#681 - Ex-Counterfeiter Arthur Williams Jr.

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, we're going to hear about it all, and we're going to hear about where he's at today. We really got into it. Today's guest is Mr. Art William. [Music] 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. And I feel like it's, I wonder if the moon feels embarrassed because like everybody's looking at it at the same time. That's what I start to think, you know. Like, if everybody was looking at me at the same time, like, I would just feel so embarrassed, I feel like.

Yeah, well, sometimes it feels like that. Yeah, but I look at the moon like I'm here. Yeah, yeah, reflection, right? But even last night in the room that you got me, hey, that room is dope. I got the dopeest city view.

Oh, nice, dude.

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

Yeah, oh, that's a peepin' time, man. Yeah, it was peepin' on me. Yeah, the moon was a peepin' time, let's try it out. Because the curtains were open, right? And it was just sitting right there looking down and I'm like, whoa.

I don't blame it, man. We met in Chicago at the Gibson's restaurant. Yeah, we met at the Viagra Triangle. Yeah, dude. But there we are.

Yeah, there we are. But dude, yeah, thanks so much for coming in. So just for our listeners, you don't know. So in a past life, you were a counterfitter. Yeah, printed money.

Printing money. Not for the feds, either. No, yeah, for yourself, for myself. Yeah, yeah, that's what I like, bro. Hey, we need more of that for sure now, right?

“Oh, dude, I think it's basically a look at the government.”

It's just going to print in for themselves. Yeah, well now they're going to print it through the digital coin, which is going to be even more trippy. Right, and I think, yeah, and we're going to get into some of that. Yeah, I want to talk about some of those things.

Yeah, no, I printed money, man. When the 1996 dollar bill came out, they said that it was impossible to replicate. And I was about, I don't know, it's probably like, 24, 25, and so it's a size size bag. I'm a replicated, I think I could. And in my store goes back a little further, because I grew up in the South Side Chicago.

Yeah, take me there, like looking back or you're able to see any things that made you think, okay, I'm going to head in this direction. Kind of like what you do in early crime or whatever? I was doing a lot of crimes. Yeah, early, you know, so when my dad early bird gets the wallet.

And that's true, though. Well, we get the coins, because I'd hit the meters. Yeah, the meters on the side of the street.

So that was like my first crime when my dad left us.

My mom was, she dealt with mental illness. She was diagnosed by a polar. So she, you know, she had to take lithium, you know, and she didn't take it.

“You know, well, once a year, she would go into the hospital, right?”

And he'd have to get the levels back up, and they put us in foster home, right? 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 socks park, um, you know, it was, uh, I remember, because we, you know, you're on well, 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, uh, would she smoke them do rails or whatever? I think she's the roller-roll.

Yeah, my mom is the big bags of tobacco. She'd be there all day in the mid-western. She's hard worker. Oh, yeah, no, my mom just rolled, but, but she was there smoking in, and she was crying, and she went and I asked why she was crying, so we had no food in the house.

So I opened up the fridge and it was empty, right? And how's it about 12 at that time? We had probably been living there almost maybe like nine months to a year. So I've already got a taste of the street, you know, and uh, so I grabbed my brother, my little brother, we ran outside and while I'm walking down the hall to the street, and I was right on 31st

in the hall, so that's where the projects that I grew up in.

“So it's like south side, they call it the low end, okay, right?”

Anything like under 50 fifth, it's like the low end. These were just all Chicago street terms, I'm telling you. Got it, not, right? Yeah, and uh, maybe I'll take you over to one day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So anyway, yeah, so that was, so we're hitting the, I'm hitting the meters, walking down the halls, and I'm hitting the meters, but as I'm an angry kid, and I think 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 on the street, hitting them with a sticker, some.

No, but my fist, just, you know how you just snatched, you know, hitting it, every, because there's a meter like every 20 feet, right, for sure. So I'm just cracking it, you know, just like this little kid, man, you know? Yeah. But then I started here with the jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle, you know, like, that's money, right? You're being like the little thing.

Right, it goes off, and uh, and so I start playing with it. So this is, with this, what God gave me, the gift he gave me is figure things out, okay?

Whatever's going on, you're going to figure it out, art, jingle.

“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? And so, so I went in the alley, I made, I made this little metal piece that allowed me to twist the little pins, there were two little pins on it, and if you could get them to go straight

up, you could pop it out, and there was always maybe like $10, $15, of quarters in it.

So you'd hit like five or six, and also you got a hundred and a hundred back then was something. Yeah, it's a lot of money. I still love a hundred, I like the hundreds of my number of men, you know what I'm saying? But so, so I, we hit it for like me and my bro hit for like 87, we went to Tony supermarket, and me and my bro were just just put stuff in rock-sided, right?

Oh, yeah. And we get up there and the big tiny looks down and he's like, you guys got money? Where kids are like, and we had a bag, it was in the bag, like a little jules bag or something. We just, this, we got money, and he looked changey, he was, yeah, that's money, right? And so he started counting, it was like 86 bucks. We get home, this is what was awesome.

When we walked in the door, my mom was still, you know, kind of, in her depressed smoke, she had a really moved jacket, but when she's seen the groceries, she lit up, ran, and hugged. It's like, where did you get this?

“She probably thought some church gave it to us or something, you know?”

Yeah. And I'm like, I'm like, we got it, my, you know, she goes, "Well, how'd you get the money?" So I had the meters. She was like, "Well, how'd you get it out the meters?" I said, "We broke it to him." She was in that, and she was going up to your room right now.

