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Speaker 1: So listen all at once ad free. Subscribe to True

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Speaker 1: Crime Clubhouse on Apple Podcasts. Welcome to Lives of Crime,

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Speaker 1: True Crime from True Criminals. I'm Steve Fishman from Orbit Media.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode is a first person account from Jeff Turner.

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Speaker 1: He was a counterfeitter, one of the best of his generations.

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Speaker 1: He was persistent, resourceful, skilled, and inventive in ways you

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Speaker 1: won't believe, in ways US Treasury agents couldn't believe. And

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Speaker 1: he did it all for love. We call this episode

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Speaker 1: making Money.

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Speaker 2: I met this girl, Jessica, and you know, we hit

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Speaker 2: it off, started dating, and after about a year or two,

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Speaker 2: we decided to just kind of move away, get get

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Speaker 2: out of Florida. So we moved up to Knoxville, where

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Speaker 2: we got married. We had a couple kids. I mean

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Speaker 2: it was really good for a while. Like I was

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Speaker 2: still doing drugs, but it was like completely like manageable.

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Speaker 2: I'd come home, She'd be cooking dinner. As I walk in,

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Speaker 2: you know, the kids would run up to me. You know.

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Speaker 2: We had a nice car, a nice house. Really it

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Speaker 2: was like American dream shit. My marriage was happy for

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Speaker 2: a long time. I was working like sixty seventy hour

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Speaker 2: weeks at this sign company, and you know, we had

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Speaker 2: a newborn baby at home, so I wasn't getting hardly

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Speaker 2: any sleep, feeding the baby every two hours. So I

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Speaker 2: got a call from the owner asking if I could

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Speaker 2: work on Saturday to do these service calls. I hardly

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Speaker 2: slept the night before, like at all, and so I

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Speaker 2: went into work at like eight am. I was by myself.

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Speaker 2: I was driving a bucket truck. I was so tired.

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Speaker 2: I was like slapping my face trying to stay awake,

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Speaker 2: turning the radio on, rolling the windows down, you know

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Speaker 2: what I mean. I remember I'd like just kind of

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Speaker 2: close my eyes for a second, and then i'd hear

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Speaker 2: the little reflectors hit the tire, and I'd wake up

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Speaker 2: and go back on the road and smoke a cigarette

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Speaker 2: to stay up, and then you know, I'd close my

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Speaker 2: eyes for a second. But then my tire went off

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Speaker 2: into this little embankment. So I woke up again and

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Speaker 2: jerked the wheel. But because that front right tire went

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Speaker 2: down into the embankment just a little bit, when I

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Speaker 2: jerked the wheel, it just turned and flipped, so like

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Speaker 2: the bucket truck flipped like six times. While it was flipping,

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Speaker 2: my head shattered the window. So I just kind of

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Speaker 2: came to in this upside down bucket truck. You know,

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Speaker 2: my whole shirt was just red from blood, and they

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Speaker 2: found ballasts like hundreds of yards from the truck. It

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Speaker 2: was just everything flew out. So the owner of that

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Speaker 2: sign company knew I was on drugs, but he kind

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Speaker 2: of just looked the other way because, like, I was

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Speaker 2: a good worker, but after I wrecked the truck, he

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Speaker 2: felt obligated to just fire me. Rent was due, our

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Speaker 2: lease was up in a couple months. I was a

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Speaker 2: functioning addict. We didn't have a lot of money, didn't

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Speaker 2: have enough to even pay rent. So me and my

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Speaker 2: wife had the conversation like, you know, what are we

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Speaker 2: gonna do? How are we gonna make this work? And

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Speaker 2: I was at a point to where I was literally

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Speaker 2: planning a bank robbery. I was looking online for real

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Speaker 2: flesh silicone masks, realistic masks that looked like an old man,

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Speaker 2: and like, like I was really like about to rob

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Speaker 2: a bank. I thought about that for a while, but

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Speaker 2: I was just like skeptical. I was like, man, I've

