because I get that happens all the time all the time have you ever just even met up with somebody just to see what it was like like what's this person even talking about no no no if if somebody comes at me like that now like I'm an artist I got a great life man you know what I'm saying like and even back then man I'd probably trunk them right just for coming to me without knowing me right yeah so like yeah anyway yeah my neighborhood we trunk they would trunk people not me you put them in a trunk yeah put them in a trunk um but anyway okay so take me back to art you're working with Pete yeah are you able to learn Pete's method or or what happens there so so when the time I was with him like I said mostly I was just moving things for him learn how to mix inks he didn't he didn't ever let me do any of the real heavy stuff like the brain work right okay got it so I got to watch his what he did you know that's how I learned what he you know I'd watch him do the plates I'd watch him do the the photography I'd watch him you know mix his inks right how he'd weigh it right he'd put the ink on the little scale like drugs right oh so you had to have a certain amount of ink on the bill yeah yeah you had yeah everything even the bill had to weigh a gram right because drug dealers like to weigh money but nevertheless so but then Pete god I want a gram go on yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so anyway for like you know we did I I stayed around for about nine months to a year and then he ended up disappearing he was gone never came into the diner no more wasn't at the shop you know and in my neighborhood that happened to people right do you know what happened to him no no I don't I don't I just he just never came back you know if you had to guess what happened to him what do you think happened well I hope he got away like that's what I think oh you think somebody might have been on him a bit oh well that's in that in that world back then especially man like people in my neighborhood disappeared that that really happened but did you see Pete being paranoid about stuff like did he also have some like things that he had done like were there things he set up at his place or his house to like so the one thing about counterfeiters that that that he did not so not only did he did I get to see what he did but we talked a lot right I mean that was the coolest thing I think about the whole experience is just getting getting to hear his thoughts on different things which expanded mine right which made me grow right you know so it was more than just learning how to print money but it was actually learning how to use my mind because up until that point I was learning how to print money and I was learning how to write and I was learning how to write at that point I had it you know and and so when when he when he did disappear like it was hard on me man you know I'd go over there I'd be looking in the window seeing if he's around you know and you never heard from him again no no and so the thing about a counterfeiter is the biggest thing is they teach you how to be quiet they teach you how to disappear they teach you how to not exist they teach you how to you know that's the thing that was so awesome when I later down the road became a master at it is I could I could go anywhere I could go to Florida I could go to New York I could go to L.A. I could go to any country and quietly go somewhere and not know anybody and talk to anybody and produce money it was the most it was the most liberating feeling you can have to have that ability to walk in with with blank paper and then turn it into to suitcase cash but but you learned how to do it quietly and so for him when he disappeared in my mind I'm thinking you know he had to go and he had to go and he had to go right the heat's on him right and and and boom he's gone right I I didn't want to think he was dead even though like that's a high that's a possibility too because you know here's the thing like whenever you're dealing with large amounts of money every it's not like the movies man you get over 50,000 you get over 100,000 your life's in danger yeah okay it don't need to be 500,000 it don't need to be a million I've seen people get killed for 5,000 so so in that world you're if people have tried to get me to do money while I'm free. No, because I don't even entertain it. Right. Right? But on the streets, yeah, there were times where there were different, you know, crews that would hear about me. And then they literally look at you like a printing press. Right. This guy's ATM. Yeah, this is an ATM, man. So that was the thing that I had to watch for back on the day, you know? That's scary. And that's why you have to be a ghost. That's why you have to be a ghost because you can't be predictable. You can't, I never, even now nobody knows where I live, man. Like I don't let, wherever I lay my head, man, it's top secret, top secret. Even my gallery, you know, by appointment only. Doors ain't open. Can't come in there. You get free nights every night, all year long, plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use all summer. It's a first of its kind plan created for how Texans actually use energy. TXU Energy, energy for everything. Rep number 1-0-0-0-4. The best business ideas come from people who are passionate about what they're creating. 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You guys are out there kind of banging, stealing this, stealing that. Kind of petty crime stuff. Maybe a little bit aggressive. You meet Pete. You kind of go under his wing as this sort of like, not exactly an apprentice, but you're there with him all the time. His helper. Yeah, his helper. You're watching, you're seeing what he's doing. And also he's kind of having conversations with you that are helping you kind of elevate and expand. That's how you even think about the world. Mentally. Okay, and now Pete disappears and you're back out on the streets and you guys start getting into some heavier stuff. Pete, yeah, like, you know, when he left, I went back. Actually, when that whole situation he took off, I went back to the streets. I started getting into the gangs and I started getting into, you know, just some real heavy shit. You know, and we started robbing drug dealers. We dress up like cops. We had the cop cars, you know. Like I said, the drug dealing was a real big thing. So I didn't like to sell drugs. Like, I had a lot of friends that did, but I didn't like to see what it did to people. You know, that's why I like the counterfeiting, right? Because it was like, I didn't feel like I was really hurting anyone, you know. I'm not stealing. I don't like to steal. And the drug part, like, I seen what it did. But we would, so we would start robbing them, right? And one of my dudes, he, like, my son, so my, my, my first son, his mom's a cop, right? So, like, and she, yeah, right? That's a whole nother lane. Well, we won't go down that one. But it, it, it, it allowed, you know, a lot of my guys, we had friends that were cops, so we could get uniforms. We could get badges, you know. I always loved a cop car. And I had a nice one, right? I always had a real nice one, like, and I loved it because I could move through, see, I'd wear glasses and, you know, make my hair to the side and I look like a cop, you know. But, but we started, we, you know, we'd start robbing the drug dealers. One's, like, out in the suburbs. And what, basically what would happen, these guys from the suburbs would come in and they'd like to hang out at the clubs downtown. They want to flash their money to the girls. We'd have girls that were working for us. So we'd have girls in those clubs and they'd be like, hey, this guy, he's doing this, this, and that. And we're like, okay, cool. And she wouldn't sleep with them, but she'd go home with them, become friends, hang out with them, finesse them. And then we'd come and poof, right? And we'd, we'd be like, we'd have fests on, guns, like, like legit, like. dressed like cops coming. - Yeah, dude. - But yeah, no, and we did that, and then it got different. dangerous it did start getting dangerous because we started getting stupid like you know at first it was and that's how y'all throw like a police ball or whatever like i mean how stupid do you guys get well that's stupid like that we'll play a softball against the fire department or something like what were you guys doing but we were like robbing more dangerous elements okay got it so it escalated it escalated like all crime right like all crime escalates you go from oh we're gonna hit these white suburban kids from out there they think they're cool and now we get our balls so big we're like oh we're gonna hit that cat on 18th street that got 10 guns around them oh yeah right so you go from like you know it just escalated it's escalation ladder and then i got shot i got shot in my side and and then and and there was a lot of things that happened that caused me to go to my next phase okay got it but we did for for that little brief you know there was i guess for about three years maybe i was just running hard on the street you know who shot you uh latin king latin king shot me tried to kill me yeah yeah and um did he spare your life no hell no yeah he tried to kill me yeah no they i was walking home from a a party like two in the morning i'm walking through a basketball court and i hear two guys behind me i looked they got they got handkerchiefs on and um and i thought it was my dudes from the party and so i'm like hey man take the handkerchiefs off man you know you're getting me nervous and they're like getting you nervous and boom they pulled out the pistols and just started just boom boom boom boom boom i turned around i took off running put my head between my legs i could feel the bullets just see right and uh and then i got hit and i fell to the ground right as i was almost around the corner from the projects you know i got hit and i stayed on i when i hit the ground i was just gonna stay on the ground and figured they thought they killed me and they take off and but when i hit the ground i looked back they were running up on me they were gonna try to dome shot me yeah you know and something something real spiritual happened at that moment like i felt something grabbed me from underneath my my armpits you know and just kind of like lift me off the ground and and i ran like five blocks to 31st and halston i was on 32nd and was you leaking too i was leaking yeah yeah you plug it up did you plug up the wound with like a there was a chicago tribune guy that was helping me he might have put some newspaper in it or something i had to put a newspaper on me well i didn't even know i i didn't even like feel it it was weird because when i got up i was like oh my god i'm i got to 31st and i sat down on the bus stop and i'm like feeling myself you know you're all like shaking and stuff and then uh and then i stood back up and i could feel like something on my side when i grabbed it was just all red and just blood and i told the chicago sun time guy say hey man i've been hit man called ambulance damn yeah so then he was delivering papers yeah delivering papers yeah damn it was like three in the morning but after that that's when i went to texas you know i was like my mom was like man you got to go you know i've already had at that point like six of my friends murdered you know i'm only like 18 19 years old you know so shit was getting hot down there huh well the south side was dangerous back then man like i said guns hit the street man seemed like everyone had one they were called larsons l-l-a-r-s i mean it's just for the type of gun yeah like right around 90 i'd say like 92 93 man everyone had these things it was a 22 a 25 and a 380 they were yeah they they were like that the little the little guns they were real tiny like that 22 yeah that's what we had oh yeah that's it those things flooded flooded the the streets man a little grocery getter you think they were a little tiny man but yeah 22 25 380 and you get them for 50 bucks it's almost like they dumped them on the street and then that's and it just so it went from you know fighting and bats and you know like the old school type to yeah real shit double dragon shit double dragon shit yeah to like everyone having these little peace shooters that killed that's crazy i wouldn't be surprised but i lost six months of my friends during that time and uh and so i went to texas my mom said let's get out of here so i ended up going down to texas and when you get down to texas is that where uh your counterfeiting journey kind of continues yeah yeah so when i went down there of course i'm trying to get away from the gang violence and uh but i'm still me you know i'm still a criminal right and so i go down there i start getting with the in with the wrong crowd i get into a little trouble um i go to i go to prison for like two years and uh in a texas prison those texas prisons were rough too man wow was it crazy i thought i was in hell but uh when i got out my girl natalie she picked me up and she took me to a hotel we did the whole you know the whole prison release freedom party right oh yeah sex or whatever sex yeah anyway and um and then we we went to the the first place i wanted to go was to the bookstore because i read a lot i've read thousands of books right and so i wanted a bruce lee book and so she wanted to get me the bruce lee book so we go to the bookstore and she buy we were buying the book and she pays with a hundred the new hundred i hadn't seen it yet right because i was in prison and and and i'm watching she pays and the and the lady just pulls out a pen and marks it and then puts it in drawer and i'm looking i'm like man already i'm thinking like she didn't even look at the hundred but she just used the marker yeah and i had yeah i just used the marker and that was entrusted fully i was and i'm thinking in my mind i'm like man if somebody figured this part out man you could have a run right and that's where it started right i just got to beat the marker just gotta beat the marker right that's the only thing on my mind i just gotta beat that because nobody's looking at it and and that's where the the quest began you know and i'm not even out of prison like a couple days and here i am already thinking about the next crime that's that's what's so like the criminal mind could be so like obsessive and addictive you know like it really can be i mean it's kind of an addiction oh for sure right especially especially printing money like the smell of ink even now gets me aroused you know like anyway i mean i might use a different word but it makes me like get goosebumps you know yeah yeah the smell of like old candy ink when you open it so anyway so so we start we start the journey i'm and and just and i again here's one of those moments where i just in the you know i got got a little bit blessed or lucky or star fell on my head or whatever is is natalie was was one of the first that was into tech right when the computers were coming out the internet was only in like the the the libraries and uh the universities right so i would use the the internet at that time i'd go into the library to to look up uh how they made money i could go onto the treasury site and they had like educational videos on how they put the money through each step it was fascinating yeah you're lying no it was yeah you could still go i bet you could still probably look up how how they how the treasury makes money and they'll have videos but we're this is early the videos were slow but you could see it right right and then you could still go and that's when i thought about my about pete right about the offset press right and then like i said i i got a little lucky because natalie was a computer genius at the time right she was working for for a tech company to that you know they were calling this before you know other countries took all the you know the call-in jobs right and um and so i what i did is i combined the old technology and then the new technology together so i created a hybrid right did you have to have a conversation with her like hey babe this is the new technology and then the old technology and then