So she, she, she, her demeanor went from happy to pissed like that, you know, like, in a 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 from money. God will provide the way." I said, "God, they 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 a create, there's something outside of me that I could tap into that, that gives me a force, I call it. Okay, right? I got it. Well, at that time, do you feel like you're doing it for a good cause? Oh, from my mind, from my brother, from my city, you're doing it, of course. Man, they got to eat, you know, like, and that started it, right? Then, once that happened,

it did stop. I'd hit the meters whenever I needed it, you know, then I could start hanging out with the gang. So like in Chicago, the gang violence was real strong. At that point, we had 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, break dancing. Yeah. And so the break dancers turned into the gangs pretty much, right? So you had the break dancing moments in Chicago, and probably

New York and all of the, probably everywhere. And then when the break dance had kind of faded out,

all those cats turned into Latin kings or disciples, or, I mean, GDs have always been there,

right? Which GDs, uh, gangster disciples. Okay. Yeah, they've always been before, you know, and all these gangs have been there forever, but the break dance and when it broke out, that's when a lot of numbers filled it, you know? What do you think caused that break dancing? It's to kind of dissipate over day. I don't, I don't, I think because 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, right? And then when they started beefing, you know, physical just always enhances even like wars. Yeah. There's escalation. There's always escalation, yeah, 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 mind in a bubble, bubble, right? So yeah, it's always a way to do it.

“Yeah, so anyway, but that's what I think happened. I think, okay, I said, you know, there's just the”

beef and, and then the guns. That was the thing that really, for me, that sticks to my memory harsh for the name, because I've been shot. And I've had friends killed one right, right there. You know, got shot in the head with you? Well, yeah, we were all out there and we heard one shot and pull fit them in the heading dropped, right? I got hit in the side and were you out there, like with the gang, like, yeah, because you were just out in the streets? Yeah, we, we all,

everyone had their corner. Got it. We had 30 second of Luzwanico. The Italians, they had armor park, 33rd Shields, Latin Kings had 33rd of Morgan. The Spanish chances had 29th of Wallace, right? Like, and who is your favorite gang looking back? I mean, the one I was with, right? Like, yeah, how's the disciple, man? Of course, yeah. That's a good thing. But I've ran the streets real hard from breaking in the cars, to grudges, to stealing cars, to just kind of escalated.

So you were in the crime, then? That was your thing. Well, it was to survive, right? Like, I didn't, I didn't ever look at like crime in the sense, and even when I got older in the sense of like,

I imagine that it would make me like a rich drug lord, right? Like, I never had that in my mind that

stealing a car is going to, you know, cause me to have something great, like, what do I have a dealership? I'm not going to have dealership, exactly, right? So 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 mys friends came up to get me because they could sign you out at the police station and on the way back, he was just telling me, like, you know, what are you doing, man? You're smart

And he brought me into his world, who was saying this? No older gentleman, well, I nicknamed him to Pete called Pete DaVinci because, you know, he told me crazy stories about DaVinci, where a little hat tying guy, okay, got it. So we're walking back, me and Peter walking back, and he's just, you know, tell me, he goes, hey, listen, I'm going to take it. I'm going to show you how to make some money and be quiet about it, right? That was the thing. That was the difference about what I was doing.

It was loud. The gangs would slob, the guns, the stealing, the break and windows, right? To get into the cars, right? He wanted to show me how to be quiet and make money. And so for me,

what my dad had even, he was kind of like the first one, the first guy that I felt like a father,

you know, like a little bit of a fatherhood, too, right? Well, yeah, dude, when you're young, if somebody comes in 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 to be print money, right? Like, I didn't know. Oh, dude, I mean, I hate to say, look, yeah, yeah, I hate to say, you got lucky because some guys are like, let me teach you how to play tennis, you know? Let me teach

you how to touch yourself or whatever, but you got lucky, bro. I really did. In my whole life, it's been kind of like that. I get in places that people just don't get into a hundred percent. I really do, man. It's like, Da Vinci paying in with the Kings. I don't know how it happens, man. It's just, I just, okay, yeah, like, portal in, right? Like here, we are in the next chapter of

“this fairy tale. I love it. I love it. That's what makes life live, 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 as a counterfeiter, you learned 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 um, but yeah, so he, he takes me to his shop, he had a shop, over by on my park, and you know, I had one that mold elevators that went on into the basement stuff, and he had his printer over here. He had his light burner over here. He had his, uh,

plate maker over here, where he did his ink, where he held his paper. I mean, it was just, it was fascinating. There's a kid on like, 15, 16, man. You know, like, Karen, I am, we're in old gangster, you know, and as a kid in that neighborhood, because my neighborhood was, was where Mary Daley was from, right, Bridgeport, they called. Where Mary Daley was from? Yeah, Mary Daley. The old Daley, Richard Daley, and all the