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Speaker 2: got kids. The FBI is gonna kick in my fucking

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Speaker 2: door if I got gone you know, with swat teams

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Speaker 2: and stuff. Then it was just straight to counterfeiting. It

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Speaker 2: was like, well, no, once I thought about that, I

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Speaker 2: was like, yeah, what am I thinking? Counterfeiting is the

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Speaker 2: way to go. I was all in with it. I

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Speaker 2: was always honest with my wife, and I remember telling

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Speaker 2: her I'm going to start counterfeiting, and I don't think

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Speaker 2: she thought I was serious. You know, we were in

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Speaker 2: a desperate situation, so she was kind of just like

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Speaker 2: jokingly like go for it, and I was serious. So

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Speaker 2: I was like all right, but in the back of

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Speaker 2: her mind thinking like, oh, well, we have to figure

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Speaker 2: something else out. It wasn't until a couple of weeks

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Speaker 2: later that I printed out my first like a first

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Speaker 2: twenty dollar bill, and she saw it and was like

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Speaker 2: shocked at how real it looked. Then I think she

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Speaker 2: kind of realized, like, oh shit, this looks good. I've

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Speaker 2: always had this obsessive, compulsive attention to detail. Like I

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Speaker 2: decided I wanted to learn guitar when I was twelve

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Speaker 2: years old, and I literally sat in my bedroom for

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Speaker 2: eight hours a day every day for years until I

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Speaker 2: could sweep arpeggios and play any unaccompanied jazz song. I wanted,

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Speaker 2: and basically, as a teenager, I was one of the

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Speaker 2: few kids that could buy beer because I was printing

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Speaker 2: fake IDs. They weren't really sophisticated or anything like. I

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Speaker 2: literally started by just printing them, scanning my ID, changing

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Speaker 2: some numbers, and printing it on a piece of paper

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Speaker 2: and then just sticking the piece of paper into like

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Speaker 2: the clear sleeve of my wallet. All my friends, of

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Speaker 2: course wanted them, so then I'd start selling them to

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Speaker 2: my friends for like fifty bucks apiece. But that kind

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Speaker 2: of like made me realize, like, well, shit, you can

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Speaker 2: forge things and you know, be successful at it. And

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Speaker 2: then I read the book The Art of Making Money

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Speaker 2: about Art Williams, who printed millions, and in that book

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Speaker 2: it roughly explains how he did it. And that's you know,

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Speaker 2: after I read that book, then it was like I

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Speaker 2: wanted to try try to print money. Then. I mean

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Speaker 2: I was just using basic printers, you know, like my parents'

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Speaker 2: printer that they had, and you know they were they'd

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Speaker 2: be gone for you know, eight hours a day or whatever,

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Speaker 2: so you know, you just go into the little den

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Speaker 2: with the computer and printer and print them out. It

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Speaker 2: really wasn't like this huge money maker, but as a

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Speaker 2: nineteen year old kid, every couple of weeks i'd make

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Speaker 2: two hundred bucks. At first, I didn't really want my

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Speaker 2: wife involved. She knew what was going on, but I

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Speaker 2: kind of try to keep her away from everything. I

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Speaker 2: wanted to insulate her. But eventually she became my partner

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Speaker 2: in crime. You know. It kind of morphed into a

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Speaker 2: Bunnie and Clyde type relationship. I knew I needed to

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Speaker 2: find thin paper to sandwich two sheets together, and that

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Speaker 2: was the main challenge. I read that you could coat

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Speaker 2: the paper with matt nail polish, clear nail polish, like

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Speaker 2: a top coat, and that would prevent the counterfeit pens

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Speaker 2: from reacting to the paper. So I knew a way

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Speaker 2: to beat the counterfeit pens. But I needed just paper

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Speaker 2: that was thin enough to put two pieces together. And

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Speaker 2: I found like tracing paper, tried like the wrapper to

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Speaker 2: toilet paper. I found rice paper and vellum paper, and

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Speaker 2: I just stumbled across Bible paper. It was perfect. It

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Speaker 2: was thin enough, it was opaque enough. I hit it

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Speaker 2: with a black light and it glowed a dull purple,

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Speaker 2: just like money. So when I found this Bible paper,

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Speaker 2: it was like a fucking light bulb that just went

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Speaker 2: over my head. I knew this was like, I was like,

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Speaker 2: this is fucking perfect. I was just like fucking esthetic.

