Transcript of #681 - Ex-Counterfeiter Arthur Williams Jr.

He was one of the most prolific counterfeiters in America, printing over $10 million in fake currency. He spent 12 years in prison for his crimes, but now he's out and he's telling his story. And what a story it is, man. Um, we're gonna hear about it all, and we're gonna hear about where he's at today. We really got into it. Today's guest is Mr. Art.

Williams.

Yeah, dude, my friends were texting me the full moon, about the full moon yesterday.

Yeah, it's a partial lunar today.

Yeah, well, they're like, go look at the moon, you know?

Yeah.

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 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. A 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, man.

I woke up at like 2 in the morning and the moon was just looking at me.

Hey.

Wow.

Oh, that's a peeping Tom, man.

Yeah, it was peeping on me.

Yeah.

The moon was a peeping Tom last night. 'Cause 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, uh, in Chicago at the Gibson's restaurant.

Yeah, we met at the Viagra Triangle.

Yeah, dude. But, uh, there we are.

Yeah, there we are.

But dude, yeah, thanks for— thanks so much for coming in. So for just for our listeners who don't know, so in a past life you, you were a counterfeiter?

Yeah, printed money.

Printed 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 going digital.

They're gonna, they're gonna print it through the digital coin, which is gonna be even more trippy.

Right. And I think, yeah, and, and we're gonna get into some of that, dude. I wanna, I wanna talk about some of those things.

But yeah, no, I printed money, man. I, I, I, I, I, when they, the 1990 $600 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, uh, and so it was a, I said, man, I, I'm gonna replicate it. I think I could. And, and, and my story goes back a little further 'cause 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 gonna 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, when, so when my dad—

Early bird gets the wallet.

And that's true though. Well, we get the coins 'cause I'd hit the meters. Oh, you would? Yeah, the meters on the side of Halsted 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 does, you know, she had to take lithium, you know, and if 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, 'cause 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.

And would she smoke them Doral's 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 she was there smoking and she was crying and she go, and I asked her 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 9 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 I'm walking down Halsted Street, and I was right on 31st and Halsted, that's where the projects that I grew up in. So it's like South Side, they call it the low end.

Okay, right.

But anything like under 55th is like the low end. These are just all Chicago street terms I'm telling you right now, right?

Got it.

Yeah. And maybe I'll take you over there one day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a cool spot. So anyway, yeah, so that was, so we're hitting the, I'm hitting the meters, walking down Halsted 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 everywhere? Because 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?

Yeah.

But then I start hearing the jingling, jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle, you know, like it's money, right? Bing! Like the little thing goes off. And, 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 gonna figure it out.

Art, right? Whatever the fuck, 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 2 little pins on it. And if you could get them to go straight up, you could pop it out. And there was always maybe like, $10, $15 of quarters in it. So you'd hit like 5 or 6 and all of a sudden you got $100 and $100 back then was something.

Yeah. It's a lot of money.

I still love $100, right? Like the $100's my number, man. You know what I'm saying? $100. Yeah. But so, so we hit it, we hit it for like, me and my bro hit for like $87. We went to Tony's Supermarket and, uh, me and my, me and my bro are just, just putting stuff in. We're all excited, right?

Oh yeah.

And we get up there and the, the big guy, he looks down, he's like, you guys got money? We're kids, man. Like, and we had a bag, it was in a bag, like a little Jules bag or something. We just said this, we got money. And he's like, He looked at the change, he goes, yeah, that's money, right? And so he started counting it. It was like $86. 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, we got 'em, Ma, you know? She goes, well, how'd you get the money? I said, outta the meters. She was like, well, how'd you get it out the meters? I said, we broke into 'em. She goes, and that— she goes, go up to your room right now. She, she, 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? Because 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 creator. There's something outside of me that I could tap into that gives me a force. I call it force field, right? I got—

Well, at that time, did you feel like you were doing it for a good cause too?

Oh, for my mom, for my brother, for my sister.

What are you gonna do? Of course.

Yeah, man, they gotta eat, you know?

Like, of course.

And that started it, right? Then once that happened and it didn't stop, I'd hit the meters whenever I needed it, you know? Then I could start hanging out with the gangs. So like in Chicago, the gang violence was real strong at that point. It was like mid-'80s, early '90s, guns are hitting the street. Right. It went from, it went from, uh, like at first it was like, uh, dance crews, like breakdancing.

Yeah.

And so the breakdancers turned into the gangs pretty much.

Right.

So you had the breakdancing moments in Chicago and probably New York and LA, probably everywhere. And then when the breakdancing kind of faded out, all those cats turned into Latin Kings or Disciples, or, I mean, GDs have always been there. Right.

What's GDs?

Gangster Disciples.

Okay.

Yeah. They've always been before, you know, and all these gangs have been there forever, but The breakdancing, when it broke out, that's when a lot of numbers filled it, you know?

What do you think caused that breakdancing to kind of dissipate over there?

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 line.

There's always escalation with it, 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?

Yeah, there'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 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 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 Luthuanica. The Italians, they had Armor 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?

Like, I mean, the one I was with, right? But I was a Disciple, man.

Of course. Yeah, bro. That's a good answer, bro.

But you know, I ran the streets real hard from breaking into cars to garages to stealing cars to just— it 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 look at like crime in the sense— and even, even when I got older, in the sense of like, I, I, I imagined that it would make me like a rich drug lord, right? Like, I never had that in my mind, that stealing a car is gonna get, you know, cause me to have something great.

Like— Like one day I'm gonna have a dealership or something.

Yeah, I'm not gonna have a dealership. Exactly right. So, so I, I always fought against wanting to do it. Right? Like, 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 'cause 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 smarter than this. You know, I see how you are and you love your mama and you, 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 Da Vinci 'cause, you know, he'd tell me crazy stories about Da Vinci, wear a little hat, Italian 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 gonna take you and I'm gonna 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 in the 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, not like a fathership, 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 gonna be print money, right? Like, I didn't know.

Oh dude, I mean, I hate to say—

look, yeah, you know, I hate to say you got lucky.

I did. 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 did, I really did. And my whole life has been kind of like that too. Yeah, 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. Just, I just, whoop, okay, here I am, like portaled in, you know?

Right. And like, here we are in 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, how to do something quiet.

Quiet. That's what it was all about. Right. And, and, and, 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? And, but yeah, so he takes me to his shop. He had a shop over by Armor Park and had one of them old elevators that went down into the basement 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, here I am with an old gangster, you know? And as a kid in that neighborhood, Because my neighborhood was, 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 Daleys. 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, and then where I lived was like the hodgepodge of everyone but poor, right? We were all just poor, right? But there was a little Puerto Rican, a little Thai and a little, 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— that was like a hand up, man. Yeah. You know, like that's what everybody wanted. You know, you didn't want to be a car thief, right? You know, you didn't want to— you wanted to be with them because you know what they did.

Yeah. They at least were a little more— they were organized.

They were organized, man. And so for me to be in the projects and be pulled out of it, right, that was like winning the lottery.

Yeah.