Daley's, that's that neighborhood. You know, I'm 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 Pilsson, which is over off 18th. And then, and then where I lived was like the Hosh Pot, she's everyone, but poor, right? We were all just poor, right? But there was a little poor league and a little tie and a little, little mud, you know, and 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, at least where they were organized. They were organized, man. And so for for me to be in the projects and be pulled out of it, right? That was like winning a lottery. Yeah. You know, it's like winning a lottery. So, you know, he took me in, he started showing me, you know, I would help care, care, but he was old. So he needed someone anyway, because the paper's heavy,

ink cans, the, you know, have to move in the equipment around. You got to keep everything clean, right? It's causing that ink to ship, man. I've had it on my hand and then when it took a piss, man, burning my piece, you know? Really? Oh, that was crazy. Yeah, my peep, man. It was like green for like a week and it wasn't got to real. But it's how it was ink. Yeah. It was not ink. But it's getting darker. You know, it's like, when it's all loose. I did, man. It was, you know,

look, yeah. So, what was some of the machinery that Pete was using to make, uh, to counterfeit? So, at that time, it was still the little, little face tundra, 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, 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 notes and he was using the old

doc offset technology. So it was, he had a AB Dick, he had AB Dick, uh, two color, right? What is that AB Dick, two color to paint? No, it's a, it's a, it's a press. It's a printing press. Okay. So it's, yeah, I got to 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. Yeah, look at like a two color AB Dick. Yeah, there you go. Right? And so,

“so 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. That. 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 guys talked about the machines. So you had a machine to take a photo, right? You would take, you put the bill up there, you take a photo of it, right? Then take it down. Then there was another machine. It was, uh, it made the, the negatives, right? So you would go and you'd

make the negatives with, with the bill. And we would always do three bills, right? Because these offsets,

they, they were, they were best with like eight and a half by 11 paper. And you would take the photos

a negative form and, you know, we put through the machine that makes the negative. And then we, that's when you do your serial numbers. We take this red tape and we, we'd 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, you, you, you'd mark out the numbers. And then you'd make the plate, you'd burn, you'd put the negative in the machine, it'd burn the

plate, then you'd 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, I really do. I love it. What's a piece of one? Yeah. And I still got a press, you know, and I sit there and I lay next door and remember this.

Yeah. But never let's, yeah, I'll show it to you one day. But so, yeah. So that, that's that process.

“But with me, what happened? And just to interrupt you real quick, how long do that process take?”

Well, for him, he could do it quick. So I had to learn because he'd never let me do some of the things. Like he'd never let me, like, take the photos. He didn't let me, you know, burn the plates. I would be there. I would move stuff for him or be cleaning. But there was a lot of things I didn't get to do. But because I got to see what he used, I replicated that part first. So when the bill came out, I went back and started thinking about all the things that he was doing.

You mean when the 1996 one 100 dollar bill came out when that came out? Because that bill came out and they said that it was unable to be duplicated. Is that right? Yeah. They said that all the security features. There was a watermark, a strip, a fluorescent on it. There were shifting ink. There was micro printing. You got the morning. This is a more ray. 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, just a scanner to scan it over to see if it's in a picture to somebody, the lines get wavy in his head. It's called a more ray, right? Interesting. Yeah. Now there's a lot of cool things on it. It says here are six

features. Yeah. Yeah. Watermark, a second faint image of Benjamin Franklin to the right of the

portrait visible when held to light embedded security thread of vertical strip embedded in the paper visible when held to light it reads USA 100. I remember when that came out, bro, UV reactive thread under ultraviolet light, the security thread glows red. So that's when you take the money to strip club and you throw it at the girl in the the line of glow, yellow, red or green. Got it. Whatever denomination it is, you wanted to grow. I would want it to glow red, right? Red was

“100. It was. Oh, I didn't want it to glow. What was green ones? Uh, no, I think that's 20s, I think.”

Okay, I'll do 20s. You can do 20s? Help the ladies out. Yeah. Ultraviolet light, the the security thread glows red. Color shifting ink, the 100 in the lower right front corner shifts from green to black as you tilt it. And now the now it's purple to gold. Got it. No 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 copy or struggle to reproduce accurately. Ordinary copy or it makes it to like wavy. Got it. But listen to this one, read that next line. The 1996 note does not have the blue 3D security ribbon or the color changing bell in the ink well. Those arrived on the redesign $100 note introduced later in 2015. You know why that bill was made? Because I'm sitting next to him. It's called visual physics. Right. You know it's so funny.

They let the bill out right when I got out of prison. Oh, I thought they were trying to rub it in my

“face. You didn't do it on purpose. Oh, yeah, they had to. Because 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. I'm the reading of the paper and Matt, you know, the new bill coming out, right? And then when I got out and I seen that purple line, I just went, I'm like, what's so what happened is they wrote a book about me called The Art of Maker Money. Like way back, it was like 2005. And so you and then they put me in a Rolling Stone magazine,

call me the best counterfitter ever. Really. Yeah, it was awesome. I mean, I mean, I went to prison for seven years. So it wasn't too awesome. But it was still cool that I got recorded, you know, and uh, but then everyone wanted to be like me. So you start having guys in California reading the book. Now granted, I only, there was 12 steps to the whole thing. I only gave them like five, right? And so

I did, for one, I would never give my recipe to anybody to how to kind of figure out. But when I was

doing the book, I was like, you know, if I give these five, even if they tried to do it, it would have come out like mine, right? Because I don't want a bunch of people make a 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 weird

it out, you know, because I get that happens all the time. All the time. Have you ever just even met up with somebody just to see what it was like, what's this person even talking about? No, no, no, if if somebody comes at me like that now, like I'm an artist, like I great life man, you know,

knowing me, right? Yeah. So like anyway, yeah, my neighborhood, we trunk, they would trunk people, not me. Get put a minute trunk. Yeah, put a minute trunk. But anyway, okay, so take me back to art,

“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, learn how to mix things. 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 links, right? How he'd weigh it, right? He'd put the ink on the little scale,

like drugs, right? Oh, so you had a certain amount of ink on the bill. Yeah, you had to, yeah, everything, even the bill had to weigh a gram, right? Because the drug deals like the way money. But nevertheless, so, but then, Pete, God, I want to gram. Yeah, so anyway, for like, you know, we did, I stayed around for about nine months, two 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, do you know what happened to him? No, no, I don't. I know, I just, he just never came back, you know? If you had a guess, what happened, and what do you think happened to him?