the new this is what i'm gonna do or uh it slowly led there right like first i'm just trying to just figure it out in my head how this could be done yeah like how do you like ease her into it like just like you're sitting on the couch being like wish wish we wish we had a couple hundreds well no i i didn't ease her into i mean a little bit of an easement but she was ready to go too like she was fascinated how i was thinking right because i'm telling her about when i was young and when i got to learn how to use the old printing presses and then she's telling me about how she's like a technician for all the new stuff and that's a good point she's already smashing criminals so it's like what are we even talking about yeah so anyway she me and her having a we start to come and form this thing the first thing we had to do was figure out the paper right you can't you know i know how i could get the press i'm looking up you know where to get presses we're calling places so we we could almost get everything we need from the ink to the printers the printers were new so they didn't have none of the secret service uh uh software in them right the photoshop was new all the stuff was new so that's why credit cards scams shot through the roof that's why checks shot through the roof people were doing corporate checks because all this equipment that was coming out there was no safeguards on it oh it was awesome it wasn't tested they hadn't really thought that people are going to use this for this well yeah we were using the magnet they had magnetic printers you could print the magnetic checks like that was like 96 97 probably looked that up i bet you fraud went through the roof right because you were able to use these machines you know and we used them well we you know she she started looking in how to uh one of the first things we did was change the uh the photoshop program where it wouldn't like if you scanned the hundred it had something in there where it would um that in 1996 financial institutions faced a dramatic surge in check and credit card fraud that's what happened man primarily by the part of it i raised my hand yeah i was a part of that shit but driven primarily by the transition into the early digital era and the rapid adoption of desktop publishing technology yeah there you go so yeah i just wanted to get that out there but you're talking about the paper yeah so the paper was the first thing we had to figure out we could figure out all the other things the printing the technology this but if you don't get the paper right it's it's worthless right because you had to beat the pen right that was the first test that led us there right was the pen and the paper is what beats the pen yeah well it's the ph in the paper right the the the paper is like a it's a neutral right it's there's no acid so so paper goes from like acidic levels and so the money paper goes from like acidic levels is like almost like at zero, right? It's really hard to get it at that. I suppose. I don't make paper, but as I learned how to do this, I learned that paper has these different levels on it. And so the pen reacts with that. With the acidic level. If it's not neutral, then what happens? It turns black. Okay, got it. Like a dark brown. Okay, got it. So that's like you see at the bank or some like- When you go to the store, you get 100- Bodegas and stuff, they do that sometimes. Yeah, they do the pen. Got it. And if it's real, it'll turn like a light yellow, right? Got it. It's like a light yellow. Okay. It's a beautiful color. Love that color. So here it is. We're trying to figure out this paper, and we're ordering paper from everywhere. In the Yellow Pages, again, the internet's only in the libraries and the universities, so you still had Yellow Pages back then. So here we are going to this paper company, this paper company. We're ordering, getting samples. She's marketing, marketing, marketing. We're going on and on with this. Finally, I'm losing. I'm thinking we're not going to be able to pull it off, so I'm getting a little upset with her. I'm arguing with her that we're not doing something right. So she starts screaming back at me, and she's waving the Yellow Pages at me. You fucker, you're fucking running me ragged. Like I was really running the girl hard, too. And she slammed it down, and she goes, nothing works. And she marked the Yellow Pages, and she goes, I can't believe this can't be. And I'm like, huh, what's going on? Because I still don't know. And she hits it again and again. She looks up. She goes, this whole time, we've been looking for the paper, and this is it, Art. Come here. And I go over there. What the fuck? It marked. I got nervous. When I seen it go yellow, I got so nervous because I didn't have to do nothing. I didn't have to do nothing to it. Bro, up until this point, I even started trying to put acid on the paper. I almost burned the house down like a real asshole. I put acid in aluminum. Don't ever do that, right? Yeah. Don't do it. Okay. Go right through it. But I was trying to do all kinds of dumb things, right? So you were trying all different papers. All different papers. And I'll hear the whole time, it's the freaking Yellow Pages that is like one of the most widely used paper in the whole world. Like what types of different papers? Cottons, linens, different poundage. 20. Because papers weighed, right? Like you got 20 pound. Like school paper would probably be like a 26 pound, 32 pound, right? You're printing papers like 32. Yeah. What I needed was 18, right? So it was real thin, right? And this is what happened. This is what made this so amazing. So here I was looking for the paper that I could mark, you know, mark right. But now this gave me, it solved a bunch of things. Because I needed to solve the watermark and I needed to solve the strip, right? And then the strip is fluorescent. So now I got to figure out how to make the strip fluorescent. But I got to put all these things in the paper. With the Yellow Pages, because it was so thin, it allowed me to press two of them together. It was awesome, right? I'd print three on each side, three fronts, three backs. I'd have my strips and my watermarks. I'd have a light table and I would have all the stuff, just every piece laid out. And I would just lay, it was all hand done. That's the one thing about my. Money, right? So like people ask how much I've done and I've printed and made a lot, but every single piece was hand done. Wow. Every piece, every, every one. I put that watermark in every one. I laid that strip. Every one of them. She'd be standing right next to me. You know, it's a little newborn. Oh yeah. I did a little baby. It's a piece of art. It really was. And then, then, then you press them. But, but when we found that, well, you know, when she did that, now we're looking for the paper. She, she would go to R.R. Donnelly out there in the suburbs of Chicago. Say that she was a teacher and she was doing a school project with the kid. Could I get, get some paper? And they'd give us a whole roll of it for free. Wow. The whole roll. Like enough to do like a million dollars. Right? It was, it was, it was. For the, of the phone book paper? Of the phone book paper. We'd get it on a butt roll, they call it. Right? Wow. So after they're done printing the, the phone books, they would have these butt rolls that would have like that much left on her or something, man. They would just, and so she'd come out of there, man, with free paper. Like, look at me, man. We'd load that shit up. And, um. And then we would cut it and then we'd, we'd prep it. We had to do a lot to it because, so when we started to, to try to run it through the, the, the ink jets, it couldn't match the, the colors. Right? So at first I wanted to just run it off the ink jet. Right? The printer. The printers. You know, the normal printers. But you could get like the serial numbers really good. You could get the seals really good. You could get certain, the back sometimes, the right ones. In the early days you could get good. But the actual color of money you could never match. Ever. I don't, I don't give a shit how good you were. I mean, again, again, here we go. Now we got the paper. Now it's time to do the files. Right? But you think you'd be able to figure out the color, right? I mean, the colors. Well, with a computer you don't control it. It's the computer that uses the Pantone. So it's a Pantone color. I see. Right? So it wasn't really exactly up to you. I mean, if you're printing, if you're using, if you're using an ink jet, it's gonna, it's only gonna have so many variations. You can adjust it, you know? And so like with money, right, you're trying to create something that is. The most powerful tool in the world. Yeah. Right? And, and, and, and money has a feel. It has a look. It has like a greenish cream color to it. Right? Like, and, and, and this, and even though it looks very simple, it's still very powerful. Right? That, that bill is. And so if you're printing like what, what the way that I did it is I did every layer like they did. When I went to the, to, to the, their website and I watched how they did it, what the first thing I learned was they did every single, every single image by itself, right? That's what made my money so good. That's what separated me from all the other counterfeiters before me. And most definitely all of them behind me. I like to do one thing at a time. If you try to do everything at one time, which a lot of the counterfeiters did, you're always going to get one or two or three of, of the, the, the assets off, right? Cause, cause you're the, the, the face and the, and the weave around it, which is micro printing or the seals or the numbers. There's so many different things that you got to print. And if you try to print them all out. Once it's going to be impossible to, to match all of them. And if you only get one or two off, you could tell, you could tell right away, right? Every one of them has to be perfect. If you want to really fool the world with the money, right? So how would you go about doing one and then doing the next one? Like with a printer, were you still using the printer or you put that kibosh on that? Well, no, that's when it advanced to, to bring him back Pete's technology with the offset because it allowed me to mix my own ink. Got it. Right. So I needed what I needed to figure out. It's how to color this paper, right? And that was one of the hardest things. It's so, so, so like trippy when I think back on it, because on the scale, the amount of paint that I used for a run was like an eyedrop, right? To get that light, light, light, green, creamy look was one of the hardest colors to match. So a run means one bill or how many bills? It's just one run through, right? Like, so, so. I see what you're saying. And how many times you have to run through to get a bill correct? So for the registry. So, so I'm going to give you some previews. Printing knowledge, right? So, so what made my bills, what, what allowed me to be able to run, keep running it through is the registration. Like on a printer, you got that little thing that moves to the side, right? For the paper. Like if you change the paper size. Okay. Right. If you have eight and a half by 11. Oh yeah. There's that little thing. That little gauge. It's like, okay, you pull, you move that to the side of it to kind of keep it right there. That's called registration. Okay. Keeps the paper straight where it goes into the computer. Perfect. Same thing on an offset press. You have a registration. A little bit harder. To work with on that though, right? You've got to be really lined up because that paper is flying through that thing. Okay. Right. Whereas a printer is like, right? Right. Offset presses, right? It's just shooting it out really fast. So that registration, but I was able to get the registration pretty much perfect every time. You know, just being patient with it, right? Not, not trying to force it. And so the first thing I would do is run the paper through the offset press. So this is when I combine the two. I see. I'm seeing that the ink jets couldn't print the background. It was impossible. And so I said, okay, let me, let me get a printing press and let me go do the old way. You know, one of Pete's. Yeah. One of Pete's. And then we'll use Natalie's way with the serial numbers and the seals. It worked really good for the serial numbers. Cause I could change every single one of them. Right. And the seals, it matched really close. Right. But with the, with the printing press, I wanted it, the color and the, in the weave and the face. I wanted that face to be perfect because, you know, if you tried to scan the bill, it would create this little wavy thing around the head and it just looked nasty. Right. That was one of the security features. It's called a Moray and they didn't even list it up there, but that's one of them. But with the printing press, I get to shoot my own, I get to take a picture of it. Right. And so when I went back to that, that's when the bills went like from here to here. Right. Cause now I'm really making it like the feds are making it just at a very small, you know, small scale. Right. And the first thing I would do is I would, we would cut the paper and we'd have to put it on a carrier paper, which was a thicker paper. Cause that 18 pound was so skinny that it would jam the big press. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. If you're putting like, yeah, if you're putting phone book paper through a printer, it's not going to make it. It would just, just tear it up. So we'd have to put that on a piece of paper thicker and then tape the sides. Funny story. I had a whole, a senior citizen, a living place putting paper on paper for me, like 50 boxes, man. Really? Yeah. We were doing, yeah. Well, I, we were about to do a big run and so I asked my boy, the Greek, I said, man, I gotta, I gotta get all this paper put on me. And he's like, how many buys? Like 50 boxes. He's like, dude, that's great. I said, and he was remodeling a senior citizen home and he's like, well, guess what, dog? He was the senior citizen home that I'm doing some work on. They play in the game room all the time. Maybe I'll ask them. He goes, there ain't no money on it. I'm like, no, no, there ain't no money on it. I just need one piece of paper placed on another and tape the two sides. So we asked the head of the, the, the, you know, the, the senior citizen and I had, before you know it, I had like 20 old. people. doing it we were doing a contest i was paying them 50 bucks a day and you're and they don't even know they don't know it's going to get printed into money yeah they were helping i had all these it was awesome man but they they had fun they were laughing they had fun for sure they did they did contests for sure they were laughing do the most i would give a bonus well who could do the most oh they would all come out but they had no idea they were helping you counterfeit not at all not at all not one bit yeah and we and we got it done like that it was so awesome yeah that was fun but anyway so yeah we the paper we'd run it through we'd do the background then we would do the the the weave in the face and then we would run it through the new technology and we would do the serial numbers and the seals and then that little hundred right and then even that with the with the shifting ink this is what was the coolest thing i i think with with me creating this bill was how i was able to take just your common things right like take car paint and use it for the shifting ink right it's car paint but i but i was able to alter it well not at all it was the same company that made it for the feds right i mean wasn't too smart of them right you know how did you find out that they made it for the feds through their uh patent number so so i would also look up patent numbers that's how i figured out the counter machine in the banks so i was i'm like a scientist with stuff man i'm always trying to figure things out and what's really nuts is the federal government man they give you like the patent office if you have a patent number you could go to the patent office and put the patent number and it'll tell