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Speaker 2: Like I knew. I was like, this is it? Like

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Speaker 2: this is it. I looked online to try to buy

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Speaker 2: Bible paper in bulk. The wholesalers that I found sell

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Speaker 2: it in giant reams to like publishing companies that produce Bibles,

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Speaker 2: and I was a little nervous to order a palette

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Speaker 2: of Bible paper. In Knoxville, Tennessee. My wife was contacting

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Speaker 2: churches and getting donations of boxes of bibles. Guy thought

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Speaker 2: the best way to stay anonymous was just like I've

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Speaker 2: just started going to bookstores and finding Bibles and just

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Speaker 2: taking the blank pages out of them. There's usually one

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Speaker 2: or two pages in the front that are just blank,

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Speaker 2: and then there's usually like two three, four blank pages

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Speaker 2: in the back. You know, I'd go to bookstores and

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Speaker 2: basically just go stand in the aisle and pretend like

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Speaker 2: I'm reading the Bible and pick up one find the

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Speaker 2: blank pages, kind of rip out the four blank pages

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Speaker 2: in the back and put them in the pocket, and

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Speaker 2: grab another one and just kind of rip them all out.

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Speaker 2: We went to every bookstore in Knoxville until there was

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Speaker 2: no more Bible paper. We went to all the bookstores

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Speaker 2: in Chattanooga. We went down to Atlanta and all the

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Speaker 2: little cities in between Knoxville and Atlanta, and up to Cleveland, Ohio.

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Speaker 2: By the time I was actively counterfeiting, we started staying

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Speaker 2: at a hotels. We'd try to get like handicap accessible

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Speaker 2: rooms because they had like a really big bathroom, and

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Speaker 2: I would kind of set up shop in the bathroom,

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Speaker 2: you know. I'd run a power cord from like the

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Speaker 2: little power outlet by the sink and have a laptop

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Speaker 2: and two or three printers. There was always one Bible

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Speaker 2: in the nightstand, so every new hotel room might take

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Speaker 2: the two or three blank pages out of the Bible

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Speaker 2: because it was right there. And eventually we were in

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Speaker 2: a hotel and there wasn't a Bible in the nightstand.

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Speaker 2: We called a front desk and said it was not

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Speaker 2: a Bible in the nightstand, and she said, oh, we'll

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Speaker 2: send one up. Then this may that guy at the

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Speaker 2: hotel knocked on our hotel room door and gave us

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Speaker 2: a Bible. So I basically was like, hey, you have

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Speaker 2: more of these Bibles, and he was like, yeah, there's

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Speaker 2: boxes in the maintenance closet. We have them upon request.

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Speaker 2: So I basically was like, listen, I'll give you one

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Speaker 2: hundred dollars if you can give me all these boxes

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Speaker 2: of bibles. So he brought us like three boxes full

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Speaker 2: of bibles, and we went through, took all the blank

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Speaker 2: pages out of all of them, and then gave him back.