“Well, I hope you got away. Like, that's what I think. Oh, you think somebody might have been on”

them a bit. Oh, well, that's in that, in that world back then, especially, man, like people in my neighborhood disappeared. That's 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 it's one thing about counterfeiters that, that, that, that he did, that, so not only did he did I get to see what he did, but we talked a lot, right?

I mean, I was the coolest thing I think about the whole experience is just 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 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 and see

any fees around, you know? And you never heard from him again? No. No. And so the thing about

a counterfeiters, 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. As 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, it was the most liberating,

feeling you can have to have that ability to walk in with, with blank paper and then turn it into to suitcase cash. But, but you learned how to do it quietly. And so for him when he disappeared, in my mind, I'm thinking, you know, he had to go, right? The heat's on him, right? And, and he, and boom, he's gone, right? I didn't want to think he was dead, even though like that's a high,

that's a possibility too, because, you know, here's the thing, like whenever you're dealing with

large amounts of money, every, it's not like the movies, man. You get over 50,000, you get over 100,000, your life's in danger. Yeah, okay? They 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 in that world, you're literally printing like, 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? 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 18, yeah. Yeah, this is an ATM, man. So, so that was the thing that I had to watch

“for, went back on the date, you know, and that's scary. And that's why you have to be a ghost. That's”

why you have to be a ghost because you can't be predictable. You can't, I never, even now, nobody knows where I live, man. Like, I don't let wherever, I lay my head, man. It's top secret, top secret, even my gallery, you know, by appointment only, doors ain't open. Can't come in there. The best business ideas come from people who are passionate about what they're creating. People who had an idea and a drive to make something happen. You know, we're always waiting

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or dial-pound law. Pound-five-two-nine. This is a paid advertisement. So just to do a timeline recap,

so you grow up in this neighborhood in Chicago. It's a hectic environment. You get in a stuff on the streets. You guys are out there kind of bang and steel in this, steel in that, kind of petty crime stuff, maybe a little bit aggressive. You meet Pete. You kind of go under his wing as this sort of like not exactly an apprentice but you're there with them all the time. He's helper. Yeah. It's 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 laughed, 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 start robbing drug dealers. We dress up like cops. We had the cop cars. 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 like the counterfitting, right? Because it was like, I didn't feel like”

I was really hurting anyone. You know, I'm not stealing. I don't like to steal in the drug part. Well, like I, I see what it did. But, but we would, so we would start robbing them, right? And one of my dudes, he, like, he, my son, so my, my first son, his mom's a cop, right? So like, and yeah, right, that, that's a whole another lane, but we won't go down that one. But it, it, it, it, it, it, it allowed, you know, a lot of my guys, we had friends that were cops, so we could get uniforms,

we could get badges, you know, I always loved the cop car, and I had a nice one, right? I always had

a real nice one, like, and I loved it because I could move through, see, I'd wear glasses, you know, make my hair to the side, and I look like a cop, you know, but, but we started, we, you know, we'd start robbing the drug to this. The ones like out in the suburbs, and what basically, what would happen, these guys from the suburbs would come in, and they'd like to hang out at the clubs downtown, and they want to flash their money to the girls. We'd have girls that were working for us,

so we'd have girls in those clubs, and they'd be like, hey, this guy, he's doing this, this, and that, I'm like, okay, cool, and she wouldn't sleep with them, but she'd go home with them, become friends, hang out with them, and then we'd come in, right, and we'd be like, we'd have fess on guns, like legit, like dress like cops, yeah, but yeah, and we did that, and then it got dangerous, it did start getting dangerous, because we started getting stupid, like, you know,

“at first it was, and that's what we're trying to like a police ball or whatever, I mean,”

how stupid he got to get. Well, that's that, that's stupid, like, there we'll play a softball against the fire department or something, like what were you guys doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we were like robbing more dangerous elements, okay, got it, so it escalated. It escalated, like all crime, like all crime escalated, you go from, oh, we're gonna hit these white suburban kids from out there, they think they're cool, and now we get our balls so big, we're like, oh, we're gonna hit that

cat on a teen street that got 10 guns around them. Oh, yeah, right, so you go from, like, you know, it's just escalated. It escalation ladder. And then I got shot, I got shot my side, and then, 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 that little brief, you know, there was, I guess, for about three years, maybe I was just running hard on the street, you know, who shot you? Uh, Latin King, Latin King,

shot me, try to kill me. Yeah, yeah, and um, did he spare your life? No, he don't know. Yeah,