You know, it was like winning the lottery. So, you know, he took me in, he started showing me, you know, I would help carry them. He was old, so he needed someone anyway because the paper's heavy. Ink cans, the, you know, have to move the equipment around. You got to keep everything clean, right? It's constant. 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. Yeah, my pee, it was like green for like a week, and it wasn't gonorrhea, but it was ink. Yeah, it was nuts, man.

But it's getting darker, you know what I'm saying? Win some, lose some, cuz.

I did, man. It was, you know, well, yeah. So sorry.

What was some of the machinery that Pete was using to make, uh, to counterfeit?

So this At that time it was still the little, little-faced 100, right? There was a time when the 100 had a tiny face on it, right?

Okay.

We're going way back, 1985. So those were the ones he made and they were, 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 an AB Dick, he had AB Dick, uh, 2-color. Right.

What is that, AB Dick? 2 colors of paint?

No, it's a press. It's a printing press. It's, uh, it's— yeah, I gotta send you a picture. They're, they're awesome, man. They're like—

We'll, we'll bring one up right here. Yeah, AB Dick.

Look at like a 2-color AB Dick. Yeah, there you go. Right. And so, so he— that's what he used.

Wow. Yeah, that looks kind of advanced for the times, huh?

Oh no. 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, uh, it made the negatives, right? So you would go and you'd make the negatives with the bill. And we would always do 3 bills, right? Because these offsets, um, they, they would, they were best with like 8.5 by 11 paper.

And you would take the photos of the bill, of the bills, of a 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 negative. And then we— that's when you do your serial numbers. We take this red tape and we knock out the serial numbers. And because that was one of the hardest things to change, right? Because the numbers is what get people caught back in the old days, right? So you'd mark out the numbers and then you'd make the plate, you'd burn— you put the negative in the machine, it burned 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.

Oh yeah.

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—

And 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 some of the things. Like he never let me like take the photos and 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 $100 bill came out?

Yeah, when that came out.

Because that bill came out and they said that it was unable to be duplicated. Is that right?

Couldn't duplicate it.

Yeah.

They said that all the security features— there was a watermark, a strip, fluorescence on it. There were shifting ink. There was microprinting. You got the Mornay. So there's a Mornay 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 in his head?

The lines get wavy in his head. It's called a moiré, right?

Interesting.

Yeah, no, there's a lot of cool things on it.

It says here 6 features. Uh, yeah, watermark, a second faint image of Benjamin Franklin to the right of the portrait visible when held to light. 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 the 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 glow. I would want it to glow red, right? Red was the $100.

It was? Oh, I want it to glow. What was green? Ones?

Uh, well, no, I think that's 20s.

I think. Okay, I'll do 20s.

You could do 20s.

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.

The new one.

Microprinting, microprinting, 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 accurately.

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 inkwell. Those arrived on the redesigned $100 note introduced later.

In 2015. You know why that bill was made? 'Cause of me.

I'm sitting next to him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's called visual physics, right? You know what'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.

Did they do it on purpose?

Oh yeah, they had to have, 'cause it was supposed to come out in '13 or no, it was supposed to come out like '11 or somewhere around there. I got out in '13, 2013, but I'm watching in the paper there. I'm reading in the paper and, man, you know, this new bill coming out, right? And then when I got out and I seen that purple line, I just went nuts. 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, called me the best counterfeiter ever.

Really?

Yeah, it was awesome, right? I mean, I mean, I went to prison for 7 years, so it wasn't too awesome, but it was still cool that it got recorded, you know? And, uh, but then everyone wanted to be like me. 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 5, right? And so I didn't— for one, I would never give my recipe to anybody.

To how to counterfeit.

Yeah. But when I was doing the book, I was like, you know, if I give these 5, even if they tried to do it, it wouldn't come out like mine. Right. Right. 'Cause 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?

Oh, they do now on my Facebook and Instagram, man. You know, like, I get a little weirded out, you know, 'cause 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?

Nah, nah, nah. 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 'em, 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.

They put 'em in a trunk?

Yeah, put 'em in a trunk.

But anyway, okay, so take me back to— all right, you're working with Pete.

Yeah.

Are you able to learn Pete's method or what happens there?

So, so when the time I was with him, like I said, mostly I was just moving things for him, learning 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 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 plate. Yeah, yeah, he had us. 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 ahead. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, for like, you know, we did— I, I stayed around for about 9 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 to him?

I hope he got away. Like, that's what I think.

Oh, you think somebody might have been on to him a bit?

Oh, well, that's in that, in that world back then especially, man. Like, people in my neighborhood disappeared. 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, 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 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 LA, 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 liberating feeling you can have, to have that ability. To walk in with blank paper and then turn it into suitcase cash. But you learned how to do it quietly.

Right.

And so for him, when he disappeared, in my mind, I'm thinking, you know, he had to go.

Right.

The heat's on him. Right. And boom, he's gone. Right. I didn't wanna 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 literally printing. Like, I— so you asked 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. Yeah. This is an ATM, man. So, so that was the thing that I had to watch for back in the day, you know?

That's scary.

And that's why you have to be a ghost. That's, 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. You can't come in there.

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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 just 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, when he left, I went back actually when 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 dressed up like cops. We had the cop cars, you know?

Really?

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 liked the counterfeiting, right? 'Cause 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 first son, his mom's a cop, right? So like, and yeah, right. That's a whole nother lane. Well, we won't go down that one, but 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.

Mm-hmm.

And I had a nice one, right? I always had a real nice one. Like, And I loved it 'cause I could move through the city. I'd wear glasses and make my hair to the side and I look like a cop.

Yeah.

But we started, we'd start robbing the drug dealers, the ones out in the suburbs. And basically what would happen, these guys from the suburbs would come in and they'd like to hang out at the clubs downtown and they wanna 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. 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 be like, we'd have vests on, guns, like legit, like dressed like cops.

Yeah, dude.

But yeah, no. And we did that and then it got dangerous. It did start getting dangerous 'cause we started getting stupid. Like, you know, at first it was, and that's how—

What, y'all throw like a police ball or whatever? Like, I mean, how stupid do you guys get?

Well, that's stupid like that.

Were y'all playing softball against the fire department or something? Like, what were you guys doing?

Yeah. No, no, no. 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 that 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 him.

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 3 years maybe, I was just running hard on the street, you know.

And 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 2 in the morning. I'm walking through a basketball court And I hear 2 guys behind me. I look, 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 zing, zing, zing, zing, 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?

Mm-hmm.

I got hit and I stayed on, When I hit the ground, I was just gonna stay on the ground and figured they thought they killed me and they'd 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 grab me from underneath my, my armpits, you know, and just kind of like lift me off the ground. And I ran like 5 blocks. to 31st and Halsted. I was on 32nd Lieutenant.

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'd have 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 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, it was just all red and just blood. And I told the Chicago Sun-Times guy, I said, hey man, I've been hit, man, call an ambulance.

Damn.

Yeah, so then—

He was delivering papers?

Yeah, delivering papers, yeah.

Damn.