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Speaker 2: He was confused, like why the fuck did they want

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Speaker 2: these three boxes of bibles? For two hours and then

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Speaker 2: they gave him back, But I gave him one hundred dollars,

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Speaker 2: so he didn't care. When I first started, I was

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Speaker 2: working on him for thirty minutes, but eventually I got

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Speaker 2: it down to where I could make one hundred dollar

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Speaker 2: bill in probably five minutes. I would constantly edit the

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Speaker 2: images and photoshop and sharpen them, and they just got

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Speaker 2: better and better as time went on. Basically, like scanners

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Speaker 2: and printers recognized the image of one hundred dollars bill

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Speaker 2: and by recognizing that it knows that it's currency and

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Speaker 2: it won't let you print it or scan it. So

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Speaker 2: in order to get the digital images, I would simply

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Speaker 2: take a photo of them, get a new crisp hundred

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Speaker 2: dollars bill, lay it on a flat on the table,

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Speaker 2: take a high resolution camera and just snap a photo,

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Speaker 2: and then you can upload that photo and crop around

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Speaker 2: it to take out the background and edit the image.

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Speaker 2: I'd print the background color and then i'd put it

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Speaker 2: back in the printer and print the green Treasury seals

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Speaker 2: and serial numbers, and then put it back in the

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Speaker 2: printer and print all the black hork And that was

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Speaker 2: the front of the bill, and I would take the

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Speaker 2: reverse side and just lightly missed on some gorilla glue spray,

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Speaker 2: and I'd line it up just right and then squeegem together.

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Speaker 2: And then after that I would spray on a thick

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Speaker 2: coat of matt lacquer spray, which that would coat the

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Speaker 2: paper so the counterfeit pens wouldn't turn black because the

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Speaker 2: counterfeit pens basically are iodine ink, and the iodine in

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Speaker 2: the ink reacts to starch in paper. So if I

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Speaker 2: sprayed the bills with a Matte lacquer spray, it would

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Speaker 2: coat the paper, so the ink in the pens couldn't

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Speaker 2: react to the starch in the paper because it's not

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Speaker 2: touching it because it's coated with Matt Lacquer. You get

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Speaker 2: the muscle memory of just the right amount of missing on,

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Speaker 2: you know, because if you spray too much gorilla glue,

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Speaker 2: it'll be too thick. Just one little that that's enough.

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Speaker 2: When I first was able to make a one hundred

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Speaker 2: dollars bill, I thought, you know, this is it. I'm

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Speaker 2: gonna be rich for the rest of my life, like

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Speaker 2: money will longer be a problem ever again, you know.

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Speaker 2: And at this point I wasn't considering that, you know,

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Speaker 2: I get caught. You know, you don't really think you're

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Speaker 2: gonna get caught until they kicked your door in. The

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Speaker 2: first bill that I broke myself in a store was

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Speaker 2: at a taco bell across from the Knoxville Airport. I

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Speaker 2: was definitely super nervous going into it. I kind of

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Speaker 2: broke this bill out of desperation. It was probably just

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Speaker 2: before midnight. It was late. I parked my car a

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Speaker 2: couple businesses down and I walked into this taco bell

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Speaker 2: ordered a couple soft tacos. And it turns out that

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Speaker 2: the cashier was the manager. And this manager basically just

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Speaker 2: took the bill, held it up, looked for a strip

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Speaker 2: in a watermark, and she put it in the register

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Speaker 2: and gave me my change. I walked a couple blocks

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Speaker 2: back to my car, and I just threw the tacos

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Speaker 2: the bushes. I kind of thought, this is going to

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Speaker 2: be easier than I thought. I knew that I was

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Speaker 2: onto something. I was living at a hotels, so we

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Speaker 2: needed visa cards to pay for the hotel rooms. So

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Speaker 2: I started buying prepaid visa cards, and I realized that

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Speaker 2: there's like a three dollar fee attached to a prepaid

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Speaker 2: visa card, So to get one hundred dollars prepaid visa card,

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Speaker 2: it would be one hundred and three dollars. So I

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Speaker 2: would give them two kind of fie hundred dollar bills

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Speaker 2: and I not get the one hundred dollars prepaid visa

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Speaker 2: card and ninety seven dollars change. So that kind of

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Speaker 2: doubled my income. And most big chain stores have multiple registers,

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Speaker 2: so you know, me and my wife would go into

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Speaker 2: one store and buy prepaid visa cards, but we'd go

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Speaker 2: to multiple registers, so we could leave a Walmart with,

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Speaker 2: you know, one thousand dollars just by going to different registers.