I walked through a basketball court, and I hear two guys behind me, I looked, 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 get 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, boom. I turned around, I took off, running, put my head between my legs. I could feel the buzz just, see, see, see, see, right, and uh, and then I got hit, and I felt to the ground, right as I was almost around the corner

from the projects, you know, I got hit and I stayed on, when I hit the ground, I was just going to stay on the ground and figure they thought they killed me and they take off, and but when I hit the ground, I look back, they were running up on me. They're going to try to don't shot me. Yeah, you know, and something, something real spiritual happened at that moment, like I felt something grabbed me from underneath my armpits, you know, and just kind of like lift me off the ground

and and I ran like five blocks to 31st in Austin, I was on 30 second with 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 had a newspaper and everything. I had a put a newspaper on me. Why didn't even know? I didn't even like feel it. It was weird because I went out to 31st and I sat down on the bus stop and I'm like feeling myself, you know, you're all like shaking stuff and then I, and then I stood back up and I could feel like something on my son when I grabbed it was just

all red and just blood. And then I told this to Chicago sometime guy say, man, I've been hit me and called ambulance. Yeah, yeah, so then he was delivering papers. Yeah, delivering papers. Yeah,

“yeah, it was like three in the morning. But after that, that's what I went to Texas, you know, I was like,”

my mom was like, man, you got to go, you know, I've already had at that point like six of my friends murdered, you know, I'm only like 18 or 19 years old. You know, it's a ship was getting hot down there, huh? Well, the south side was dangerous back there. And like I said, guns hit the street, man, it seemed like everyone had one. They were called Larsen's LLA RS. I mean, it's just for the type of gun. Yeah, like right around 90, I'd say like 92 93 man, everyone had these things. It was a 22 or 25

in a 380. They were, yeah, they were like that little, the little guns. They were real tiny like that, 22. Yeah, that's what we had. Oh, yeah, that's it. Those things flooded, flooded the streets, man. A little grocery gather. Yeah, they were a little tiny, man. But, yeah, 22, 25, 380. And you get them for 50 bucks. It's almost like they dumped them on the street. And then that's, and it just, so it went from, you know, fighting and bats and, you know, like the old school type to get 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 six of my friends during that time, you know, and so that I went to Texas, my mom, so let's get out of here. So I know going on to Texas.

“And when you get down to Texas, is that where you're kind of fitting 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 wrong crowd. I get into a little trouble. I go to, I go to prison for like two years. And, uh, in a Texas prison, those Texas prisons were rough too, man. Wow. Was it crazy? I thought I was in hell. But 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, yes, sex.

So whatever, yeah, anyway. And, um, and then we went to the, the first place I wanted to go

was to the bookstore, because I read a lot. I read thousands of books, right? And so I wanted to Bruce Lee book, and so she wanted to get me the Bruce Lee book. So we go to the bookstore, and she bought, we were buying the book, and she pays what a hundred. The new hundred. I hadn't seen you yet. All right, because I was in prison. And, and, and I'm watching, she pays it, and the lady just pulls out of pen and marks it, and then puts it in drawer. And I'm looking, I'm like, man, I'm all ready.

I'm thinking like, she didn't even look at the hundred, but she just used the marker. Yeah, and I, yeah, just used the marker. And that was entrusted fully. And I'm thinking to my mind, I'm like, man, if somebody figured this part out, man, you could have run, right? And that's where it started, right? I just got to beat the marker. Just got to beat the marker, right? That's the only thing on my mind. I just got to beat that because nobody's looking at it. And that's where the

quest began, you know? And I'm not even out of prison like a couple days in here, I am already thinking

“about the next crime. That's, that's what so, like, the criminal mind could be so, like,”

obsessive and it, in addictive, you know? Like, it really can't be. I mean, that's kind of an addiction. Oh, for sure, right? Especially print money. Like, the smell of ink even now gets me aroused, you know? Like, anyway, I mean, I might use different words, but it, it makes me like, get goose bumps, you know? Yeah, the smell of, like, old candy ink when you open it. So anyway, so, so we start, we start to

got a little bit blessed or luckier, star fell on my head or whatever, is, is Natalie was, was one of

“the first that was in the tech, right? When the computers were coming out, the internet was only”

in like the, the libraries and the universities, right? So, I would use the, the internet at that time, I might go into the library to, to look up 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. No, it was fascinating. Yeah, you're lying. No, it was, yeah, you could still go. I bet you could still probably look up how the, 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 a tech company to, you know, they were calling this before, you know, other countries took all the, you know, the calling jobs, right? And, and so, 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 it's slowly led there, right? Like, first,

I'm just trying to just figure it out, 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, wish, wish, we had a couple hundreds." Well, no, I didn't ease her into, I mean, a little bit of an easement, but she was ready to go to, 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

though printing presses, and then she's telling me about how she's, like, a technician for all the new stuff. And that's a good point. She's already smashing criminals. So it's like, what are we even talking about? Yeah, no, she said, yeah, so anyway, she, me and her, we start to come and form this thing. The first thing we had to do was figure out the paper, right? You can't, you know, I know how I could get the press. I'm looking up, you know, where to get presses,

we're calm places. So we could almost get everything we need from the ink to the printers.

“The printers were new, so they didn't have another, the Secret Service software in them, right?”

The Photoshop was new. All the stuff was new, so that's why credit cards scam shot through the roof. That's why checks shot through the roof. People were doing corporate checks. Because all this equipment that was coming out, there was no safeguards on it. Oh, it was awesome. It wasn't tested. They hadn't really thought that people were going to use this for this. Yeah, we were using the magnetic printers. You could print the magnetic checks. Like, that was like 96, 97,

probably looked at up. I bet your fraud went through the roof, right? Because you were able to use these

machines, you know, and we used them well. She started looking in how to, one of the first things

we did was change the Photoshop program where it wouldn't, like, if you scanned the 100, it had something in there where it went up. In 1996 financial institutions faced a dramatic surge in checking credit card fraud. That's what happened to me. I was part of it. I raised my hand. Yeah, that's 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,

it's one of the shit that out there. 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? It was the pen. And the paper is what beats the pen. Yeah, it was the pH in the paper, right? The, the, the

the paper is like a, it's a neutral, right? It's, there's no acid. So, so paper goes from like acidic levels. And so the money paper is like almost like a zero, right? It's really hard to get it. And 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, it's cyclical. If it's not neutral, then what happens? It turns black. Okay. Like a dark brown.