It was like 3 in the morning. But after that, that's when I went to Texas. You know, I was like, my mom was like, man, you gotta go. You know, I've already had at that point like 6 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. It seemed like everyone had one. They were called Larsens. L-A-R-S-E-N. I mean, it's just—

Was it a 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 were like that. The little guns. They were real tiny like that. .22. Yeah, that's what we had.

Oh, they're little.

Yeah, that's it. Those things flooded, flooded the streets, man.

A little grocery getter, you think?

Yeah, they were a little tiny, man. But yeah, .22, .25, .380, and you get them for $50. And 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 pea shooters that killed.

That's crazy. I wouldn't be surprised.

But I lost 6 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, in with the wrong crowd. I get into a little trouble. Um, I go to, I go to prison for like 2 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. 'Cause 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 $100, the new $100. I hadn't seen it yet, right? 'Cause I was in prison. And I'm watching, she pays 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 $100.

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 gotta 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 quest began, you know, and I'm not even outta 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, that's kind of an addiction.

Oh, for sure. Right. 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 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.

Nuh-uh.

It was fascinating. Yeah.

You're lying.

No, it was. Yeah. You could still go. I bet you could still probably look up 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 that's when I thought about my, about Pete, right. About the offset press. Right. And then, like I said, 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 is 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 get to have a conversation with her like, hey babe, this is what I'm going to 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, and that's a good point, she's already smashing criminals, so it's like, what are we even talking about?

Yeah, no, she said— yeah, so anyway, Anyway, me and her are having a— we start to come and form this thing.

Mm-hmm.

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 software in 'em, right? The Photoshop was new. All the stuff was new. So that's why credit card 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, okay.

Oh, it was awesome.

It wasn't tested. They hadn't really thought that people are gonna use this for this yet.

Not for what we were using. The magnet— they had magnetic printers. You could print the magnetic checks. Like that was like '96, '97. Probably look that up. I bet you fraud went through the roof, right? Because you were able to use these machines, you know? And we used 'em 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 $100, it had something in there where it would, um—

In 1996, financial institutions faced a dramatic surge in check and credit card fraud.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. That, that's what happened, man.

Driven primarily by the—

I was 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, to get that out there. Uh, but you were 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 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 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, like a dark brown.

Okay, got it. So that's like you see at the bank, or there's some like— some like, uh, you go to the store, you get money and stuff, they do that sometimes.

They do the pen, and if it's real, it'll turn like a light Yellow, right?

Got it.

It's like a light yellow.

Okay.

Beautiful color. Love that color. But so here it is, we're trying to figure out this paper and we're ordering paper from everywhere. But like back in the day 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 it. I'm thinking we're not gonna be able to pull it off. And 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, 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, right? And she slammed it down and she goes, nothing works. And she marked the Yellow Pages and she just, she stopped. She goes, she goes, I can't believe this can't be. And I'm like, huh, what's going on? 'Cause I still don't know. And she hits it again and again. She goes, she looks up, she goes, this whole time.

Um, we've been looking for the paper and this is it, Art. Come here. And I go over there and what the fuck? It marked. No, I got nervous when I seen it go yellow. I got so nervous because 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. Yeah, 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? I mean, all different papers.

And now 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 paper?

Cottons, linens, um, different poundage. 20, because the paper's weighed, right? Like you got, you got 20-pound, 30, like, like school paper would probably be like a 26-pound, 32-pound, right? Your printing paper is like 32.

Yeah.

Uh, 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 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 2 of them together. It was awesome, right? I'd print 3 on each side, 3 fronts, 3 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.

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, a little baby.

It's a piece of art.

It really was. And then, then you press them. But, but when we found it, well, you know, when she did that, now we're looking for the paper. She, she would go to, uh, 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. And, and for that—

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 it or something, man. They would just— and so she'd come out here, man, with free paper, like, look at me, man. We'd load that shit up and And then we would cut it and then we'd prep it. We had to do a lot to it because— so when we started to try to run it through the inkjets, it couldn't match the colors, right? So at first I wanted to just run it off the inkjet, right?

The printer.

The printers, right? 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 can 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 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 inkjet, 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 their website and I watched how they did it, what the first thing I learned was they did 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 1 or 2 or 3 of the the, the assets off, right? Because, because you're— the, the face and the, and the weave around it, which is microprinting, 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 at once, it's gonna be impossible 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? Are you— you put that on that?

Well, no, that's when it advanced to bringing 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 was 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.

I mean, a run means one bill or how many bills?

It's just one run through, right?

Like, so, so when I see what you're saying and how many times you have to run through to get a bill correct.

So for the registration, so, so I'm gonna give you some printing, uh, knowledge, right? So, so what made my bills, 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 8.5 by 11, oh yeah, there's a little, 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 registering.

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 got to be really lined up because that paper's flying through that thing.

Okay.

Right? Whereas the printer's like, right, right? Offset presses, right? It's just shooting it out really fast. So that registration— but I, 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 combined the two. I seen that the inkjets 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-a-piece. Yeah. One-a-piece. And then we'll use Natalie's way with the serial numbers and the seals. It worked really good for the serial numbers because I could change every single one of them. And the seals, it matched really close, right? But with the printing press, I wanted the color and the weave and the face. I wanted that face to be perfect.

Yeah.

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 moiré, 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 this. 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?

Yeah.

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 gonna make it.

It would 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, senior citizen living place putting paper on paper for me. Like 50 boxes, man.

Really?

Yeah, we were doing— yeah, well, we were about to do a big run. And so I asked my boy, the Greek, I said, man, I gotta get all this paper put on, man. He's like, how many boxes? Like 50 boxes. He's like, dude, that's crazy. I said, what? And he was remodeling a senior citizen home. And he's like, well, guess what, dog? He goes, 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 taped to 2 sides. So we asked the head of the, the, the, you know, the senior citizen. And I had, before you know it, I had like 20 old people doing it. We were doing contests. I was paying them $50 a day.

And you're the— 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. Oh yeah, they had fun for sure.

They did contests.

For sure they were laughing.

Who could do the most? I would give a bonus for 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 100. Right. And then even that with the, with the shifting ink, this is what was the coolest thing. I think 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 was car paint, but I was able to alter it. Well, not 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'd you find out that they made it for the feds?

Through their patent number. 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. 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 patent number and it'll tell you. You could make a nuclear bomb if you wanted.

I think actually it'll tell you everything about it.

Tell you everything about it. Well, it 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.

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 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 them, 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 was ridiculous, you know?

And so And so now you can make money.

Yeah.

Right. How long does it take you to make like a decent amount of money? And then what do you decide you're gonna 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 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 it. I'd probably hit every town in the country. Like I'm like back road. already, man. I have been on every back road in this country.

You were just cruising, just having a good time?

I got like 2 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, spend, you know, almost $15,000 in like an hour and a half.

Dang.

And we'd be on the road, gone, you know? And we sometimes, well, we only, the most we ever did was 3 in one day. date. 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.

Yeah, keep where 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 so much, man, shit don't mean nothing. Like, you're almost like, God, I feel like an asshole, right? I got 150 shirts, Right.