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Speaker 2: And when your job is breaking one hundred dollar bills,

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Speaker 2: Walmarts and stuff like that. Of course, my kids got

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Speaker 2: pretty much whatever they wanted. And if they say, oh,

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Speaker 2: can I have this toy, It's like, sure, I'll make

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Speaker 2: fifty bucks off of getting you that toy. I would

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Speaker 2: go to my children and specifically say what do you want,

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Speaker 2: because I need to buy stuff. I mean, yeah, anything

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Speaker 2: they wanted. I was eager to get them because that's

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Speaker 2: how I made my money. I remember having Christmas in

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Speaker 2: a hotel room and we had so many toys. It

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Speaker 2: filled up like the whole floor of the hotel room

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Speaker 2: with presents. And you know, we had a Christmas tree

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Speaker 2: in the hotel room, so the kids had a great time,

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Speaker 2: you know what I mean. At this point, I was

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Speaker 2: used to cashiers only marking the bills with the counterfeit

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Speaker 2: detection pen. And like I said, my bills I sprayed

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Speaker 2: with lacquer, so the pens were no problem. But the

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Speaker 2: first time I went to break a bill out of CBS,

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Speaker 2: the cashier pulled out the counterfeit pen marked it. It

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Speaker 2: marked properly, but then she turned the pen around and

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Speaker 2: shined a black light on my bill and the strip

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Speaker 2: didn't glow red. So it was a real close call

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Speaker 2: for me. I was like I thought, I was begin

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Speaker 2: to get caught. So at that point I knew I

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Speaker 2: needed to somehow make the strip glow red. Then I

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Speaker 2: found these invisible ink UV pens online. They're basically marketed

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Speaker 2: towards little girl's diaries, so the girl can write in

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Speaker 2: her diary with this invisible ink pen, so no one

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Speaker 2: can read her diary. So I googled that I found

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Speaker 2: them in red ink. You know, I ordered them, and

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Speaker 2: after I glued my bills together, I would take a

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Speaker 2: ruler and put it over the strip and just draw

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Speaker 2: a line with this invisible ink UV pen so when

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Speaker 2: you shine the black light on it, they it appeared

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Speaker 2: to glow red, just like a real bill. I'd normally

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Speaker 2: wake up at about nine am and print for about

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Speaker 2: three hours, usually make a couple thousand. At least by

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Speaker 2: noon I had a couple thousand dollars in fake hundreds,

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Speaker 2: and then you know, you spend the rest of the

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Speaker 2: day just kind of breaking them, going to different stores.

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Speaker 2: Some days, some heroin dealers I knew would put in

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Speaker 2: an order for like ten thousand dollars, So some days

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Speaker 2: I'd just print all day to give them ten thousand.

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Speaker 2: They'd give me like twenty five hundred for the ten thousand,

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Speaker 2: and I'd probably print a couple thousand for myself to

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Speaker 2: break as well. A big part of it was buying

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Speaker 2: heroin from dealers with counterfeit money. This one dealer I

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Speaker 2: was buying like an eight ball of heroin off of

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Speaker 2: him every day for like a month straight. We'd go

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Speaker 2: up to Cleveland together. He'd re up and I'd drive

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Speaker 2: around Cleveland, breaking bills and getting Bible paper and doing

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Speaker 2: the whole routine. He went up to Cleveland without me,

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Speaker 2: and he got arrested while he was up there. A

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Speaker 2: day or two goes by and he calls me. I

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Speaker 2: figured the FEDS were listening to that conversation, but I

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Speaker 2: also said I wasn't a drug dealer, but I didn't

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Speaker 2: expect anything to come of it. I was in a

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Speaker 2: hotel room at the time of that phone call, and

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Speaker 2: about thirty minutes later, I hear a knock on the

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Speaker 2: door of the hotel room, and I kind of peek

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Speaker 2: out the window of the hotel and I see the