you you could make a nuclear bomb if you want it i think actually it'll tell you everything about it tell you everything about it what has to right so if you're trying to file a patent you got to do a patent search right so i got the my boy's mom worked at the bank and i had her get the patent number off the counter machine and then i just went and put it in in the you know patent trademark office and it gave me the whole schematic man how it used the magnetic ink for the thread how it did this how it counted i mean i literally defeated the bill by using their own knowledge yeah it was pretty cool you know but um wow dude dude i and and i remember whenever we whenever we met up in chicago you told me that um yeah like whenever you made that first bill it was crazy the feeling was like really overwhelming because um it was scary it was i mean i don't get scared much but it it put a it put a level of fear in me like what did i just do you know like i you know because i'm from the streets and and i and i and i've seen people get hurt i've seen people get hurt and i've seen people get hurt and i've seen people do really well but money can cause a lot of things you know oh yeah and and so for me i'm sitting here like the the first thing that came to mind is be as secretive as possible don't let anybody know like i didn't want to tell nobody right so it wasn't you know sometimes you do something that that you're so proud of that you you want to go show your mama yeah i didn't want to show my mama this one right like i didn't want to show nobody man i and and i got nervous i'm like man they'll kill us they'll kill us i told i actually told now they'll kill us for this man like this is their power and we're and we're learning how to create it out of freaking yellow pages yeah you know like i can't even imagine yeah it's ridiculous you know and so and so now you can make money yeah right how long does it take to you to make like a decent amount of money and then what do you decide you're going to start doing and what do you start spending it on well again crime escalates right so you know at first it was like we wanted to just because i wanted to be secretive about it we would just drive around the country and just spend it right we'd shoot shoot to the other side of the country where'd y'all go like vegas to the malls you know i mean no we'd hit i probably hit every town in the country like i i'm like back road arty man i have been on every back road and you were just cruising is having a good time i got like two million miles under me for sure absolutely on the road driving yeah back then we had the atlas you know so we look at a town and every town always had like this little mall in it you know and natalie got good boy she could hit a mall man be on the other side of it so i was like i'm gonna go to the mall and spend you know almost 15 000 in like an hour and a half and we'd be on the road gone you know and we sometimes well we don't the most we ever did with three in one day she was on a roll i don't know if she did a line of cocaine or what man but she wouldn't stop you know if she did a line of cocaine but let's keep it going well she was going anyway so like yeah we would hit the road man and but what happened is first we started buying things for us and then before long you got like you're almost like god i feel like an asshole right i got 150 shirts right yeah yeah what are you gonna do you have yeah a lot of pairs of shoes what are you gonna do yeah so then we started getting things for like our family and friends and stuff like that and were people noticing that you had money for sure yeah but people you know here the thing is is i was always looked at as a hustler got it right so whether it was robbing drug dealers or like i mean we even hit hit trucks i was a teamster we'd get shit off the the docks you know all the time one time i had like 250,000 condoms like everyone in chicago was wearing one of the condoms i was yeah oh you robbed the truck yeah got it the trucks yeah trucks in chicago that was another little hustle we had you know i had big razors i had i've had everything you know but anyway back to to the the the money yeah how were you spending it so we so we started buying stuff for like our families and friends and stuff like that you know so i started buying things for kids right i grew up poor grew up in the projects you know we were at the salvation army shelter home you know and so there's a salvation army box in every town yeah so i would just tell tell natalie listen just get diapers baby clothes baby shoes baby toys you know you know we were at the salvation army shelter home you know and so there's a salvation army box in every town yeah so i would just tell tell natalie listen just get diapers baby clothes baby shoes baby toys you know and so i would just tell natalie let's go drop them off and we'll just drop them off and that was like that was like one of the coolest times of my life that's the most fulfilling they say i they say i did that by my therapist said when i was in prison i did it to like cover up my crime but but for me it really i i loved helping people man it was awesome what made it one of the best times of your life well because i just do because it wasn't even just the salvation army but even families like you know uh one of natalie's friends down in houston was struggling man and we just showed up at christmas and just bam blessed her kids with with with with brent and toys they weren't gonna have a christmas right right and see that and you know or even like i'd go to church man like i was i was so sick with it i would take 10 out and i'd go to church on sunday we'd hit we hit the malls friday and saturday and i go church and give them 10 and walk out you know like i just love doing things like that you know so you were using some of the counterfeit money to go tithe yeah you give 10 counterfeit money give god the money he's the biggest gangster ever man you know for sure gotta give him his man well you know what that's the thing about life right like there's there's i call it the flow right like when you when you when you give man it you're what you're doing is you're opening yourself up man for a lot of good yeah a lot of good you know and i learned how to do that even in the toughest times like man we when there were times when i was growing up man where we didn't have uh hot water for two years we didn't have no hot water you know how cold it gets in chicago yeah and here you're you're taking a cold shower you know while it's 30 degrees out yeah like that shit was rough yeah you know but even in that you found some happiness man right right and it's all about the mind the thought man where you're where you're where you're going to be you know and so for me helping these kids giving back doing that was like and i say it's one of the coolest times because even though there was my mom was mentally ill you know my dad was gone my brother was you know i lost my brother to mental illness he was no longer with us you know i lost two years ago i'm sorry man i didn't know that you know i lost my brother to mental illness yeah yeah you know out in la man he just you know he's gone but but he was he was special he had a great mind right but you know so for me the money at that time that's what brought me happiness right was giving right so it led you to a place where it's like yeah at least i get to do something for others right yeah that's a good i mean it makes sense especially if you come from a place you didn't have much then you would want to be able to give to others you know um did you try to put any money in the bank no no i mean my bank was forest preserve just burying it yeah i'd bury it man i'd say i'd stuff it in pvc pipes well first i put it in plastic seal it and put because pvc doesn't disintegrate you know and stuff it in there and then go bury it i probably still got stuff buried out there i just don't know where it's at we can go look sometime if you ever come up there hypothetically i got at least three that are still buried somewhere over there i just lost the map three mil you think oh no i don't know about that i'd always do like hundred thousand dollars and i'd be like oh my god i'm gonna have to go to the hospital i'm gonna have to go to the yeah you know like just little ones you know put maybe two or three or four tubes in a hole five tubes you know but yeah i did lose some out there but i really don't know where it's at and i don't want to find it just that's just i just need to say that did you ever give counterfeit money to people that you knew oh not like purposely right you know like i i like to play with it one of my favorite things back then you know the bombs on the street that would have the little signs will work for food right i always give them 100 yeah yeah because you know they'll go spend it and they were good i knew that they wouldn't get caught with it right and they'd go spend it in a place that i probably would never have gone right you know so like if it did pop up hey you know what's going on what happens to places that end up with counterfeit money like what happens to say like you go to like a bodega or a gas station someplace you pass a hundred dollar bill on them what happens to those so here's the thing so like corporate stuff back then they could just write it off right the bank could snatch it they have to write it off right they have to write it off right they have to write it off right they have to write it off as a loss right we we'd always try to stay away from like boat you know i don't want to go hit a mama pop with a bogus hunter you know because i don't want it to pop up on them in their bank and then they get it so it was always like i always try to stay towards the corporation stuff you don't like the walgreens the walmart's again you know i i wouldn't go to the corner store and spend it on on old lady you know got it yeah so i but but but the corporations i you know now i mean i think they changed it to where now they do make them responsible but back then because it wasn't so like aggressive the the laws were a little bit lighter what do you mean it wasn't so aggressive well there wasn't the counterfeiting it wasn't like a really big crime like there's drug dealers in every city thousands of them right there might be one or two counterfeiters in a city right like the crime was especially when the new bill did come out it did defeat a lot of things you know a lot of 1996 100 it put a lot of people out of business you know like it did yeah and um you know and and and still does there i mean i don't think really there's been a a huge you know impact a counterfeiter since then especially with the new bill the new bill is almost impossible to do yeah it would cost too much money to try to even replicate it is that true yeah oh yeah what new features have been added well the visual physics it's that purple strip so like i said yeah you can look it up but that that on the 2015 i think it came out in 15 or 13 i think it was 13 because that's when i got out i felt like they let it out right when i got out and uh it's a purple strip that goes down the middle okay and it's actually like uh there it is it's actually thousands like nano nano shards of glass that they embed and in it in it it's called visual physics it's actually really fascinating do they even tell you it's called visual physics in that thing no no they don't let me see this right here this says it has a 3d security ribbon for one where if you tilt the note back and forth while focusing on the blue ribbon or blue strip some people call them you will see the bells change to 100s as they move when you tilt the note back and forth the bells and 100s move side to side if you tilt it side to side they move up and down the ribbon is woven into the paper not printed on it wow it's called visual physics that's the name of it okay scientists created and the reason they didn't release the bill at the time was because that the bills were defected so that that printing technology wasn't perfected and they were trying to use it too soon so if you take 100 if we had one and you folded it right on that it would rip and so they didn't release it for a while the ribbon would rip you mean yeah right on the edge of the ribbon the bill would just come right apart whereas money's made to be to last right got it and so these ones were a little bit that that that technology wasn't perfected when they decided to use it got it let me read the rest of these yeah bell in the inkwell color shifting 100 a raised intaglio printing genuine bills feel slightly rough particularly across franklin's portrait and certain printed areas uh you've on his lapel you could feel his lapel oh you can yeah when you rub your thumb across his lapel you could feel it and they had a famous director um who used to uh that famous director who used to pass money i think it was from that movie live and die in los angeles you looked at it might have been williams live and die in la yeah it's one of the greatest movies ever live and die in la yeah i love it's only counterfeiting money oh yeah this is the guy right here william yeah freaking let's let's hear this real fast introduced me to a counterfeiter that he had arrested and put in prison and he got this guy out to come and make counterfeit money for us which was as good as the government's money i know because i used to pass it these fake 20s this guy was an artist if i was the government i'd hire that guy to make the money cheaper so yeah that's pretty wild i remember hearing about that that he used to pass this money he used to go around and spend it and they had it on this the money they got i believe it was from the set of uh live and die in la i'd like to get some of that yeah i collect money i'd love to get my hands i bet you do i was actually doing a painting of live and die in la in my gallery and and on mel so i'm an artist now right i told you but i had i had a space on melrose and la cienga and i was doing uh a live and die in la picture right i was doing the the like the poster that it came out but i i made it with money and i mean i made it really badass it was really big and on halloween night i i didn't go in because i went to take the kids trick-or-treating and there was a drive-by and all my windows got shot out and somebody got shot yeah i would have been there if i didn't go trick-or-treating but i was doing to live and die in la and i got bullet i got bullet holes in my window like what the hell is this man dude but then predict the future predict like i'm really good when like theo goes to heaven but yeah so let's get back into it so how much money do you think you printed over time oh gosh i mean millions millions you know but i burn millions too like so so my way i would burn money if it was if it wouldn't come out right you know i'd get rid of it immediately because it was too risky to pass try and pass yeah yeah and just didn't want it floating around you know and like what's the escalation ladder like once that once you start to make money you're buying things you're tithing you don't even know what to do like what's happening with you personally and then what's happening with you as far as making the money personally you know me and natalie are having the greatest time of our life right but uh i was getting tired of hitting the road all the time it gets exhausting because you don't want to spend it at home no no you you don't yeah absolutely not right but i hadn't been in chicago in like nine years so when i went to texas i had to stay down there and so i wanted to go back home you know and and show my friends you know like now it's time i want to you know i know that you know i know i'm from an organized crime neighborhood you know so i'm thinking man this might be good you know i won't have to be driving around all the time because you're taking chances when you're hitting the road with that stuff right you get pulled over and you got stacks of 20s fives and ones you know the cops are going to be thinking something how much would you have in the car sometimes oh god 30 000 40 000 like it's scary you have so much you know like yeah