Yeah. Yeah. What are you going to do? You have a lot of pairs of shoes. What are you going to 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 trucks a little bit, you know, my boy was a Teamster. We'd get shit off 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 Bic razors. I had, man, I've had everything, you know. But anyway, back to, 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, you know. But then that, that even kind of got to the point to where like people started expecting things.

Yeah.

Like, you know, like you'd come into town and like, they'd be like always looking, what's, what's he got me now? Right. You know? And if you didn't, there'd be like an attitude or something, you know? So like, that's when I stepped away from that. And then, then we just 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 Natalie, listen, just get diapers, baby clothes, baby shoes, baby toys.

Let's go drop 'em off.

And we'll just drop 'em off. And that was like, that was like one of the coolest times of my life. That's the most fulfilling. They say I did that, my therapist said when I was in prison, I did it to like cover up my crime. But for me, it really, I loved helping people, man. It was awesome.

What made it one of the best times of your life?

Well, 'cause I just knew, 'cause 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 rent and toys. They weren't gonna have a Christmas.

Right.

Right. And see that, or, 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'd go church and, and give 'em 10% and walk out, you know, like I, I just love doing things like that, you know?

So you were using some of the counterfeit money to go tithe?

You'd give 10%? You gotta give God the money. He's the biggest gangster ever, man.

You know? Oh, for sure.

Gotta give him his, man. Well, you know what? That's the thing about life, right? Like the, there's, there's, I call it the flow, right? Like when you, when you, when you give, man, it, 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 2 years we didn't have no hot water. You know how cold it gets in Chicago?

Yeah.

Here 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?

Yeah.

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's no longer with us. You know, I lost him 2 years ago. I'm sorry to hear that. 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. That's a good— I mean, it makes sense, especially if you come from a place where 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?

Nah, nah, nah. I mean, my bank was this 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? 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 have at least 3 that are still buried somewhere over there.

I just lost the map.

$3 mil, you think?

Oh no, I don't know about that. I'd always do like $100,000 tubes. Yeah, you know, like just little ones, you know, put maybe 2 or 3 or 4 tubes in a hole, 5 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 like to play with it. One of my favorite things back then, you know, the bums on the street that would have the little signs, will work for food, right? I always give them $100.

Yeah.

Yeah. 'Cause 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, is he, 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 $100 bill on them. What happens to those places?

So here's the thing. So like corporate stuff back then, they could just write it off, right? The bank could snatch it. They'd have to write it off as a loss, right? We'd always try to stay away from like, you know, I don't want to go hit a mom-and-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 know, like the Walgreens, the Walmarts, you know, I wouldn't go to the corner store and spend it on, on, on old lady, you know.

Got it.

Yeah. So I, but, but, but the corporations out, 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 laws were a little bit lighter.

What do you mean it wasn't so aggressive?

Well, there wasn't— the counterfeiting wasn't like a really big crime. Like, there's drug dealers in every city, thousands of them, right? There might be 1 or 2 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.

There are a lot of—

1996 $100 bill, it put a lot of people out of business, you know, like it did.

Yeah.

And, um, you know, and, and, and, and still does there. I mean, I don't think really there's been a, a huge, you know, impact of counterfeiters since then, especially with the new bill. The new bill's almost impossible to do. Yeah, it would cost too much money to try to even replicate it.

Is that true?

Yo, 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 like thousands, like nano, nano shards of glass that they embed in, in it. And it, it's called visual physics. It's actually really fascinating. Do they even tell you it's called visual physics in 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. it. And some scientists created it. And the reason they didn't release the bill at the time was because the bills were defective. So that printing technology wasn't perfected and they were trying to use it too soon. So if you take a $100, if we had one and you folded it right on that, it would rip from there real easy. Real easy, right? 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, that technology wasn't perfected when they decided to use it.

Got it. Let me read the rest of these. Yeah, Bell and the Inkwell, color shifting 100, um, erased intaglio printing, uh, genuine bills feel slightly rough, particularly across Franklin's portrait and certain printed areas.

Uh, UV on his lapel, you could feel his lapel.

Oh, you can?

Yeah, when you rub your thumb across his lapel, you can feel it.

And they had a famous director, um, who used to, uh, they had a famous director who used to pass money. I think it was from that movie Live and Die in Los Angeles. Can you look at it? Might have been Williams.

Oh, Live and Die in LA. Yeah, it's one of the greatest movies ever.

Live and Die in LA.

Yeah, I love it. It's only counterfeiting money.

Oh yeah, this is the guy right here, William Friedkin. Let's, let's hear this real fast. He 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.

I used to spend 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 on some of that.

I bet you do.

I was actually doing a painting of Live and Die in LA in my gallery and on Melrose. So I'm an artist now, right? I told you, but I had, I had a space on Melrose and La Cienega 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 made it with money and I mean, I made it really badass and 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 Dino, 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 a really good one, like Theo goes to heaven.

Paint that one.

Um, 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 burned 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 it?

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 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 9 years, so when I went to Texas, I had stayed 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, 5s, and 1s, 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 know, like, yeah. Even recently, you know, anyway. Yeah. So yeah, the money, you have a lot of it, gets you nervous. And, and so I wanted 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, 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 Chicago could be a little racy at times, you know, sports always healed that, you know? So I could go to 47th and Indiana, man, and go hoop, and them boys loved me over there, right? Or I'd go to Pilsen, man, and I'd hoop with the amigos over there. I mean, I was able to go all over the city because of basketball.

Got it.

And I would, you know, I created friendships in all the different areas, man. You know, Ukrainian Village, And even now, like, I go anywhere, man. I'm probably the only white dude that go on 103rd and Wallace, you know, and hang out and just chill there. Right. All them cats over there love me, you know.

Really?

Oh yeah.

Yeah. I'd go over there. I'd leave quick.

I'd 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 'cause 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 a— 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 $100,000 at a time for $30,000, right? Or $200,000. I never really wanted to go too high with the number.

That's high.

Uh, $100,000 was a good number, right? $100,000 for $30,000, you could walk away from that one, right? You start getting into the bigger numbers, you know, I've had people say, I want $1 million. I had one guy, Jordanian dude, wanted $5 million, right?

Did you consider it?

Uh, I, I did, but I, I didn't, right? I like— I didn't do it, you know. I considered it, you know. He actually showed up. I told him he was full of shit. 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 million. It was— yeah, it was a lot of money. He had a suitcase of money.

What kind of car?

First time I— Rolls-Royce too.

Who in a Rolls-Royce?

Well, he actually owned, uh, he owned, uh—

you can't pull up in a damn Elantra with that shit.

Nah, he owned the exotic like a 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 shit.

Yeah, it got real weird because they were taking the money to Vegas. His, his, his, uh, his, um, his stepmom or something owned a casino in Vegas and they were running the money through there.

And so when people would win, they would win that money?

They'll 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 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.

And so how much were you keeping at the house then?

At my— 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 that had like, you know, 20, 30 apartments in them. Like, Cat was well off. He had a lot of apartment buildings. And when he died, my friend got them all. Oh shit. So my buddy inherited like 40 apartment buildings, you know, and then I'd sleep everywhere. Well, I had 8 apartments at one time, man.