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Speaker 2: corner of a Knox County sheriff. So at that point,

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Speaker 2: fucked fucked. I threw about ten thousand roughly into the

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Speaker 2: toilet and flushed it. Took another probably five ten thousand

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Speaker 2: threw it in the toilet, but when I went to

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Speaker 2: flush it the second time, just kind of bl bl

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Speaker 2: blah blooh. If water was shut off at this point,

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Speaker 2: there's a bunch of counterfeit money just floating in it

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Speaker 2: or like stuck to the rim of this toilet. I

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Speaker 2: heard people yell, multiple people yelling through the door knocks,

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Speaker 2: kind a sheriff Us Secret Service, and then they just

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Speaker 2: started kicking it in. But the hotel room door was

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Speaker 2: like reinforced with steel. It was like a thick metal door.

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Speaker 2: They just you know, boom boom boom, over and over again.

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Speaker 2: There was nothing I could do. There was nowhere I

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Speaker 2: could go. So I did a line of heroin and

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Speaker 2: lit a cigarette and just sat on the bed and

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Speaker 2: smoked a cigarette while they were kicking the door. When

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Speaker 2: they offered me that deal to not charge my wife,

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Speaker 2: I always planned on taking it, whether the deal was

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Speaker 2: good whoorbad, Like I wouldn't have let my wife go

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Speaker 2: to prison. We went to a meeting with my lawyer

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Speaker 2: and the Secret Service was really like impressed, and they

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Speaker 2: wanted me to explain to them how I did everything,

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Speaker 2: and he's like, we want you to make a training

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Speaker 2: video for Secret Service agents as a part of cooperation.

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Speaker 2: As soon as I walk into the room, there's like

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Speaker 2: lights and tripod with cameramen. There was like a sound

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Speaker 2: guy that put mic on me. I was like shocked

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Speaker 2: at first. I'm like, oh shit. They had all the

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Speaker 2: evidence that they seized from my hotel room. They had

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Speaker 2: my computer and my printers and a suitcase I had

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Speaker 2: with all these different pens and sprays, so they had

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Speaker 2: everything I needed to make money. He kind of was

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Speaker 2: just like go and I'm like, what do you mean? Go, Like,

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Speaker 2: what do you want me to do? And he's like,

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Speaker 2: make two counterfeit bills, explain every step of the process.

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Speaker 2: They kept saying, who taught you? I mean, I really

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Speaker 2: just caught myself, you know, I mean trial and error.

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Speaker 2: The Secret Service. They kept saying, this will really help

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Speaker 2: train Secret Service agents. You know, I spent a lot

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Speaker 2: of time and effort into really perfecting this recipe. And

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Speaker 2: the Secret Service what they said like they were super

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Speaker 2: excited to meet me. So I guess in a way

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Speaker 2: it made me feel.

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Speaker 1: Good in return for cooperating with the government and making

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Speaker 1: that impressive instructional video. Jeff served just three years in

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Speaker 1: prison and his wife served none. Today he's a changed man.

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Speaker 1: He's been drug free for years and has a steady job.

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Speaker 1: He calls himself a professional printer. He and his wife

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Speaker 1: are divorced. The creator and host of Lives of Crime

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Speaker 1: is Steve Fishman. Executive producers Steve Fishman and Kevin Wardis,

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Speaker 1: Senior producer Michael Epstein, producer and engineer Austin Smith, Story

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Speaker 1: editor Dan Bobkoff. Our sound designer is Bianca Salinas. Assistant

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Speaker 1: producer Eric Axelrod. Special thanks to the inimitable Fisher Stevens,

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Speaker 1: the Glamorous Ria Julian and our agents at WM e

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Speaker 1: Evan Crasseik, Marissa Hurwitz, Ben Davis. Lives of Crime is

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Speaker 1: a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Company

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Speaker 1: Number One. Follow us at orbit Media FM, on Instagram,

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Speaker 1: TikTok and YouTube