you're like yeah even recent you know anyway yeah so yeah the money you have a lot of it gets you nervous and and so i wanted to a little bit easier life with it right so that's what happens with crime though it escalates like i told you in the first and so when i went back home my so when i was growing up in chicago the other thing is i like to play basketball love basketball so i was on different teams and we would go to different neighborhoods and whereas the chicago could could be a little racy at times you know uh sports always healed that you know so i could go i could go to 47th and indiana man and go hoop and then boys would love me over there right or i'd go to pilsen man and i'd i'd hoop with the with the amigos over there i mean i i was able to go in all over the city because basketball got it and and i would you know i created friendships in all the different areas man you know you're carrying in village and even now like i go anywhere man i'm probably the only white dude that go 103rd and wallace you know and hang out and just chill there right all them cats over there love me really oh yeah yeah i'd go over there i'd leave i'll take you over there with me i mean i would leave quick but i would go but but i'm saying like i i could move through the city because i just and so when i went back you know i went back to my boys you know got it and so were you trying to big shot at that time a little bit like did you get it not at that time not at that time at that time i just wanted to sell large chunks of it right i wanted to sell a hundred thousand at a time for thirty right or two hundred dollars i never really wanted to go too high with the number that's high uh a hundred thousand was a good number right 100 for 30 you could walk away from that one right you start getting into the bigger numbers you know i've had people say i want a million i had one guy jordanian dude wanted five million right did you consider it uh i i did but i i didn't right like i didn't do it you know i considered it you know he actually showed up i i told him he was full of i'm like you ain't got that type of cash and he showed up he showed up popped his trunk man and uh he had 300 grand well that was 5 million so he had like 1.5 it was yeah it was a lot of money he had a suitcase of money what kind of first time i rose royce too who went and rolls royce well he actually owned uh he owned uh you can't pull up in an emmy launcher with that he owned the exotic car rental company in chicago years ago oh yeah his cousin who i was going through actually killed himself on the road in vegas there's actually a video of it oh yeah it got real weird because they were taking the money to vegas his his uh his um his stepmom or something owned a casino in vegas and they were running the money through there so when people would win they would win that money they would win my money yeah it was nuts man right yeah it was crazy yeah and then i guess muhammad yeah that's that was a real wild yeah that sounds like a bad idea it was a bad idea yeah but that sounds exciting though well for for for me you know so how much were you keeping at the house then am i i i didn't so one of my dudes um irish cat from the south side his his dad was a big real real estate guy he had like man he probably had gosh he probably had like 60 buildings on the south side big apartment buildings it had like you know 20 30 apartments in them like yeah cat was well off he had a lot of apartment buildings man and when he died my friend got them all oh my buddy inherited like 40 apartment buildings you know i'd sleep everywhere well i had eight apartments at one time man you did yeah i had something over here you had how many about eight at one time eight apartments yeah about eight and so you would keep money in them well i'd keep i'd keep equipment so i never did everything at all at the same place got it right like i would print the money on the offset in one area and then i'd move it right i wanted to get it get it away from the offset as quick as possible got it right because if i just got caught with this i'm cool i get caught with that uh-uh i'm gone I wouldn't even been sitting here if I got caught with that. I see. Yeah. So, yeah, I was always able to get away without getting caught with the equipment. They never caught any equipment with me, you know. But so, yeah, I would have stuff over here. I'd have paper over here. I'd have money stashed over here. And how did things start to get hot? Just ego, you know, living life, you know, not the money's coming. Yeah, buying extra sandwiches, salad. Going to the clubs. Cars, hats. Cars, cans, blowing in the air, you know what I mean? Just the whole night. Oh, you started popping, huh? Oh, man, I was an animal. I was a savage. I didn't know all that shit, dude. I was a savage, man. You fucking made it sound like you're fucking. Yeah, I am now. I'm a grown old man dad. No, but you made it sound like you're in there tithing. You guys are just popping into different malls and freaking blessing Cinnabons and shit. And now you're over here telling me all out, getting it going. I was a dirty Christian. That's what I call it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would pray, you know, anyway, man. I think, who termed that? Shiloh LeBleu from Transformers. The dirty Christian. The dirty Christian. The dirty Christian. Believe in God, but still sin. No, we, well, that's what happened, man. Just what, when you, well, one of my boys, so I got a really badass crew of cats in Chicago. Okay. Still do. My dude owned a drink. He was one of the owners of the drink, which was a real famous club in Chicago. Then he had one of the dopest private clubs in the city called Stilettos. It was like super private. Super private, you know. I can imagine it. Yeah, yeah. So, so, so, I had, my crew of guys, we were like, we were serious. We were badasses, man. You guys were out doing it. Yeah. Oh, yeah, dude. I will say this. Some of the dudes that I know that get after it the most are from Chicago. Oh, yeah. No, we know how to have a good time, right? I mean, it's like, it's unprecedented, bro. And then they're always like, at some point in the evening or weekend, they're always like, oh, have you tried this, like, sausage? And it's always like, some dude's grilling up some Polish franks or whatever. It's fucking the best. Oh, well, in the summer, my dude, Tommy, he don't even use a stove. Yeah. It's grill only. We got one of our guys, one of our guys, Kristal, he's a Russian cat, man. He likes to cook indoors, man. And Tommy tries to draw him out the window. He's like, only outside in the summer, man. No cooking inside, you know? Literally, that grill is going nonstop. But, yeah, no, I just had a good group of guys, but we were animals. We were savages, man. See, all out. You're sitting after it. You're doing the cocaine. Yeah, we were doing limos. We were doing just dumb shit, man. Oh, limos are for fuck's sake. Yeah, well, back then, it was kind of cool. Yeah, I agree. Not now. The problem was, you get in, and you got to go all the way in. You got to come all the way in. Come all the way out. Now, we do the Suburbans. Those are the best ways, right? Suburban level. But, dude, when I, like, sometimes limos, I'd get in. If you're the first person in, you got to go all the way to the, like, bro, I'd be so drunk, sometimes I couldn't even get out. I'm like, fuck it. I'll just stay. I'd crawl out the fucking Sunroof. I'd just stay in there. Yeah, just stay in there, go to sleep. Because it's too long. It's like a hallway. It's like a hallway. It was too far to get to the door, dude. Yeah, but things started getting out of hand, man. You're drinking, you're going out, you're doing drugs. You're partying, you're flexing. You're showing your all. You're flexing, and you're just making mistakes. Got it. With me, you know, my, and then, when I got caught, it was just kind of just freak, right? Because I'm always moving, right? But, in the early days, I was like, I'm not going to do this. Early time, it was more of the quiet, being the quiet ghost, right, you know? And now you're going to the clubs, and you're meeting people, and you're doing more, and you're doing more, and you're doing more, and you put yourself in more danger the more you do, right? And so, I actually ended up at the House of Blues. How I got, you know, how this, the whole thing went down is I was at the House of Blues. I was meeting somebody. Dude, I've been to that House of Blues. It's right over there. It's across the river from the Chicago Theater. Yeah, yeah. It was awesome back in the day. Was there a band playing? Yeah. No, it was a great night. I mean, we had, so we went, we were actually staying at the hotel because I had like a little, I had like where I lived was in Marshall, Illinois, was like three hours or two. I forgot how south it was. It was on Highway 1, but, so like I told you, I'm real weird about where I lay my head at night. Yeah. And so, I rarely ever was in the city, right? Where I laid my head was usually outside of the city, you know? Were you staying at that tall hotel right there by the river? Well, you had the round things, you know, where the round is? The corn husk looking one? Yeah, that's it, the corn husk. Yeah. The corn husk. That's the one you were staying at? Yeah, that's the one I was staying at. Let's go, dude. I'm staying there. You want to go? Well, let's go. Anyway, I got the cops. The cops kicked my door in. Did they ever kick yours in? No. Oh, okay. Well, they kicked mine in and with guns out. You should have left the sign out there. No, they tricked me. Did they really? Well, what happened is we were down at the, so I'm coming in, I'm selling 100 grand to one of my dudes. He had me meet, you know, we were going to stay at the House of Blues, so I had him meet us at the bar. So, I get in and. And he's just, he shows up and he's like, dude, I can't really stay because I got family from, he was one of my Russian friends and he had family come in. They were doing a wedding or something. And he's like, he goes, why don't you come back to my house and we'll party with all my family and then we'll do the deal tomorrow. I was like, all right, cool. Let's do it. So, I went with him. We had a great time. But the bartender heard us say party and I guess he was a snitch for, you know, some dicks downtown, you know? And so, he called. He called his little, you know, contact. And so, when me and my wife's sister, because I had my wife's sister, she wanted to see the city and I brought her up and, you know, it was all that. And she was having a great time. And so, when we went up to the room, I went into the room and she stayed on the couch, you know, near the front door. But I was all the way in the back, in the, it was like, you know, the suites, you got the. So, the phone rings. Like, so we get into the room like two in the morning. The phone rings. I pick it up. I pick it up and there's no one there, you know? And when that happens, you know, you got a problem. You got about 30 seconds. Yeah, it's not good, right? I put the phone down and not like literally 30 seconds, I mean quick, I hear the door knock, right? And do you have cash in there with you? Yeah, I had like 100,000. I had it in the closet in between the towels. As I put the phone down, I hear the, you know, the door hitting. And I scream out, don't open the door, right? But she got up because I was, because the suites were big. She didn't even hear me. She opened the door. Boom, they come in. They got their guns out. I'm like this, man. No, no. I'm on the bed. It was just a crazy movie scene, man, you know? What'd they think it was? They thought I was selling drugs. Oh, because the guy said party. Yeah, party. So, he thought it was cocaine. Again, cocaine gets you in trouble, man. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, they. They came in there. Where's the cocaine? Where's the cocaine? I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, I have no fucking clue what's happening right now. They handcuffed me. They handcuffed my wife's sister. She's crying. She's only like 16 years old. So, she's scared? She's scared, right? Because we were supposed. I was going to take her to the museums, and it was going to be a great, like, really nice day. Now, she's in cuffs, right? And I'm thinking, oh, my God, what is going on? And does she know you have this money in the room? No, she don't know nothing. Yeah. She don't have a clue. I was just going to drop it off, and Natalie's like, man, why don't you take my sister with you? She wants to see the museums and all that. And I'm like, whatever. I bring her, and what happens? So, now here I am. We're both handcuffed, and she's looking at me like. Now, one thing I will say about her, she didn't say nothing, man. She was sorry. Yeah, she just stayed there. She was crying a little bit. Then she kind of said, just calm down. It's going to be all right. She listened to me. Anyway, they're searching the room looking for the cocaine. They find the money in the closet. They got the money. It's a brick. It's a brick money. They said, listen, you're going to go through with the deal. You're going to call your contact, and you're going to go through with this deal, and you're going to have him come here and bring the cocaine here. I said, what are you talking about, man? Well, that's why you have this money. I'm like, man, you guys are. I ain't doing nothing. And then they're getting all threaded and all that shit. Well, my luck, the one cop, he starts counting it. They get me there. They're just talking shit to me. They're counting me. He's like, man. And then probably about maybe five minutes into it, he starts looking, and he's looking for something. And he calls his partner, and he tells his partner. So the guy was a fucking banker before he was a cop. He worked at a bank, like a teller, before he became a cop. So he wasn't seeing no red and blue fibers in there. So I didn't have the red and blue fibers in this. And I later ended up putting him in after this because this happened. Yeah. But he didn't. Blue ranch, yeah. Yeah. He didn't have no. He didn't see the red and blue fire. He had everything else. He had the watermark. He had the strip. He's like, man, I don't know what to think about this stuff. He goes, it got all this stuff on it, but I'm not seeing no fibers in it. It's just not making sense. So they said, well, we're taking him in anyway. So they took me in. They took her in. And then the Secret Service came, a woman's Secret Service. And she said, oh, we. While you were in jail? Yeah. They took us downtown, right? And what about the kid? They let her go? No. Hell no. They had her. They put her in jail. They put her in a cell too. But the Secret Service showed up, right? And she's threatening me, telling me, we know this. We know that. We've been looking. She goes, first she goes, we've been looking for you. We've been looking for you. I'm like, okay, you know, whatever. She goes, where, you know. Didn't find me, cuz. Yeah, she's trying to. She wants to know where my stuff is, where my paper's at, where this is at. She's probably trying to meet someone too, which she's. Who knows? Yeah, well, who knows with them, right? Because they're so. You don't know. Yeah, you never know. But one thing she was doing was threatening me with my wife's sister. Oh. Right? She's like, you're gonna tell me what I want. Or she's gonna face some charges. She's gonna face some charges. and i'm like man what am i gonna do i didn't because i had to get my wife's sister out on a good note back then you had like those burn phones everyone you know you could get them at walmart right a little twenty dollars with the card remember sketch scratch the card off put the number in it so we had i was like i was like a james bond criminal too never went into that but i had uh surveillance anti-surveillance shit i had bug detectors i had like all kinds of whacked out stuff man like you know just really had i could find hidden cameras and shit had this little thing anyway i was real big into stuff like that and again safety right because here you know we i didn't i i try i