“Okay, got it. So that's what you see at the bank or something like something like,”

we go the store, you get all the stuff they do that. They do the, do the pen back. And if it's real, it'll turn like a light yellow, right? 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. We're going on

and on with this. Finally, I'm losing it. I'm thinking we're not going to be able to pull it off.

And so I'm getting a little upset with her. I'm, I'm arguing with her that we're not doing something. Right? So she starts screaming back at me. She's waving the yellow pages at me. You fuck her here. Fuck her running me and rag it like I was really running the girl hard to, right? And she slammed it down and she was nothing works. And she marked the yellow pages. And she just, she starts. She was, she was, I can't believe this can't be. And I'm like,

oh, what's going on? Because I still don't know. And she hit it again. And again,

art. Come here. And I go over there. What the fuck? It marked? I got nervous. When I seen it go yellow, I got so nervous because I didn't have to do not do it. Bro, up until this point, I even started trying to put acid on the paper. I'm almost

“burning the house down. Like a real acid. So I put acid in aluminum. Don't ever do that. Right?”

Yeah. Don't do it. Okay. Well, right? But I was trying to do all kinds of dumb things, right? So you're trying all different papers. I mean, all different papers. And I'll hear the whole time. It's the freaking yellow pages that is like one of the most widely used paper in the whole world. Like what's I have to different papers? Cotton's land ends. Different poundage, because the paper's weight, right? Like 20 pound, like school paper would probably be like a

26 pound, 32 pound, right? Your print papers, like 32. 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

to for the paper that I can mark, you know, mark right. But now this gave me, it solved a bunch of things, because I needed to solve the watermark. And I needed to solve the strip, right? And then the strip is fluorescent. So now I got to figure out how to make the strip fluorescent. But I got to put all these things in the paper with the yellow pages, because it was so thin, it allowed me to press two of them together. It was awesome, right? I'd print three on each side, three front, three backs. I'd have my

strips of my watermarks. I'd had 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 printed and made a lot, but every single piece was hand done. Wow, every piece. Everyone, I put that watermark in. Everyone, 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 art. It really was. And then then you press them. But when we found that when you know, when she did that, now we're looking for the paper. She would go to our our 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

“in for that of the phone book. Like the phone book paper, we get it on a butt really call it, right?”

So after they're done putting 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 there, man, with free paper, like, look at me, man. How are we? We loaded that shit up. And then we would cut it, and then we'd we'd prep it. We had to do a lot too, because so when we started to try to run it through the the ink jets, it couldn't match the colors, right? So at first, I wanted to just

run it off the ink jet, right? The printer, the printers, right? You know, the Nora printers. But you could get like the serial numbers really good. You could get the seals really good. You could get certain, maybe the back sometimes, the right ones, 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 shit, how good you were. I mean,

again, here we go. Now we got the paper, not it's time to do the files, right? But you think you be able to figure out the color, right? I mean, a color with a computer, you don't control it. It's a computer that uses the pantone, so it's a pantone color. I see, right? So it was it really exactly up to you. I mean, if you're printing, if you're using a ink jet, it's going to, it's only going to have so many values. You're going to 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, right? And money has a feel. It has a look, it has like a green, green color to it, right? Like and this, and even though it looks very simple, it's still, 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 the, to the 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 one or two

or three of the, the, the, the assets off, right? Because, because the, the, the face and the, and the weave around it, which is micro printing or the seals or the numbers, there's so many different things that you got to print. And if you try to print them all at once, it's going to be impossible to, to match all of them. And if you only get one or two off, you could tell, you could tell right away, right? Every one of them has to be perfect if you want to really fool the world with the money,

right? So how would you go about doing one and then doing the next one, like with a printer,

to, to bring in back pizza technology with the offset, because it allowed me to mix my own ink, got it, right? So I needed, when I needed to figure out what's how to color this paper. Right? And that was one of the hardest things. It's so, so, so, like, trippy when I think back on it, because on the scale, the amount of paint that I used for a run was like an I drop, 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? Let's just one run through, right? Like, so,

“so, not as you were saying, and how many times you have to run through to get a bill correct.”

So for the registry, so, so I'm going to give you some printing knowledge, right? So, so what made my bills, what allowed me to be able to run, keep running 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 it and have by 11, oh, there's that little gauge, it's like, okay, you move that to the side of it,

it's going to keep it right there. That's called registration, okay, keeps the paper straight, where it goes into the computer perfect. Same thing on and off set press, you have a registration, little bit harder to work with on that though, right? You've got to be really lined up, because that paper is flying through that thing, okay, right, whereas the printer's like, right, right, offset presses, right, it's just shooting it off, really fast. So that

registration, but I was able to get the registration pretty much perfect every time,

but, you know, just being patient with it, right, 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 ink jets couldn't print the background, it was impossible. And so that I said, okay, let me, let me get a printing press and let me go do the old way, you know, want to piece, yeah, want to piece, and then we'll use Natalie's way with the serial numbers in the seals,

“okay, it worked really good for the serial numbers, because I could change everything with one of them, right?”