You did?

Yeah. I had something over here.

You had how many?

About 8 at one time.

8 apartments?

Yeah, about 8.

And so you would keep money in them?

Well, I'd keep, I'd keep equipment. And so, 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 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?

Uh, just ego, you know, living life, you know, not the money's coming.

Yeah, buying extra sandwiches.

You're going to the clubs, cars, hats, cocaine's blowing in the air, you know what I mean? Just the whole night.

You started popping, huh?

Oh man, I was an animal. I was a savage.

I didn't know all that shit, dude.

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, just freaking blessing Cinnabons and shit. And now you're over here telling me y'all out getting it going.

I was a dirty Christian. That's what I call it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would pray and, you know, anyway, man. Yeah, that— I think, who, who termed that? Uh, Shia LaBeouf from Transformers. The dirty Christian.

The dirty Christian.

The dirty Christian. Believe in God but still, still sin. No, we— well, that's what happened, man. What—

when you—

well, one of my boys, he's— so I got a really badass crew of cats in Chicago. Okay. Still do. My dude owned The 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. Like super private, you know?

I can imagine it.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so I had my crew of guys. We were like, Like we were serious. We were badasses, man. You know what I'm saying?

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, 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 from— and it's always like some dude's grilling up some, Some Polish franks or whatever. It's fucking the best.

Oh, well, in the summer, my dude Tommy, he don't even use the stove.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's grill only.

We got one of our guys, one of our guys, Kristal, he a Russian cat, man. He likes to cook indoors, man. And Tommy tries to throw 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.

So y'all were out getting after it. You're doing cocaine. Yeah, we were doing limos.

We were doing just dumb shit, man. Oh, limos are fun. Yeah, well, back then it was kind of cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not now. The problem was you get in and the other— you got to go all the way in, you got to come all the way out.

Now, now we do the Suburbans. Those are the best ways, right?

Suburban. Dude, when I— like, sometimes limos, I'd get in, if you're the first person, 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 crawl out the fucking sunroof. No, I'll just stay in there.

Yeah, just stay in there.

Because it's too long. It's like a halt.

It's like Like a hallway.

It was too far to get to the door, dude.

Yeah, but things started getting out of hand, man. You don't, you know, you're drinking, you're going out, you're doing parties.

Yeah, you're flexing.

Yeah, you're showing off, flexing, and, and you're just making mistakes.

Got it.

With me, you know, my— and, and then, and then for when I got caught, it was just kind of just freak, right? Because I'm always moving, right? But in the 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, 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 3 hours or 2, I forgot how, 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, I rarely ever was in the city, right? Where I laid my head was usually outside the city. Oh, you know.

We stayed at that tall hotel right there by the river.

River? Uh, well, you had the round things, you know, where the round corn husk looking one. That's at the Cornhusk. Yeah, it's the Cornhusk.

That's when you're saying that? Let's go, dude. I'm staying. You want to go?

Well, let's go. Yeah. 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, uh, with guns out.

You should have left the sign out there.

No, they tricked me.

Did they really?

Well, what, what happened is we were at— we were down at the, uh— so I'm coming in, I'm selling $100 grand to one of my dudes He had me meet, you know, we were gonna stay at the House of Blues, so I had him meet us at the bar. So I get in and, uh, and, and he's just, he shows up, he's like, dude, I can't really stay 'cause I got family from— he was a Russian, one of my Russian friends, and he had family come in. They were doing a wedding or something. And he's like, uh, he goes, why don't you come back, uh, to my house and we'll party with all my family and then we'll do the deal tomorrow.

Mm-hmm.

I was like, all right, cool, let's do it. So I went with him, we had a fucking great time, but the bartender heard us say party. And I guess he was a snitch for, you know, some dicks downtown, you know?

Mm-hmm.

And so he called his little, you know, contact. And so when me and my wife's sister, 'cause 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, in the, in the— it was like, you know, the suites you got the—

yeah.

So the phone rings at like— so we get, we get into the room like 2 in the morning, the phone rings, I pick it up and there's, there's no one there, you know. And when that happens, you know, you got problems.

You got about 30 seconds.

Yeah, it's, 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, I had it in the closet, uh, in between the towels. As I put the phone down, I hear the, the, the, the, uh, the, the, you know, the door hitting. And I, and I, and I scream out, don't open the door, right? But she got up because I was so— because the suites were big. Yeah, she didn't even hear 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. So—

Okay, 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, 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. Now they handcuffed me. They handcuffed my, my, my wife's sister. She's crying. She's only like 16 years old.

So she's scared.

She's scared, right? She's— because we were supposed to— I was gonna take her to the museums and it was gonna be a great little, 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 drop it off and, and, and, and Natalie said, 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 is— so, 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 brick money, you know. They said, listen, you're gonna go through with the deal. You're gonna call your contact and you're gonna go through with this deal and you're gonna 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, you know?

And then they're getting all threatened and all that shit. Well, my luck, the one cop, he starts counting it, right? They get me there, they're talking shit to me, you know, they're counting me. He's like, man, you know? And then like probably like about maybe, know, maybe 5 minutes into it, he starts looking and he's looking for something. And he calls his partner and he said— and, and, and he tells his partner he didn't— so the guy was a fucking banker before he was a cop.

No.

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 them in after this because this happened.

Yeah. Yeah, but he didn't— Cool Ranch.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He didn't have no— he didn't see the red and blue fire. He had everything else, had the watermark, had the strip. He's like, man, I don't know what to think about this stuff. He goes, it got all the 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 them in anyway. So they took me in, they took her in, and, uh, and then the Secret Service came, a woman's Secret Service, and she said, oh—

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 a cell too. But they, you know, the Secret Service showed up, right? And, you know, 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, where, you know, then find me, cuz. Yeah, she's trying. 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 make sure meet someone too, which she's— who knows?

Yeah, well, who knows with them, right? Because they're so— they're, you know, you don't know. Yeah, you never know. But one thing she was doing was threatening me with my wife's sister. Oh, all 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? Little $20 with the card. Remember, scratch the card it 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 that— 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 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 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, this is a serious situation. It looks like I'm gonna be going away for a while. Well, what was awesome, she went right into her movement and she got rid of everything. Everything. Like, I mean, I don't even know how she did it. Her mama had to help her, right? But like, by the time they got there, Natalie strung 'em along.

Mm-hmm.

Right? She kept stringing 'em 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 it off. 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 Right? That they seen it and boom, that was their probable cause. I said, well, that's impossible, man, because the hallway, they'd have to be Superman. They'd have to have fucking X-ray vision to see the weed. Right? And 'cause there was a table around the corner. So he had someone go take pictures and then 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.

Right.

Said that there was no, they didn't see no weed. And then he had the pictures and stuff. And so when I went back to court 3 weeks later, my attorney read off the— put the cop on the stand and read off the police report. Uh, yeah, we seen weed on the table and that gave us probable cause.

So it was illegal?