always wanted to keep it to where if anything ever happened it was just on me got it you know that way i had natalie in the world still where she could help me while i'm away right you don't i don't want her to go down too you know because then then it takes my my access away right so y'all ended up getting married you and her yeah we ended up getting married so okay got it so here it is i i said okay i'll call her right they said we know you got your stuff here you know uh pharaoh said that your mom or her mom is with her sister right now at your house but she don't know where the house is and there's no way she could have known because it was in marshall illinois man we had they flew into indianapolis i was in the cornfields man like for real right and uh and they said so we want you to call her right so i called natalie and um i said hey listen i'm i'm here in chicago i'm not in a good position you know they got your sister and uh and she said yeah my mom's trying to figure this thing out right now i said okay well you know they're this is a serious situation it looks like i'm gonna be going away for a while well what was awesome she she went right into she went right into uh her movement and she got rid of everything everything like i mean i don't even know how she did it her mom was like i don't know her mom i had to help her right but like by the time they got there natalie strung them along right she kept stringing them along and by the time they got there it was completely empty i had nothing in the house man the girl really saved my ass i get arrested they locked me up for the money that was in there they let her go right i say it's my money my thing right and my lawyer comes and he's telling me he's reading me the police report right and he reads he says hey he goes you know they see weed on the they said they saw weed on the table right and that's why they came in right that they seen it and boom that was their probable cause i said well that's impossible man because the the hallway they'd have to be superman they'd have to have x-ray vision to see the weed right and because there was a table around the corner so he had someone go take pictures and then brought in the um brought in the security person that actually like came with the cops and threatened to put him in jail if he lied so he told the truth said that there was no they didn't see no weed and then he had the pictures and so when i went back to court three weeks later my attorney read off the put the cop on the stand and read off the real police report uh yeah we seen weed on the table and that gave us the probable cause then it was illegal it was all legal he said he goes you know officer he goes you're saying that you were able to see it he goes well i have photos here with an affidavit from the manager of the hotel that says no furniture was moved and there's no way you could have seen a table right away the prosecutor's ah judge i you know right they stopped the hearing fucking judge dismissed it and i walked right out no walked right out you were free i was free yeah couldn't believe it i remember i called i called she was way back to texas because she was from texas with her mom i remember calling her i'm like and she goes where you at how'd you call me what you know because usually it's like you got a call from a correctional facility right yeah there's none of that shit it's just me calling her and i said man they let me out today i just beat my case she's like what and so then i end up going there and then you know i'm like i'm gonna go to the police i'm gonna go to the police i'm gonna go to the police and then you kept doing it well no i stopped then i i went through i went into like a real bad depression and shit man just i couldn't because now i got secret service knowing who i am you know and like and and then i felt like i was locked i i if i did they knew it was counterfeit so oh yeah but they had to destroy it they had to throw the money away you know and do you have any money hidden anywhere at that time i mean i had money stashed here and i had but i was scared to go it i was i was like i felt like the trees were watching man you know like it was like you secret service you don't really know know what they know right right like you they got secret weapons and shit man they could see underneath yeah their name starts with secret secret yeah that's enough right there like you know so so for me it was in my head and so i ended up i ended up watching this movie man uh it was an arm wrestle movie with sylvester stallone over the top of the top yeah and and it was about a dad and a kid man and and i just was missing my pops over the top's i think it's like is it yeah yeah i think it's like over the top or whatever or i don't know i don't know what it is but it's something like that well back then it was an arm wrestle movie yeah with sylvester over the bottom i think over the bottom nah we don't want to do no bottoms that's the one i'm thinking we don't want to do no bottom yeah this movie i remember for sure yeah over the top man especially it was awesome so anyway i ended up trying to find my pops i went i went on started looking for arthur j williams jr one pops up in uh uh alaska you're i started catching up with you then probably well now everything's caving in right you know like my whole world is is like i can't i don't want to go near my presses i don't want to go to the apartments i don't want to go here i don't want to drive that car i don't you know like i'm in a bad depression man like i don't i just don't want to move so you find where your dad lives yeah so i ended up watching this movie now i got this thing with me so i find out there's a p.o box in uh what was it um it was east of anchorage chickaloon chickaloon alaska and i'm like where's the p.o box it's way the hell up there man right he got far away from you guys that's crazy well it was the lady he took off with right she she she didn't want him to be around his kids so she made sure she took him as far away from us as she could you know that's crazy yeah it was terrible but so i find him and i write a letter you know i say man if this is art williams boom from chicago this is your son man here's my phone number and i had a burnout phone and it took about three weeks he called me and then when he called me i i was like you know i said hey you know i didn't tell him what was going on i i just say man i'd like to see him you know he said well you come up here so before this was before the 9-1-1 so you know you could still get into the airports you know pretty easily you know and so i had fake ids too you know so i i ended up sneaking off to seattle and then i flew out of seattle to anchorage and i and i brought natalie with me and uh i don't know man my dad picked us up with the that chick he took off and i could just see the the the darkness on her face that i was showing up you know yeah and uh and he i remember driving out to his house and just kind of tripping that i was in alaska like i'm a straight south side city boy man and now i'm in a fucking wilderness you know and that shit's wilderness out there you know yeah that's what i heard oh yeah it's beautiful though man nothing like it but like we when we we got to his house he had another separate like little guest house and then he had like a little trailer over here you know and so we went into this guest house and natalie went out to the trailer i actually and then uh and his wife went into their house and me and my pops just stayed up for like two days man smoking that alaska perp you know because he he had the you know that purple bud before people knew it was purple you know oh y'all was bent off that iceberg shit we were just and we were talking shit and catching up was he like a crime guy i mean yeah well he was a paper hanger at one time you know like when i was young he was running checks so it's kind of kind of odd that i and him were hanging when i went to alaska you know and we're smoking and we're talking we literally stayed up for like two days just catching up and i was telling him about everything i i opened up about what i did i had some of it on me i showed him some of it you break him off a little well that's where all things went bad right that's when i ended up going to prison because you know after i showed him so i call it gold fever right like when people when people when i would show that's the reason i didn't show too many people because when you showed somebody the bills and like even my canvas ones now people see can we print it on paper right if because i print on canvas and i paint over it right but even those bills i've had people say man that looks good it's on canvas it's not even on paper so when you would show someone the real bill they get wet their brain gets wet everything gets wet you know like they just it's i call it a gopher because they would go into this just their eyes would change you know especially if he's up in alaska he's already half he's into that shit yeah well he well it got it got nuts i mean he um so you showed him the money i showed him the money and then after we started moving around he he had his own thing going on he was growing bud in um like track truck tractor trailers he they bury them underground and then they he would tap into the the the power line on the side of the highway like he had some crazy shit going on too damn y'all are wild yeah no he was on one like i was like man ain't you scared to get electrocuted he's like oh man you know he was actually tapping into to the power line you know and they were and then they were like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die they had this uh special material that the the heats could the airplanes couldn't look through through like they were awesome this is early in the game you know and um and so we we were bonded by showing each other what we were doing yeah i'll show you mine i'll show you yeah i'm doing the money you're doing the weed you know i'll show you my crime you show me yeah that's pretty much what it was that's how we reunited man like the crime things you know and uh and it was awesome man my dad was cool man it was funny man he was he was he was um it sucked he had left you know i think for him you know he he seen how i was right like we we we were cool man and and and and he felt i could feel the they're like damn i wish i would have known this cat you know like i wish i would have been around him more you know yeah he probably you guys probably would have had a good time together good time yeah you know but so anyway he started um he started asking me if i if he could make if i could make more right and and and i was like man yeah of course and then and then it's my dad so i want to make him proud you know and so but i came clean with him i said look at man the reason I actually came to find you is because I got jammed up in Chicago and so I had I had to disappear and he's and he said well well can you still make the money I said well of course I can make it but we have to change it I can't make it exactly the same because then they'll know it's me so some sort of element has to be changed in it and so then he goes well can you do it and I'm like yeah I think were you planning on doing it uh there was a thought because I knew I couldn't use the same recipe you know but were you planning on making more no hell no I wanted to go up there and I didn't want to do nothing man I just I just wanted my pops yeah yeah I just wanted my pops I didn't want to make no money you know damn that's kind of crazy then that he asked you yeah well he's a crime he's a crime crime guy man you know and then and then we're bragging about it hey look this you know right so then maybe he thinks my son thinks it's cool too yeah you know and then and even when I told him about what happened man he's like you got away so there was even the element that I pulled the fast one right right like that even that was impressive to him right you got out I got out right and now you're here they don't know where you're at all right fuck them let's go let's go right so so I told him I said listen I'm gonna do this I gotta go back to Chicago and I gotta get some supplies and we'll ship them up here and so I had I had brought with me I had brought with me about twenty thousand of the fake money I used to I used to have a belt that I could put ten grand in and I could wear it around you know and that's what I was showing them and so I said I said here listen I'm gonna leave this let's leave most of it here and let's fly into Seattle and then we'll drive across the country to Chicago we can spend a little money check out get close because you know we haven't seen each other for 22 years yeah right and um spend a little counterfeit cash yeah enjoy yeah go to Chicago get the material ship it back and we did we we you know he so he was his his wife though and she hated me and so she started spending it in Alaska giving it to her friends telling her friends who made it telling it was fake you know buying moose meat and shit just yeah moose meat probably yeah yeah fur hats fish hollabish yeah fish made out of fur but they were spending it and and I had specifically told him you cannot spend this here in this in Alaska you can't you know yeah because it's it's fucking way up here man oh you know you're done at least in the lower 48 you know you you can move the money around so anyway she did though and not only did she but then she she made sure she let the Secret Service know who was making it when it all came down right because when we were in Chicago so here I am in Chicago and I'm sending we're sending stuff back and um and then we see my sister and my sister my dad they get into it my sister is forgiving as I am she's kind of like man fuck this guy yeah yeah yeah you know and she's even at me like what what's the deal man what do you care what do you care about this cat he left us you know yeah and uh and so I didn't go back with him I shipped every all the stuff and I said I told him I had to go to Texas to get one thing uh and while he fly back and then I'll come and I I ended up leaving Natalie and the baby up there and she was pregnant right with with in Alaska in Alaska okay and so when I finally called her I went back to Texas she goes like oh man I had to go here she goes that you better I'm pregnant dude what are you doing you know yeah and so I ended up getting the things I needed and I fly I flew back to to Anchorage but I stayed with uh a niece's daughter in Anchorage when he when he was out there and um and it's so so so weird how things happen and how fast but I was I was getting a bad feeling I don't know it was weird like I just wanted to get out of there so I'm telling Natalie I'm like hey we're leaving we're out here and and oh that's what it was when when I went to visit him he took me uh he took me to this biker party it was Hells Angels right he was real cool friends with one of the big dogs up there and uh and we went to this crazy ass like gathering and he introduced me to the dude and then he then he told the dude that I was the one that made the money and I looked at him like what are you telling this cat that I don't know that I'm making money man I got pissed with them man real bad that's pretty shitty yeah it was terrible man he started showing me colors of reason why he left you know there was a reason he left because he wasn't that that that cool laughity dude there was something wrong you know yeah and now I'm seeing it right and so after that happened when I got back to to to the house I told a pack up we're leaving we're getting out of here and uh and so then I ended up flying to Houston and one of my dudes picked up at the Secret Service was waiting for me in Dallas so unbeknownst to me as I'm wanting to get out of Anchorage because of how he is he's working with the the Secret Service the whole time his wife his wife oh yeah so they're getting ready to why why would she do that she just didn't want me around she didn't want his kids around it was the whole reason he took off for 22 years you know and so this was her way of just like get get him out of here you know so once you hit