In the seals, it matched really close, right, but with the, with the printing press, I wanted the color and the, in the weave and the face. I wanted that face to be perfect, yeah, because, you know, if you try to scan the bill, it would create this little wavey thing around the head and it just looked nasty, right, that was one of the security features. It's called a mary, and they didn't even list it up there, but that's one of them. But with the printing

press, I get to shoot my own, I get to take a picture of it, right, and so when I went back to that, that's when the bills went like from here to here, right, because now I'm really making it like the

feds are making it, just a very small, you know, small scale, right, and the first thing I would

do is I would, we would cut the paper and we'd have to put it on a carrier paper, which was a thicker paper, because that 18 pound was so skinny that it would jam the, the big press. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, if you're putting like, if you put in foam book paper through a printer, it's not going to make it. It would just just tear it up. So we'd have to put that on a piece of paper thicker, and then take the sides. Funny story, I had to hold a senior citizen living place,

putting paper on paper for me, like 50 boxes, man. Really? Yeah, we were doing the act. Well, we were about to do a big run, and so I asked my boy to Greek, I said, man, I got it. I got to get all this paper put on, man. He's like, I mean, he's like 50 boxes. He's like, dude, that's great. I said what, and he was a remodeling a senior citizen home. And he's like, well, guess what, dog he was the senior citizen home then I'm doing some work on. They play in the

game room all the time. Maybe the last time it goes there, you know, money on it. I'm like, not, not there ain't no money on it. I just need one piece of paper placed on another and take the two sides. So he asked the head of the, the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the senior citizen. And I had before you know it, I had like 20 old people doing it. We were doing a contest. I was paying on 50 bucks a day. And you're the, and they don't even know they know it's going to get

printed into money. Yeah, they were helping. And all the, it was awesome. But they, they had fun. They were led. They had fun for sure. They did, they did contest. We're sure they were laughing to the most. I would give a bonus. Well, who could do the most? All they would all come out, but they had no idea they were helping you kind of fit. Not at all. 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, the paper we'd run it through. We do the

background. Then we would do the, the, the, the, the, the weave in the face and then we would run it through the new technology and we would do the serial numbers and the seals and then that little hundred. Right. And then even that with the, with the shifting ink. This is what was the coolest thing. I, I think what, what, me creating this bill was how is able to take just your common things, right? Like take car paint and use it for the shifting ink. Right. It's car paint. Right. But I was able to alter it.

Well, it's not all. It was the same company that made it for the feds, right? I mean, it wasn't too smart of them, right? You know, how did you find out that they made it for the feds?

“Through their patent number. So, so I would also look up patent numbers. That's how I figured out the”

condom machine and the banks. So I was, I'm like a scientist for stuff. And I'm always trying to figure

things out in what's really nuts is the federal government, man, they give you like the patent office.

you could make a nuclear bomb if you wanted, I think, actually. It'll tell you everything about it. Well, has to. Right. So if you're trying to file patent, you got to do a patent search. Right. So I got the, my boy's mom worked at the bank and I had to get the patent number off the condom machine. And then I just went and put it in the patent and trademark office and it gave me the whole schematic, man, how it used the magnetic ink for the thread, how it did this, how counted. I mean,

I've literally defeated the bill by using their own knowledge. Yeah, it was pretty cool, you know, but wow, dude. Dude, I remember 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 it was scary. I mean, I don't get scared much, but it put a level of fear. I mean, like, what did I just do? You know, like I, you know, because I'm from the streets and I and I 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, the first thing they came to mind

“is be a secret to 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 you're so proud of that you, you want to go show your mama. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I didn't want to show my mama this one, right? Like, I didn't want to show nobody, man. And I, and, and I got nervous, I'm like, man, they're kill us, they'll kill us. I told, I actually told now they'll kill us for this, man. Like, this is their power. And we're, 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 until now you can make money. Yeah. Right. How long does it take to you to make like a decent amount of money? And then what do you decide you're going to start doing? And what do you start

spending it on? Well, again, crime escalates, right? So, you know, at first it was like,

we wanted to just, because I wanted to be secretive about it, we would just drive around the country and just spend it, right? We should shoot to the other side of the country, we'll just go, like,

“they get to the malls. You know, I mean, no, we did it. I probably hit every time the country. Like,”

I'm like, back road already, man. I have been on every back road. You were just cruising as having a good time. I got like too many miles underneath for sure. Absolutely. On the road drive. Yeah, back then we had that list, you know, so we looked at the town. In every town, all we've had like this little mall in it, you know? And that really got good boy. She could hit a mall, man, beyond the other side of it, spend, you know, almost 15,000 in like an hour and a half.

Yeah. And we'd be on the road, shoot, gone, you know? And we, sometimes, well, we don't, the most we ever did with three and one day, she was on the road. 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. People where she was going. Anyway, so like, yeah, we would hit the road, man. 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.

“All right. I got 150 shirts. Right. Yeah. Yeah. What are you going to do? You have yet a lot of”

pairs of shoes. What do you even do? Yeah. So then we started getting things for like, our family and friends and stuff like that. And where people notice and they get money for

sure. Yeah. But the people, you know, the thing is, as I was always looked at as a hustler, got it.