It was all illegal. 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, ah, judge, ah, you know, right? They stopped the hearing. Fucking judge dismissed it and I walked right out.

Nuh-uh.

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 'cause 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, 'cause 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. today. I just beat my case. She's like, what? And so then I ended up going there, and then, you know, 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. And just, I, I couldn't, because now I got to seek for 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 way, you know?

And did 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. I was, I was like, I felt like the trees were watching, man, you know? Like, it was like, you know, in the Secret Service, you don't really know, know what they know, right? Right. Like, you— they, they got secret weapons and shit, man. They can 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, uh, It was an arm wrestling movie with Sylvester Stallone, Over the Top. Over 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 a gay movie now, I think.

Yeah, is it?

Yeah, yeah, I think it's like Over the Top or whatever, or I don't know, I don't remember what it is, but it's something like that.

Well, back then it was an arm wrestling movie. Yeah, with Sylvester Stallone.

Oh, it's Over the Bottom, I think.

Over the Bottom? Nah, we don't want to do no bottoms.

That's the one I'm thinking of.

I don't wanna do no Bob at the top.

Yeah, this movie I remember for sure.

Yeah, Over the Top, man. Sylvester Stallone, it was awesome.

My bad.

So anyway, I ended up trying to find my pops. I went, I went on and started looking for Arthur J. Williams Jr. One pops up in Alaska.

So your past 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 wanna go near my presses. I don't wanna go to the apartments. I don't wanna go here. I don't wanna drive that car. I don't, you know, I'm like, I'm in a bad depression, man. Like, I don't— I just don't want to move.

So you find out where your dad lives?

Yeah, so I ended up watching this movie. Now I got this thing with my— so I find out there's a PO box in, uh, what was it? Um, it was east of Anchorage. Chickaloon. Chickaloon, Alaska. Damn, right? 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 hate— she didn't want him to be around his 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, hey 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 3 weeks, he called me. And when he called me, I was like, you know, I said, hey, you know, I didn't tell him what was going on. I just say, hey man, I'd like to see you. being, you know. He said, well, you come up here. So before that, this was before the 9/11, 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 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. Yeah.

And, uh, and he— we— 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 actually And then, uh, and his wife went into their house, and me and my pops just stayed up for like 2 days, man, smoking that Alaska Purp, 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, huh?

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 ended ended up running money, right? Paper, you know. And at that time, so when me 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 2 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 they— and even, man, like, even my canvas ones now, people see, can we print it on paper, right? If you— 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 mouth gets wet. Their brain gets wet, everything gets wet, you know? Like, they just— it's— I call it a go fever 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 truck tractor trailers. He'd bury them underground, and then they— he would tap into 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, nah, man. You know, he was actually tapping into, to the power line, you know.

Damn.

And they were— and then they had this, uh, special material that the, the heat could— the airplanes couldn't look through.

Couldn't get through.

Like, they were on some— this is early in the game, you know. And, um, and so we, we were bonding by showing each other what we were doing.

Yeah, I'll show you mine. Yeah, I'll show you.

Yeah, I'm doing the money, you're doing the weed, you know.

I'll show you my crime, Show me your hands kind of.

Yeah, that's pretty much what it was. That's how we reunited, man. Like through crime things, you know? And, uh, and it was awesome, man. My dad was cool, man. He 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, and he felt, I could feel the, the like, damn, I wish I would've known this cat, you know? Like I wish I would've been around him more, you know?

Yeah. He probably, you guys probably would've 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.

Mm-hmm.

Right. And, and, and I was like, man, yeah, of course. And then, and then it's my dad, so I wanna make him proud, you know? And so, but I came clean with him. I said, look, 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 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 at 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 that, right? Fuck them.

Let's go.

Let's go, right? So, so I told him, I said, listen, if I'm gonna do this, I got to 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 $20,000 of the fake money. I used to, I used to have a belt that I could put 10 grand in and I could wear it around, you know. And that's what I was showing him. 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.

Enjoy it. Yeah, enjoy it. Yeah, go to Chicago, get the materials, ship it back. And we did. We, we, you know, he— so he left the stuff with his 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. Fur hats, fur fish. 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 fucking way up here, man.

Oh, you're done.

You know, you're done. At least in the lower 48, you know, 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 and my dad, they get into it. My sister ain't as forgiving as I am. She's kind of like, man, fuck this guy. Yeah, you know, and she's even at me like, what, what's the deal, man? What do you care about? 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 why don't 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—

In Alaska?

In Alaska.

Okay.

And so when I finally called her, I went back to Texas. She goes, why ain't you on the plane with your dad? I'm like, oh man, I had to go here. She goes, fuck 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 flew back to Anchorage, but I stayed with Anissa's daughter in Anchorage when he was out there. And it's so weird how things happened and how fast, but I was getting a bad feeling. I don't know, it was weird. Like I just wanted to get outta there. So I'm telling Natalie, I'm like, Hey, we're leaving. We're outta here. And, and oh, that's what it was. When, when, when I went to visit him, he took me, uh, he took me to this biker party. It was Hells Angels, right? He, he was real cool friends with one of the, the big dogs up there. And, uh, and we went to this crazy-ass like gathering and, 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, wow, what are you telling this cat that I don't know that I'm making money, man? I got pissed with him, man. Real, real bad.

That's pretty shitty.

Yeah. 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, hey, 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, but 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, Anise is working with 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 where Natalie's mom is, and Secret Service were waiting for me. They busted, they grabbed us. They said, we gotcha. 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 then she was the confidential informant. But when she went to court, she pleaded insanity.

Oh no.

And they, oh no, this woman was crazy, right? She pleads insanity. I get 3 years. years. My dad gets 6 years— or no, he got 4 and a half years. And then she pleads insanity, and the judge takes her to trial and gives her 6.

Wow.

She gets 6 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 4 and a half years, you know?

Yeah, he was in Sheridan Federal Correctional. But yeah, yeah. But anyway, well, the sad part though is the day I got out of he died.

No.

Yeah, had a heart attack that morning.

In prison?

In prison.

Oh man, I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I should not have just said that.

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 ain't— 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 handed, you know, a phone and they tell you 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.

I can't even lie.

Ah, yeah.

You weren't arrested 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 shit's wild. You can't— I'm telling you, this shit's 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?

Oh 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 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, 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—

and y'all were printing money.

Yeah, we were pretty— 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, I'll tell you, it was—

you and him were cellmates for going to jail for counterfeiting together?

Yeah. So when So after my dad died and I get out, man, long story short, my son and me, we were not really getting along, right? He's being a tough kid. His mom can't take care of him 'cause she's a cop. She can't have that shit in her house. And we connect through music, you know? Like he was a real good musician, you know? And he was only like at that time, like 13. And so I knew Johnny K, who, he had Groove Sounds and he did like Disturbed, Fall Out Boyz. Those guys came outta Chicago. It was his studio and that was my dude.

Okay, he's a producer? Big producer.

Got it.

Big time.