Houston yeah once I hit Houston my boy drives me up to Dallas to where Natalie's mom is and Secret Service were waiting for me they busted they they grabbed us they said we got you and they did you know they had me I ended up going to prison my dad ended up going to prison because he had guns in the house and he was a felon in possession and uh and then she she was the the confidential informant but when she went to court she she pleaded Insanity and they oh no this woman was crazy right she pleads Insanity I get three years my dad gets six years or no he got four and a half years and then she pleads Insanity and the judge takes her to trial and gives her six wow she gets six years because she was lying about it because she was lying about it I got less than everyone it was wild on the day I get out at least you finally knew where your dad was for four and a half years you know yeah he was insured in federal correctional but yeah yeah but anyway well sad part though is the day I got out of prison he died no yeah had a heart attack that morning in prison in prison oh man I'm sorry yeah yeah yeah just said oh no man it's cool man my dad's laughing his ass off right now he ain't tripping man you know I I need so the thing is is that's irony in life man right like when my when I got so here you are I'm getting ready to get out of prison you're packing your stuff you're happy you're going home you know there's no better feeling than getting your freedom back right and you walk out the door and then you get handed you know a phone and they tell your dad's dead and so you go from one high to the next quick right and and I had to deal with that and then I ended up getting my son right so I had now I got a 13 year old whose mom's a cop and she's calling me pissed off because he's printing 20 bills at her house off her little printer probably just trying to relate to his dad exactly right because I just got out of prison so now I got this kid you know that I'm taking care of because she don't want him at the house and you know me and him ended up going to prison together for what money I ended up going back with your own son yeah no sorry dude yeah yeah yeah at the same time no we weren't arrested at the same time so so he's 13. bro I am yeah no it's crazy dog this is wild you can't I'm telling you this is so nuts man like I I sit back and trip out on it yeah I sent a picture to your dude with my son rapping in prison there it is right there oh he raps yeah he raps he's a badass rapper yeah no this is a crazy situation because in prison it's real racy you know yeah and I would imagine that American Greed did a show on me American Greed you know yeah they did yeah episode 46 right early in the American Greed days and so me and my son are in prison together watching American Greed and they played one of his songs on TV right so all the brothers heard him rapping and they do shows in prison like on on the holidays yeah you know that's how Johnny Cash came in there and jammed so Johnny Cash didn't come here but they uh on July 4th the brothers were doing a concert you know well like on Fridays you know uh the brothers would do stuff on yeah there's like I think it's like a red white and black yeah yeah just like that right yeah and so they came to him and they said hey man we heard you on TV man like rapping because we were like prison celebrities in there right yeah because we were on TV and then I was printing money yeah we were yeah we were like the coolest cats so you guys were in prison together yeah we were cellies together no what are you talking about so you and your son were then that little boy 18 years old it was nuts tight yeah well that relates for going to jail for counterfeiting together yeah so when I so after my dad died and I get out man long story short my my son and me we're not really getting along right he's being tough kid his mom can't take care of him because she's a cop she can't have that in her house and uh and we connect through music you know like he was a real good musician you know he loved and he was only like at that time like 13. and so I knew Johnny K who who uh he had Groove Sounds and he did like disturbed fallout boys those guys came out of Chicago it was his studio and that was my dude okay he's a producer big producer big time you know he did disturb fallout boy yeah I don't know a lot of uh producers in that area but understood yeah so we would hang out at his studio okay got it and then my boys at this badass studio you know and he's and he's and he's they're letting him rap in there and make beats in there and just do some really cool shit and and and he had talent johnny was like hey man this kid you know this is before there were any other white rappers besides eminem got it right and uh and so he made some song he made four songs and then started getting expensive my boy was like hey look at let's keep it going but you you gotta throw me a little something right because it's not like now where you could have a home studio you know got big boards and so that's what brought me back into printing because i was like okay you know what i'm gonna make as much money as i i'm gonna do one big blast and i'm gonna help my son make it you know and uh yeah there's artists now that i think their parents are helping to make it i think oh no yeah well i knew a lot of people plus i was you know so it just needed this yeah the money you know so the only way i knew how to do it was you know at that point i was working out at the at a shipyard and you know the river rat running up and down the river pushing barges and shit so i was i was done with the work and myself so you were ready to travel more go at it i was ready i was like let's do it you know and then i got my did you convince him or he convinced you at first i didn't even let him know it was on me you know like this was my thing you know oh so you were gonna make a money you're gonna make some money anyway yeah yeah i was already at that point but this was a perfect reason to do it too because he needed money for his career yeah for his career yeah so anyway now but at this point man all the technologies changed they had scrapped all the freaking presses you know they had what year is 2003 2000 yeah about 2004 okay because i went to prison in 2000 end of 2005 2006 got it um so so but it was hard to get the equipment that now at this time you got to hook up the internet to use photoshop you can't just pop in the cd anymore you know so i pretty much spent time hustling all the equipment up and getting it ready to go and uh me and my brother broke into the paper place you know we actually cut off we're probably the only idiots to to break into a paper company yeah like we cut a hole in the thing we're like in a rope and it was really oh it's nuts man and what's really nuts about it the paper company only closed one day a year one day a year guess what day that was christmas fucking christmas we watched it yeah so on christmas you and your brother broke into the paper company yeah it was the best we got onto it we cut a hole in the ceiling in the in the tin metal it was on christmas we lowered ourself down we actually got into a fight in there because they had these big uh potato sacks right and these these rolls were massive right like i had always got little butt rolls right you know but the real roll was massive and weighed thousands of pounds and they were stacked up real high so me and my brother had we had to scale all the way up to the thing and then we're sitting here with our legs up in the air and we're pushing the roll off the thing and when it hit it cracked the concrete and then me like a madman when we get down when you cut the roll it makes a snap boom real loud right because it's tight you know and and and i was stuffing the potato sacks and i had about 10 10 big potato sacks stuffed but i couldn't stop i kept stuffing and kept stuffing my brother grabbed me he's like bro we gotta go we got enough we got enough to make 10 million and i'm like there's never enough like and then we're getting into it and finally he's like well i'm leaving you here man i'm out of here anyway he waited for me but we we got all the paper we had everything ready damn and then uh and then one day i had just spoke this is the first time i've ever spoken to a guy and i'm like oh my god i'm gonna get this is what was crazy now they're doing they just did a rolling stone thing on me i was a rolling stone magazine right so you were doing public speaking i was doing public about being of counterfeiter as i'm counterfeiting this is what was so bizarre about it's addiction really addiction it's all addiction could it stop well they flew me out to rochester right document security systems it was a a check company um and so they wanted me to speak at some conference and i thought it was a corporate check conference right i fly out there to rochester and and i got the same uh assistant that frank abigail had right frank abigail was the check guy from catch me if you can well he had retired and so they wanted me to step in his place right so the security company was trying to get you to come and work for them yeah yeah it was a it was a check security they wanted me you know they would send me product it was a document security system dss and they but you're still doing crime at this point i am yeah they don't know right they don't know so you get there and what happened so i get there man and i'm sitting in the hotel uh bar with the assistant and i'm looking around i'm like man everyone in here looks like a cop right like and and i ask her i'm like hey isn't this uh like a corporate check security thing she goes no this is a homeland security conference for for fraud i'm like well what do you mean like everyone in here is an agent she's like yeah these are all federal agents i'm like what i wanted to run out the door man i couldn't believe it i was like oh this can't be happening this cannot be real you speak at the conference yeah yeah but it was not easy though i'll tell you what happened so so here it is i don't even really drink much man right but i'm pounding whiskeys right yeah it sounds like it i'm fine i get to the room she was worried about me she's like she's like you're gonna be all right i'm like yeah man i'm all right you know i'm just glad it finally at some point this story that somebody was worried about you yeah yeah yeah you know what i'm saying like we gotta have somebody be worried about us you know i got i got people now that love me man yeah i'm good it all for sure but this is the first time i'd heard you say that in all of this yeah well my mama always did oh she did yeah mama was always there and but so anyway so here i'm at the conference and and i go up to the room she wakes me up at like six in the morning telling me what to not eat what to eat what i can eat you know and um we go what's she worried about you die for or did you gotta speak that day yeah that morning i was first don't want you being nervous yeah she don't want me being nervous got it i was the first speaker it was at eight o'clock in the morning right so i i i go into the the hall where it's all set up and i walk into the front and i'm looking at who's speaking it was the guy sam was speaking that day too right the serial killer yeah it was pretty cool man actually but i'm like nervous my stomach is just ripped man right and i'm looking like who's coming in and i'm thinking to myself oh man it's eight in the morning they're not gonna be here maybe 10 20 15 not too many people are gonna show up so i'll be all right yeah it fit a thousand people all right literally man i'm not kidding like that hall stayed empty till like two minutes before eight yeah i thought i won it was only like just a few people and i'm like oh yeah they're still sleeping this is their vacation they're not gonna be getting up at eight in the morning to watch some counterfeiter right man bro like in a matter of like two minutes man it started filling up and the whole place was packed all agents damn with their badges and and i start sweating like i'm i'm sick i don't know if they i don't know if they know what i've done right back in right i don't know i'm i'm thinking man am i being set up do they know are they playing games with me are they like my brain was rattling right and uh and so she gives me some water she sees me sweating i said man i gotta go to the bath so they hooked me up they put the thing the mic on me getting ready to go and i'm i'm looking around it's loud you know and everyone's sitting down and um and the in the in the present the present the the guy that was presenting everybody he came up he goes hey you all right he goes you know let's test the mic and you know we're about i'm this is how i'm gonna do this i'm gonna say this and this and i'm gonna call you up okay i'm like all right cool you know i said can i can i use the bathroom real quick and uh she's like yeah it's right out the door so i i go out to the bathroom and i and i just start throwing up i'm in the bathroom just throwing up there was a door that went outside i kind of stumbled out the bathroom went outside and i'm talking to myself i'm like what the fuck is wrong with you what are you doing you fucking man like i'm really like insane talking to myself and they can hear you and they fucking heard me she comes out she comes running out she goes dude dude she grabs the thing she goes we're we're canceling this you're not gonna you're not speaking and and i'm like what do you mean she's like they've listened to everything you just said right now i killed them all remember that guy he's like i killed i killed them all who was that guy they heard everything i was talking about what the fuck am i doing so i said i said no man we're not going to cancel this man we're not going to cancel it so i walked back in went in there we're not going to cancel no well that's the problem with me i'm stubborn dog right like that's the reason i ended up making the money i did robert durst muttered killed them all of course like so so i go back in there and it's silence now and they're all staring at me you asked the first question you asked me how does it feel when people are staring at you and all that stuff you were talking about yeah like the moon yeah like the like the moon yeah that's what i was going through right that's what it felt like and and they walked me up to the front the presenter he starts then he calls me up and i'm like what the there's no way you got through it oh listen this it was awesome actually i get up there and i look and i freeze like i'm frozen for sure like i can't move dog right and there was a there was an older woman that had this silver hair i'll never forget her she was about 15 rows in and she just lip lipped it uh you're gonna be all right i could i could read her lips it was weird she goes you're gonna be all right that's what she kept saying like and and then i then i just came out of it i said i'm gonna be all right i'm gonna be all right i'm gonna be all right i'm gonna i said you know i'm i'm a little froze right now it's the first time i've ever been in a room with this many agents usually i'm getting hauled off to jail and they all laughed okay right and once they laughed then i just started like going in with everything and it was amazing i ended up speaking for like 45 minutes i took questions for like 30 minutes they ended up sitting me next they sit me at the head table next to the homeland security secretary right and we were joking about how he was making credit or a fake i.d. when he was in high school. And so like it, what turned, what looked like to be terrible right turned out to be amazing wow you know but i had to go back to chicago and i was still printing money i was going to anyway but now i'm having second thoughts like there was all kinds of things going on when i was flying back to the city okay you know like i i was like man am i really gonna do this you know when i actually got this opportunity right here that maybe could actually take care of me you know right and when i get home you know my son's being whatever and i i do a few things and when i come back to the house he's printing