Disturbed, Fall Out 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 boy's 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 songs, he made 4 songs and then it started getting expensive. My boy was like, hey, Look, let's keep it going, but you gotta throw me a little something. Right. 'Cause it's not like now where you could have a home studio, you know, big boards. And so that's what brought me back into printing. 'Cause I was like, okay, you know what? I'm going to make as much money as I— I'm going to do one big blast and I'm going to help my son make it, you know?

And, uh, yeah, there's artists now that I think their parents are helping them make it, I think.

Oh no. Yeah. Well, I knew a lot of people, plus I was from, you know, so it just needed this, 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 working myself anyway, you know.

So you're ready to try one more go at it?

I was ready. I was like, let's do it, you know. And then I got my boy.

Did you convince him or he convinced you?

No, 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 were gonna make some money anyway?

Yeah, yeah, I was already at that point, but this was a perfect Perfect reason to do it too.

Because he needed money for his career.

Yeah, for his career, for sure. Yeah. So anyway, now, but at this point, man, all the technology's changed. They had scrapped all the freaking presses, you know. They had—

What year is this?

Ah, that was like 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 me and my brother broke into the paper place. You know, we actually cut a— we're probably the only idiots to break into a paper company. Yeah. Like, we cut a hole in the thing and we're like in a rope and it was really—

Really?

Oh, it was 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. Yes!

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 tin metal. It was on Christmas. We lowered ourselves down. We actually got into a fight in there because they had these big potato sacks, right? And 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 to scale up 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 that'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. And 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 outta 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 what was crazy. Now they're doing, they just did a Rolling Stone thing on me. I was in Rolling Stone magazine. Right.

So you were doing public speaking?

I was doing public speaking.

About being a counterfeiter.

Counterfeiter as I'm counterfeiting. Counterfeiting. This is what was so bizarre about it.

It's addiction, really.

Addiction.

It's all addiction.

Couldn't stop. Well, they flew me out to Rochester, right? Document Security Systems. It was a, 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 Abagnale had, right? Frank Abagnale 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.

ADP?

No, it was Document Security Systems. DSS.

And they— And so, 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 happens?

So I get there, man, and I'm sitting in the hotel bar with the assistant and I'm looking around and I'm like, man, everyone in here looks like a cop. Right. Like, and I ask her, I'm like, hey, isn't this 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.

Did you speak at the conference?

Yeah. Yeah. But it was not easy though. I'll tell you what happened. So, yeah. So here it is. I don't even really drink much, man. Right. But I'm pounding whiskeys. Right. Yeah. I'm pumped. I get to the room. She was worried about me. She's like, she's like, you gonna be all right? I'm like, yeah, man, I'm all right.

You know? I'm just glad it finally, at some point in 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. Yeah.

Well, you know, I got, I got people now that love me, man. So I'm good. It all worked out.

For sure. But this is the first time I'd heard you say that in all of this.

Yeah, yeah. No. Well, my mama always did, but—

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 6 in the morning telling me what to not eat, what to eat, what I could eat, you know. And, um, we go—

What's she worried about your diet for? 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 8 o'clock in the morning, right? So I, I, I go into the, the hall where, where it's all set up, and I walk into the front, and, uh, I'm looking at who's speaking. It was the guy that caught the Son of 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 8 in the morning. They're not going to be here. Maybe 10, 20, 15. Not too many people are going to show up, so I'll be all right.

Yeah.

It fit 1,000 people. All right. Literally, man, I'm not kidding. Like that hall stayed empty till like 2 minutes before 8.

Yeah.

I thought I won. one. 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 going to be getting up at 8 in the morning to watch some counterfeiter, right? Man, bro, like in a matter of like 2 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 back in Chicago, right? I don't know. 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?

Yeah.

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 looking around, it's loud, you know, and everyone's sitting down. And 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, this is how I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna say this and this, and then 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 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, they've listened to everything you just said right now.

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 there. We're not gonna cancel it? 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 I— they walked me up to the front. The presenter, he starts, then he calls me up.

There's no way you got through it.

Oh, listen to 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, lifted, 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, 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. Got it.

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, uh, fake IDs when he was in high school. And so like, it— what turned out— what looked 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 do a few things. And when I come back to the house, he's printing money, 20s. We get to— he's with 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 a cop is passing by.

Nuh-uh.

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, 'Cause 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 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 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 did—

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.

Wow.

But what happened though is 3 weeks before that, the old man that owned the building, Rick of Benny's— he owns Rick of 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. And they were messing with 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 so like—

Blessed and cursed, bro. It's kind of like this perfect mix, bro.

It's a perfect mix, man. But— But did you have to—

um, testify against your son or anything like that?

No, no, he didn't even 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 7 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 this 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 3 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 3 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. 'Cause they're 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 hit 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 called, my sister tells me what's going on. gone. And, uh, and he gets sentenced to— I forgot, I think it was like 36 months. So now I've already been gone for 3 years. Now he's 18, and they ship him to Forest City, Arkansas. I'm in Big Spring, Texas, at 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 So as soon as I went through processing, you know, you go through all that shit all day. As soon as I hit the dorm, some of the white guys came up to me, hey, you know, what's your name? 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 till the yard. Your son's in the dorm. I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, he's here in this dorm. He's in the TV room right now.

Damn.

I'm like, what? So I haven't seen my son for 3 years. Right? And I beelined to the TV room. And when I opened up 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 got up and just ran straight to me, man. I'm tearing up because 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 could handle me, right? My life's been hell. I don't want him going through it, you know?

And what—

this is 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 of their kids. And they're seeing me and my son just embracing. I just held him, man.

Damn.

And that's where I learned to become a dad, man. The next 2 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 plan, the grand master plan was, you know, that, that he was going to do music and I was going to do You are, 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 gonna let you out first so you could get yourself situated, then we're gonna let your son out.

Okay.

And so when I got out, you know, I just— I, I had an unbelievable— I had an unbelievable, uh, community around me. 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 in— 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 2 years out, I almost actually went back to printing, and he busted me. He busted me with some, with some chemicals.

And your son did?

Yeah, yeah. So like 2 years after this, after—

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 déjà vu all again. Right? And so I ended up walking away from it. And, and I ended up— one big-time cat in Chicago, his name's Joe Cacciatori. He owns Lakeside Bank. He took me under his wing and he said, look, man, I don't want you to go back to prison, man. I want to show you how to make it, you know? And, and damn, here it is 13 years later, you know, and I've had 5 galleries. I've had unbelievable shows from Rolls-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, bro.

What a community can do, man. 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, what I, what I, what I, 'cause I've mentored guys getting outta 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? 'Cause crime can be addictive too. And, 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's 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, is very unusual, right? You know.

Well, that part I get.

Yeah.

But do you think, what effect do you think that crime had, like, on just like your, like, you know what 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 the second generation of it.

Well, here's the thing. The crime, crime, actually it, the streets, it's even deeper than 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've taught me how to deal with shit now. Right? Like, 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 crime, from the first time breaking into the meters. I was— the training was to just like an animal to hunt, right?

You'd learned 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 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 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 7 years, you know, Natalie was still— had the 3 babies down Austin, you know, and I didn't even know, I didn't even get to meet the young one till like 4 years later.

Wow.

And so the things that I regret are more family, you know, I would, 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 then I was always doing good with it. So whether that was to justify me doing it or not, I just, I 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 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 not.

No, no, I brought you 100, but not one of them. I brought you something though. Nah, 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 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. substance abuse. Uh, 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, nah, the money, man. Like, even now, so when I, I, I print sheets of money right now, like—

But it's for work, right? It's for your art.

Yeah, it's canvas and I paint over But I still get that same— 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.

Do you think that people should be allowed to counterfeit money?

No, 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 know, like, my, my, my, my things were— I think we should be allowed to 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, should people be allowed to print? No, neither should have I. I mean, it was wrong, you know?

These days, it's like our government is just printing money. They're just siphoning money out.

Like, they give—

they're giving money away to these different, like, um, uh, 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, the financial system that they set up, it's $40 trillion in the hole, 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 and I analyze it, and 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 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 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 it's all programmable, which means they could 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 directions.

If they have certain coins, they are, but Bitcoin isn't necessarily programmable, right?

Bitcoin ain't, but the US, the US, uh, the digital dollar will be.

Okay, got it. A US digital dollar is a proposed central bank digital currency 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 stablecoins. 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 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, that just like they got these cars coming out where they could turn 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'll be no more private ever. 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. What do you think?

It's kind of like the, uh, the truckers that were in Canada that were protesting, 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 it's 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 that shit.

Yeah, they debanked him.

Yeah, this they won't have to debank you, they'll just turn it off. It's just programmable.

But it's kind of the same, right?

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 years, believe me, they're putting the programmables in the, in the, in the, in the digital dollar.

Would 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 it.

We can't use paint on this though.

No, we just have to figure out how to break into the system. But no, I mean, this— here's the thing. I, I hope that you'll have the states that, uh, that pass— like Florida's passed laws where you can't refuse cash, you know. But I, you know, they're in other countries, they're already— 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 flock 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, Hey, 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? Every— 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 5 years later drove through it and it had boarded up windows and everything, right?

We've seen the same.

I mean, even—

yeah. Oh, it's heartbreaking. It's just like, yeah, it feels like our government has just sold everything out that was good from here. 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 think I did. I don't know, 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 designed for general public use. The bill's supporters, led by Representatives Tom Emmer, French Hill—

well, this is awesome that they're filing a bill for this.

This is the first time I've seen this. Cite 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 CBDCs would enable consumers to bypass commercial banks entirely, potentially destabilizing credit intermediation. I—

so 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. Or also—

Yeah, no more buying cocaine.

Right, which is good for me, which is good for me. But, but also, if you, if you spend money where they don't, 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, um, even paying to see— say you're paying to see a speaker that says things that the government doesn't like. Yeah, they could, 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 this is like, you know, well, the good thing is I'm learning how to create currency with my art, right? Like, so, so now that I'm an artist, you know, like, I— it's been 13 years, 10 years professional artist, you know. The first time it, 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.

And, fuck, wow.

Oh, it was badass, man. I mean, here I am, 2 years out of prison, shit ain't working, can't get nothing going, you know, the catch there, me and Arnold right there. And, um, 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 some of this and being in a show.

Yeah, I was in a show.

Well, before we get into something else, let me just, uh, 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, and that goes for a lot of things. Like, and I, and I, I, I reference art because like, really, what does, how do I sell a painting for 10 grand that I sold for $1,000 5 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, on 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?

Wow.

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, to make this stuff look valuable, and then they made gold a 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.

Yeah.

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, you give the— and then the way they created the system, right? The system for us really kicked in after World War II, right? That's when they really created the financial structure, Right? Uh, 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, uh, secret societies that like manipulate things at a higher level. So now this country has to Like, we have immigrants that are going from here because we caused starvation here, or we stopped— we, we put a, like, a fuel, uh, 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, uh, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102 on April 5th, 1933, which largely outlawed the private ownership of gold coins. 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, 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, uh, at a cheaper rate.

Yeah, yeah.

Let me see that. Americans had to turn in their to a Federal Reserve Bank by May 1st, 1933. The government paid citizens $20.67 per troy ounce of gold.

Um, 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 Wow. And devaluing the dollar.

So they gave $20 and then raised it to $35. I mean, that's crazy money. Like, even like, I look at how they changed— like, when they changed the bill to the new purple thing, like, that, that really was fascinating to me that I, I was able to create something that caused them to change the whole system, you know?

Are you sure that that was the cause?

Oh yeah. I mean, it— yeah, they need the paper, you know? The paper— they— 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, and soon, you know, like, like you, I, 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.

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. 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 shit's popping, Carl.

Oh no, it's awesome, man. I love it. Yeah, so, so I still get to print, you know, like, yeah, 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 a hoax because this shit don't really work well.

Yeah, I agree. This shit's capped.

The data centers are good for the robots. I'm telling you, they're making that shit for the robots.

Oh, the data centers, just, I think it's to store a lot of information from all the surveillance information. When you think about that too, activating surveillance talents and how they're— 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 could go into it the right way, right? Like, 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.

And we need a— we need like a new Mel Gibson. We need a new Patriot, you know?

Patriot.

Yeah, we need, we need a new Patriot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Art Williams, you have your studio now. People can find it. It's online.

Yeah, I got, uh, juliusda Vinci.com.

I got, uh, juliusda Vinci.com.

Yeah. And then I got, uh, arthurjwilliamsjr.com, my name. And then I got a gallery in Chicago on Clark and Diversey and, uh, just started showing other artists, which is kind of cool because—

Oh, that's cool stuff. Yeah, no, yeah, I like to go see art.

Yeah, 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. press there.

Do you?

Oh yeah, oh yeah, I got a printing press there.

Um, and, uh, oh, one thing I wanted to go into real quick. What are the top— can you look up, Trevin, what are the top things that can be counterfeited?

Clothes, bags.

Okay.

Um, medications are a big thing.

The 10 most counterfeited products in the world, let's see them. Uh, 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 Morton's Coffee, which is a blatant knockoff of the popular Canadian caffeine product. Huh. 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 cap.

Yeah.

Uh, pharmaceutical drugs.

Movies still.

Fake pills. Oh, movies. Yeah, like in third world countries. Uh, sneakers and shoes. That makes 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.

Oh no, I'm done. I'm retired, man.

Look, um, Art Williams, man, thanks so much, dude, for hanging out. Thanks so much for just telling us about your story. Congrats on— I mean, in the end, you were kind of just an artist, man. Yeah, really, you know.

And not just an artist, but yeah, it's like I said, went through some shit that just—

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 your art and criminal type shit. And these days, dude, everybody should be able to make their own fucking money. You know what I'm saying?

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 Von making money classes.

TBD, man. And you have a book, I don't want to forget, The Last Counterfeiter. Um, Art, man, thank you so much, dude.

Yeah, I appreciate this, man. It's been awesome, brother.

Yeah, I appreciate it. Tell Pinelli I said what's up. Yeah, I will.

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 piece of my life out. I can feel it in my bones, but it's gonna take a little—