money 20s we get into he's one of his friends we get into it he runs out i run out after him you know i'm trying to tell him he don't have to do this and he throws the money at me while while a cop is passing by yeah yeah and the cop gets out i'm trying to pick the money up off the ground and the cop i tell the cop my name and right away boom and it was over right they called the secret he arrested me called the secret service secret service was toying with me actually because they they were like you know we know this is your son's money and all this like we're not we're not looking at you but i had some i had some of that old money that i got busted with you know from that was buried and i played with it a little bit and and and it popped right and they knew and so they they pulled me in and they said we we know we know what you're doing we know you got a whole new off you know a whole new place and you got paper and you got the you got the ink and you know we got we're about to get you man you're going down for the rest of your life like because because if you get busted with the presses and the files and the plates and stuff you're done got it for sure yeah you're done right so what is so what happened is they ended up they ended up um they said they knew where it was at they took me in and and my boys let me know what happened i wasn't there but they literally had helicopters and SWAT teams and they fucking busted in my space but what happened though is three weeks before that the old man that owned the building rick and benny he owns rick and benny's it's a bread shop he's dead now but he had sold it it was an old warehouse old dingy warehouse and he had sold it before before this happened and told me that i had to get all my shit out of there so the secret service yeah they knew that i was there but they didn't hit me i don't know why they waited and so i ended up moving everything out because he told me to move everything and then he had a cleaner come in and clean everything so when they kicked in the door there was nothing in there it was insane nothing i wouldn't be sitting here right now if there was yeah they and they were messing me they're like we got you now we got you we're going in and there was nothing the press was gone the paper was gone ink was gone everything was gone it was it was so like blessed and cursed bro it's kind of like this perfect mix bro perfect mix man but but did you have to um testify against your son or no no he didn't go to jail so how do you and your son end up in jail together so after this happens they kick in the doors whatever i go ahead and take the beef right i got probably the shortest paragraph federal indictment in history literally one paragraph right they give me seven years 105 months i go down my son's left he's 15 well he kept doing it right he he got he's smart kid right he's seen some of the stuff he gets the paper he's like he's getting everything my brother's still out there playing with him so him and my brother whatever right and i'm in prison and i'm gone for like three years now were you able to help give him advice and suggestions about it from prison no no we didn't really talk much you know that was it you know i didn't see him at all i saw him three years later so what happens is i get a call i call home and my sister says hey you need to call karen the day my son turned 18 the secret service went and arrested him as soon as he became an adult they pretty much let him play money man right because there's like these charges aren't that good if you're a kid yeah you're a kid nothing's gonna happen as soon as he hit 18 they kicked he his stories he got a crazy story how they grabbed him but he was on the run a little bit and they grabbed him finally and so i caught my sister tells me what's going on and uh and he gets sentenced to i forgot i think it was like 36 months so now i'm already been gone for three years now he's 18 and they ship him to forest city arkansas i'm in big spring texas a real shithole i've been trying to get out of there and they end up transferring me from there to forest city wow yeah and it was crazy because when i got there i knew he was there i knew he was there right so as soon as i went through processing you know go through all that shit all day as soon as i hit the hit the dorm some of the white guys came up to me hey you know what today i told him he's like oh your son's here and i'm like yeah i know and i need to see him as soon as i hit the yard tomorrow right they were like shit you don't have to wait to the yard your son's i'm like what he's like yeah he's he's here in this dorm he's in tv room right now damn i'm like what so i haven't seen my son for three years right and i i i beeline to the to the uh the tv room and when i opened up the the tv door and he was sitting right there on the front thing looking up at the tv with his little headphones on and when he seen me man he just he just he got up and my boy's in prison so as happy as i am to see him i'm devastated inside that he's here that both y'all are there yeah just devastated well i can handle me right my life's been hell i don't want him going through it you know and what this what was cool though man here it is some of the hardest cats man in this tv room and it's just pure silence and you see this guy crying over there and this guy crying over there and that guy crying over there like people were thinking my son just embraced and i just held him man damn and that's where i learned to become a dad man the next two and a half years man i started i've been painting i paint you know and so in prison that's what i did and then my son was music so he he was writing lyrics and so our plan was yeah that's me in prison with one of my first pieces you know and so so the the plan the grandmaster plan was you know that that he was going to do music and i was going to do art you know and um and so you know when i got out in 2013 i got out a month before him they let they wouldn't let us out together the therapist the counselor said we're going to let you out first so you can get yourself situated then we're going to let your son out okay and so when i got out you know i just i had an unbelievable i had an unbelievable uh community around me you know like when i got out my attorneys were there my friends were there they got me a job they got me a place they got me a car i had to go through my struggles it wasn't easy you know and then my son got out he ended up getting his cdl and then he started driving a trash truck now he's doing amazing he's been out 13 years we've both been out 13 years now he just bought his first house out yeah it's amazing he just had a baby you know he's doing amazing he's writing new music now his music is freaking awesome like he's really getting down on his music and then me you know i i went through the art thing you know i first two years after this he busted me he busted me with some with some chemicals and your son did yeah yeah so like two years after this he said this ain't it yeah well it's just like it was a bunch of things like i i you know i i just met someone was about to have a baby you know and it just felt like deja vu all again right yeah and so i ended up walking away from it and um and i ended up one a big time cat in chicago his name is joe catch tory he owns lakeside bank he took me under his wing and he said look at me i'm not going to let you go i'm not going to let you go i'm not going man i don't want you to go back to prison man i want to show you how to make it you know and uh and damn here it is 13 years later you know and i've had five galleries i've had unbelievable shows from rose royce to satai i've got to meet some of the most amazing people and you know just life has been so fucking awesome a better community too it just shows you what a community can do for us really like what about um tell me about like when you look at like crime and the effect that it's had like on your family overall like what do you think about that i mean for for me like what would i would i would i because i've mentored guys getting out of prison i speak at schools i've spoke at schools you know to talk about how to overcome stuff whether it's mental illness whether it's drugs whether it's crime right because crime is can be addictive too and and yeah i'd never thought of it as an addiction until i spoke with you about it yeah and it almost seems like a familial addiction too yeah they say it's worse than heroin counterfeiting if you looked it up i think it says that counterfeiting is more addictive than heroin you know wow bring that up yeah there's there's something saying on it you know for me it's like it so so i i have a few cats that i've kept in touch with that i was in prison with yeah but sadly almost you know 78 of people go back small percentage of us that make it out there's even a smaller percentage that make it into something really big you know so what i've done with my art with my life and with you know is is a is very unusual right you know that part i get yeah but do you think what effect do you think that crime had like on just like you're like you know i'm saying because you had it it's it's very wild that you had this happen in your own father-son relationship and then had it in this the second generation of it well here's the thing the the crime crime actually it the streets it's even deeper the crime it's the whole aspect of the streets and the and the mental illness with my mom those things i think make make allow me they they've taught me a lot of things that i've how to deal with shit now, right? Like before what would happen, the reason I would always go back to the crime is because the stress right of being able to survive right i need to eat i need shoes i need to take care of my kid like people have these stresses everyone does right some people deal with it differently right me i was trained since from the the first time breaking into the meters i i was the training was to just like an animal to hunt right you'd learn that yeah i learned that that's what that's where yeah i don't blame you and and so there there wasn't like there wasn't the guilt there wasn't the shame there wasn't that part of it but the crime in the streets and everything i went through it's made me now like aware like i see through a lot of things that other people don't see but looking back do you think um yeah do you have like was there any situations that you caused like by passing all that fake money like did it like did it ruin some people's business or anything like that did you have to make any like amends with that sort of situation no the the the more of the amends that i needed to make was with my my son you know and and my kids and and and the people that that relied on me that that that i you know i wasn't there for right like even even when i went back for seven years you know natalie was still had the three babies down in austin you know and i didn't even know i didn't even get to to meet the young one till like four years later wow and so the things that i regret are are more family you know i i would i i didn't sell drugs and i wasn't into all the other stuff you know so for me the money was almost like well they're doing it shit you know like why can't i you know and and then i was always doing good with it so whether that was to justify me doing or not i just i didn't ever feel that guilt for it you know and um did anyone ever come to you and say hey you passed this much fake money with me and this is a problem no no no no i've had people come to say hey man i got one of your bills and i loved it right like people would come to me and say hey even even now there's a couple people in the city that had had some of them that actually framed them are they still in circulation no i don't know maybe you know the money was good do you if you even have one will you send it to me so i can have one i will you will yeah i will yeah i actually brought you one no you did no i brought you 100 but not one i brought you something though no i mean it was it was it was a wild time man you know and then like oh yeah here we go yes counterfeiting money can become a psychological or behavioral addiction while it's not classified as a substance addiction criminologists and the police are not the only ones who can be counterfeiting money psychologists recognize that the process of committing high stakes financial fraud can trigger the exact same neurological reward pathways as gambling stealing or substance abuse the high of counterfeiting comes from the combination of chemical rush of the crime the artistic obsession and the illusion of ultimate control dang bro that sounds like some shit i would love to do but i just wasn't brave enough you know i did that fucking nose crime baby yeah yeah yeah cocaine yeah no the money man like even now so when i i i i print sheets of money right now like but it's for work right it's for your art it's canvas and i paint over it but i still get that same when when i see that sheet coming out and i could do it legal like it just warms my i just get like all giddy man see do you think that people should be allowed to counterfeit money no no no no no no no well because money's just like a so it's like a kind of a social construct that we have it's like this you know well see the thing about money you keep more of it so so i think that we're taxed too much right i agree you're taxed on what you do you're taxed on what you buy you're taxed on your car you're taxed on this like before the 1900s there was no tax right and and so like there was like even me i love to barter i barter a lot man i trade paintings for cars for this for that i love to barter right so so like is our should people be allowed to print no and either should have i mean it was wrong you know these days it's they give they're giving money away to these different like um i think they gave up i think they gave up i think i think that they gave they they knew that this thing's going to collapse the society you mean well the financial system that they set up it's 40 trillion the whole man like you can't there's no way to get out of it impossible right and they know that and so like for me i look at it i analyze it like i think they gave up already there's gonna have to be a reset there's gonna have to be some sort of and that's what that the the digital dollar is going to be right it's going to be a reset i just hate that it's going to be a reset i just hate that it's programmable right that's what they need to get rid of like what do you mean when you say that well if you look it up digital currency have them look it up and pro it's all programmable which means they can say hey you can't buy gas on tuesdays and guess what your card will not work on tuesdays so it's programmable they could give it direction if they have certain coins they are but bitcoin isn't necessarily programmable right bitcoin ain't but the u.s the u.s uh the digital dollar will be okay got it a u.s digital dollar is a proposed central bank digital currency that would be issued and backed directly by the federal reserve as a digital form of physical cash government backed unlike decentralized cryptocurrencies like bitcoin or private stable coins um a cbdc the central bank digital currency uh would be official legal tender backed by the u.s government it would represent a direct digital liability of the federal reserve available to the general public wow ask if it's programmable they don't want to tell you that part just put in there is it programmable because this for sure is and that's the thing that people need to be asking questions about is it programmable whether a u.s digital dollar would be programmable is one of the most heavily debated aspects of its potential design and the federal reserve has explicitly stated it would oppose making it programmable for retail users for retail users so what are you saying that means so what happens is that the just like they got these cars coming out where they could turn them off right they'll be able to turn your money off really easy like easier than we it's ever been in human history so throughout human history it started with bartering and then coins and then paper right the human has always had the ability to trade something for something right right and you can do it in a private setting or a public setting right with this there will be no more private ever that's gone and some people say well if you're not doing anything wrong but what happens is is you can see through time that laws change where you thought it wasn't wrong this day is now wrong this day right and that's where this gets dangerous because like explain that to me a little bit better where you think it's kind of like the uh the truckers that were in canada that were protested and then the canadian government turned their accounts off got it right i'm sure you remember that yeah and it's just like kanye west when he was like speaking out against um i don't know exactly what it was but i don't know if it was like jewish people or just some things he said or things about the record industry at some point they cut off some of his oh yeah debank you and all they debanked him yeah this they won't have to debank you they'll just turn it off it's just programmable ai is not being too honest right now about this because it's saying it possibly because these cats here they they don't tell you the truth all the time and and but there's the engineers believe me they're putting the programmables in the in the in the digital dollar with the digital dollar then uh be counterfeitable or no it's a good question we could try we could try man i would love to try we can't use paint on this though no we just have to figure out a break into the system but no i mean this is a good question and i think it's a good question and here's the thing i i hope that you'll have the states that uh that pass like florida's past laws uh where you can't refuse cash you know but i you know they're in other countries there are you see all these kids are raised on their phone paying with their phone yeah right that's crazy to me like i see that and i'm like man i don't even like to have my phone on me right and you're letting it like do everything for you from your money to your life to your social media to your dating to like yeah we've just gotten well we've just gotten so addicted we've gotten so used to it i think it's hard to separate that and i think a lot of people don't realize um the depth of the surveillance you know well now they got fly cameras going up they got you know i mean it's it's getting really interesting you know and and you know for me because i was a ghost i i pay attention to that stuff real carefully yeah not because i'm doing anything wrong it's because i want to be free yeah right at the end of the day i'm not doing anything wrong i'm not doing anything wrong you know this this is what i look at this country you know like i love this country i've been on every road that there is probably right i've been in so many towns in this country man and i've watched the middle middle the middle part of the country just disappear right where where there was a time where i would drive through a town and it looked a little bit alive and then five years later drove through it and it had boarded up windows and everything right we've seen the same and that's sad yeah oh it's heartbreaking you know well like just like yeah it feels like our government has just sold everything out that was good from here it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like they've let it like just let it be siphoned out yeah i think they gave up i think they gave up i did i don't did they give up or were they i mean it seems a lot more like they were um well they were siphoning now they gave up right now they're looking like oh just let's get what we can it's gonna it's gonna get reset the digital dollar divide right here it says um the anti-cbdc act would bar the federal reserve from issuing piloting or implementing any digital currency design for general public use the bill supporters let go of the digital currency design for general public use the bill supporters let go of the digital currency design for general public use led by representatives tom emmer french hill uh well this is awesome that they're filing a bill for this this is the first let me see this site risks of government surveillance and programmable money pointing to china's digital yuan as a cautionary example of state control over individual financial behavior banking industry groups argue that retail cbdc's would enable consumers to bypass commercial banks entirely potentially destabilizing credit intermediation i so china China already does it, they do the programmable, right? Right, but if that becomes here, then it's like, yeah, if you didn't spend your money appropriately, it would just be cut off. Yeah, no more buying cocaine. Right, which is good for me, which is good for me. But also, if you spend money where they don't like it or you're paying for a service that they don't like, they could cut your money off. If it's something that they deem that isn't right, or if you're even paying to see, say you're paying to see a speaker that says things that the government doesn't like, they could cut your money off. Yeah, it's terrible, man. I mean, that's super scary. Yeah, no, it's, you know, like, but, you know, my hope is, is like, you know, well, the good thing is I'm learning how to create currency with my art, right? So now that I'm an artist, you know, like, it's been 13 years, 10 years, professional artist, you know. The first. The first time, you know, that I got into the industry was when I met Arnold Schwarzenegger. I got to go out to his house and have a show, sold a bunch of art. Fuck, wow. Oh, it was badass, man. I mean, here I am two years out of prison. Shit ain't working. Can't get nothing going. You know, the catch there, me and Arnold right there. And here it is. I feel like I'm about to go back to printing. Catch Torrey kind of, you know, scoops me in. I worked for him a little while. And then I ended up going to Florida. I remember you telling me about something. I remember this and being in a show. Yeah, I was in a show. Before we get into something else. Let me just, I want to go a little bit further about like, because like Bitcoin is like, because say something is a money, right? It's just because we all agree that money has value, right? Like if tomorrow everybody just agreed it didn't have value, then it wouldn't. It wouldn't. And that goes for a lot of things. And I reference art because like really, what does? How do I sell a painting for 10 grand that I sold for a thousand five years ago, right? Right, how do I do that? How do I make it valuable, right? And it's the same thing with paper and actually in the old money, the 1800s money, it looks like little pieces of art. And the reason they did that is because them old-timers didn't want to give up their gold, right? So they had to make the paper look valuable, right? So if you look at, look at this money, man, some of this stuff is beautiful, right? Look at, look at the educational series, the 1896 educational series. I mean, that thing is, is, is just unbelievable. And, and so they had, they had to make this stuff look valuable and then they made gold illegal, right? To get the old-timers to give up the gold. Like, look at this stuff, that's a $5 bill. You see that? That's, nobody's seen no $5 bill like that. Look how beautiful that is. It looks like a piece of art, right? So they, they, it's, it's all about really kind of trickery, a little bit, a little PSYOP, right? You, you, you, you give the, and then the way they created the system, right? The system for us really kicked off. Then after World War II, right? That's when they really created the financial structure, right? How, how America would loan money to different countries and then they would buy goods and then it would create this system, right? But what happened is they just dug too deep into it, right? I mean, it could have been an unbelievable system. Right, but then people started manipulating things that happen in certain countries. There's sort of this, I mean, we just had a guy on who was talking about secret societies that like manipulate things at a higher level. Oh, way higher. So now this country has to. Like we have immigrants that are going from here because we cause starvation here or we stopped, we, we put a, like a fuel embargo here. And so now this country is going to behave like this. And so it's like, and they're all betting on that at a higher level. I want to, I want to get this point out there. Franklin, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102 on April 5th, 1933, which largely outlawed the private ownership of gold, coin, bullion, and certificates in the United States. The Great Depression widespread bank failures caused citizens to hoard gold, shrinking the circulating money supply. So, but then when they bought it back, sorry to interrupt you, but when they bought it back from them, I know that they bought it. They made everybody kind of give their gold and then they sold it back to them at a cheaper, at a cheaper rate. Yeah, yeah. Let me see that. Americans had to turn in their gold to a Federal Reserve Bank by May 1st, 1933. The government paid citizens $20.67 per troy ounce of gold. Yeah, 10 years in prison if you didn't do it. Yeah. Is that what it says? Violations. Violations carry penalties of up to a $10,000 fine or 10 years in prison. And then in January 1934, FDR raised the official price of gold to $35 per ounce, increasing the Treasury's value and devaluing the dollar. So they gave 20 and then raised 35. I mean, money, like even, like I look at how they change, like when they changed the bill to the new purple thing. Like that, that really was fascinating to me that I was able to create something that caused them to change the whole system, you know? Are you sure that that was the cause of it? Oh, yeah. I mean, it, yeah, they need the paper, you know, the paper. There was too many people doing it, you know, they had to, they had to fix it. They had to fix it, you know. But, you know, and soon, you know, like, like you, I look at my art kind of like historic art because soon there won't be currency. Soon there won't be paper currency, you know. Right. And so for me. It's almost like I'm, I'm preserving history through my pieces. That every piece I make, that it's, it's going to be historical. Because a lot of it's printed on actual money. Oh, yeah. The canvas you're saying. Yeah, I print. Yeah, I love to print. Yeah. Maybe one time you're in town, I'll print with you. There you go. There's a sheet of money. Bro. Yeah. Yeah, I'll give you one. Give me a little. I'll give you a little one, dog. Yeah. But I paint right over it, man. I love it. You know, and look at that. Now, now this sheet almost. Dang, that's just popping. Oh, no, it's awesome, man. I love it. Yeah. So, so I still get to print, you know? Yeah. Like, it's just, it's just awesome that I get to do it. But, you know, soon, soon currency will be gone, you know? And it'll be digital, and it's going to be an interesting time in humanity. Like, big time. Like, it's going to get, it's going to get, like, I get more nervous about that than AI. I think AI is kind of a little bit of hoaxy because the shit don't really work well. Yeah, I agree. The shit's capped. And the data centers are good for the robots. I'm telling you, they're making that shit for the robots. Oh, the data centers. I think it's to store a lot of information. Yeah. From all the surveillance information. When you think about activating surveillance and what they're going to need, I think there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of future stuff that's going to be super scary, and I don't know if we're ready for it, but we don't have a choice but to go into it. It doesn't look like, because it doesn't look like anything is going to save us. Or you can move to a country that doesn't have it, you know? Or, like you, bringing it to people so they understand it, so we can go into it the right way, right? It really is about just information, like, teaching the people the things where they can make a choice to make. This world better, right? Like, and that's what's awesome about podcasts now, because you guys get to actually inform people about things that are happening so that maybe it could change. Like, to have hope. I want to have hope that even if they change the money, even if they have surveillance, that somehow humans will find a way to thrive. Yeah. Right? We need a heat. We need, like, a new Mel Gips. We need a new Patriot, you know? New Patriot, yeah. We need a new Patriot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, Art Williams, you have your studio now. People can find it online. Yeah, I got it. I got JuliusDaVinci.com. I got. JuliusDaVinci.com? Yeah. Okay. And then I got ArtJWilliamsJr.com. My name. And then I got a gallery in Chicago on Clark and Diversey, and just started showing other artists, which is kind of cool, because. Oh, that's cool stuff. Yeah, no, it's great. Yeah, I like to go see art. Man, you got to come to the gallery, man. You know? You'll dig it, man. Yeah, I would love to. I got a printing press there. Do you? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, one thing I wanted to go into real quick. What are the top. What are the top 10 things that can be counterfeited? Clothes, bags. Okay. Medications are a big thing. The 10 most counterfeited products in the world. Let's see them. Food products. Food. Oh, that's 10. I think that food products and well-known brands of food could be counterfeited, but that is increasingly the case, especially as food prices around the world continue to rise, and companies charge. Yeah, that's an interesting one, huh? And companies charge a premium for their brands, whether it be coffee, chocolate, or fruit. For example, in Canada, the most popular and profitable coffee store chain. is named Tim Hortons after a hockey player. However, in South Korea, people are sold Tim Hortons coffee, which is a blatant knockoff of the popular Canadian caffeine product, huh? Oh, wow. Designer labels, tags. That's pretty obvious. Computers. Computers. I wouldn't have thought that, but I guess it makes sense because you do hear people like on Facebook Marketplace and stuff, like, I went to buy this computer and it was cat. Yeah. Pharmaceutical drugs. Movies still. Fake pills. Oh, movies. Yeah, like in third world countries. Sneakers and shoes. Does that make sense? Smartphones. Jewelry. Jewelry and accessories. Money's not even on there. Watches, for sure. Handbags, purses, wallets. No money. No money. Man, I gotta get money on there. Yeah. Hey. Yeah, figure out the digital. You'll figure it out, bro. Nah, I'm done. I'm retired, man. Look, Art Williams, man, thanks so much, dude, for hanging out. Thanks so much for just telling us about your story. Yeah. Congrats on. I mean, in the end, you were kind of just an artist, man. Yeah, really. You know? Yeah. Not just an artist, but yeah. An artist that went through some shit that just, you know. Well, yeah, if you're an artist and you're locked and you're stuck in, like, criminal-type shit, then, of course, you're gonna start your art in criminal-type shit. And these days, dude, everybody should be able to make their own fucking money. If the government's just printing that shit and just handing it out. We could give classes. Yeah. Dude, it might not be a bad idea. Crazy Theo Vaughn making money classes, man. Hey. TBD, man. Yeah, yeah, I love it. And you have a book. I don't want to forget The Last Counterfeiter. Art, man, thank you so much. Thank you so much, dude. Yeah, I appreciate this, man. It's been awesome, brother. Yeah, I appreciate it. Tell Penelope I said what's up. Yeah, I will. Yeah, yeah. All right. Now I'm just floating on the breeze And I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be Cornerstone Oh, but when I reach that ground I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it In my bones Thought it's gonna take This episode is brought to you by TXU Energy. It's called Free Nights in Cool Summer. Discover how much more you could save with Free Nights in Cool Summer. TXU Energy. Rep number 10004.