Right. So whether it was Robin drug dealers or like, I mean, we even hit trucks a little bit. You know, our boys, the teamster, we'd get shit off the doxion all the time. One time I had like 250,000 condoms. Like, every one in Chicago was wearing one of the condoms. How's it? Yeah. Oh, we robbed the truck? Yeah. Got it. The trucks. Yeah. The trucks of Chicago. That was another little hustle we had. You know, I had big razors. I had a man. I've had everything, you know. But anyway,

back to the money. Yeah. How are you spending it? So we started buying stuff for like our families and friends, you know. But then that, that even kind of got to the point where like people started expecting things. Yeah. Like, you know, like you'd come in a town and like, they were like, always looking what's what's it 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, tell Natalie, let's just get diapers, baby clothes, baby shoes, baby toys. Let's go drop them off. And then we'll just drop them off. And that was like, that was like one of the coolest times in my life. That's the most fulfilling. They say I,

they say I did it by 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, because I just do, because it wasn't even just the Salvation Army, but even families, like, you know, one of Natalie's friends down in Houston was struggling, man. And we just showed up at Christmas and just bam, bless their kids with, with, with, with, we're brand and

I'd go to church, man. Like, I was, I was so sick with it. I would take 10% out. I'd go to church

on Sunday. We hit, we hit the malls, Friday and Saturday. And I go church and give them 10% and walk out. You know, like, I just love doing things like that. You know? So you were using some of the kind of money to go tied. You'd give 10% out of the money. You've got to give God the money. He's a biggest gangster ever, man. You know, for the store. God give them his, man. Well, you know, what that's the thing about life, right? Like, there's, there's, I call it the flow, right? Like,

when you, when you, when you, when you give, man, it, you're, what you're doing is you're opening yourself up, man, for a lot of good. Yeah. A lot of good. You know, and I learn 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 a hot water for two years, we didn't have no hot water. You know, codec gets a Chicago, you know, you're taking a cold shower, you know, while it's 30 degrees out.

Yeah. Like, that shit was rough, you know? But even in that, you found some happiness, man, right? And it's all about the mind, the thought, man, where, where you're, where you're going to be, you know? And so for me helping these kids, giving back, doing that was like, I say, it's one of the coolest times, because even though there was, my mom was mentally ill, you know, my dad was gone, my brother was, you know, I lost my brother to mental illness. He was no longer with us. You know,

I lost 10 years ago. 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? But 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? Did you try to put any money in the bank? No, no, I mean, my bank was as far as preserve. Just bury in it? Yeah, I'd bury it, man. I'd say I'd stuff it in PVC pipes. Well, first I put it in plastic seal it, and put, because

PVC doesn't disintegrate, you know, and stuff it in there and then go bury it. I, I still got stuff buried out there. I just don't know where it's at. We go look sometimes here, come up there. Hypothetically. How about at least three there still buried somewhere over there? I just lost the map.

Three million, you think? Oh, no, I don't know about that. I'd always do like $100,000

of tubes, you know, like just a little ones, you know, put maybe two or three or four tubes and all five tubes, you know? But yeah, I did lose some out there, but I really don't know where it's at, and I don't want to find it. Just, that's just, I just need to say that. Did you ever give counterfeit money to people that you knew? Oh, not like purposely, right? You know, like, I like to play with it. One of my favorite things back then, you know,

the bombs on the street that we have the little signs will work for food, right? I always give them hundred. Yeah. Yeah, because, you know, they'll go spend it, and they were good. I knew that they wouldn't get caught with it, right? And they'd go spend it in a place that I probably would never have gone, right? You know, so like, if it did pop up, hey, you know, what's going on? What happens to places that end up with counterfeit money? Like, what happens to say, like, you go to like a

bodega or gas station, so in place, you pass a hundred dollar bail on them. What happens to this?

“So here's the thing. So, like corporate stuff back then, they could just write it off, right?”

The bank had snatch it, they'd have to write it off as a loss, right? We'd always try to stay away

from like boat, you know? I don't want to go hit a mama pop with a bogus hundred, you know, because I don't want it to pop up on them in their bank, and then they get it. So it was always like, I always try to stay towards the corporation stuff, you don't like the wall greens, the wall marks, okay? You know, I would go to the corner store and spend it on, on old lady, you know? Got it, yeah. But, but the corporations, I, you know, now, I mean, I think they changed it to where

now they do make them responsible, but back then, because it wasn't so like aggressive, the laws were a little bit lighter. What do you mean it wasn't so aggressive? Well, there wasn't the counterfeiting, it wasn't like a really big crime, like there's drug dealers in every city, thousands of them, right? There might be one or two counterfeiters in a city, right? Like the crime was, especially when the new bill did come out, it did defeat a lot of things,

you know, a lot of 1996 won a hundred dollars bill. It put a lot of people out of business, you know, like it did, yeah. And, you know, and still does, I mean, I don't think really this better, a huge, you know, impact a counterfeiter since then, especially with the new bill that no bill is almost impossible to do. Yeah. It would cost too much money to try to even replicate it. Is that true? Yeah. Yeah. That new features have been added. Well, the visual physics is that

purple strip. So, like I said, yeah, you could 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 it's a purple strip that goes on the middle. Okay.

nano shards of glass that they embed and, and it, and it, it's called visual physics. It's actually

“really fascinating. Do they even tell you it's called visual physics and that thing? No, not at all.”

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's a scientist created. And the reason they didn't release the bill at the time was because the, the bills were defected, so that, that printing technology wasn't perfected.

And they were trying to use it too soon. So if you take 100 if we had one and you folded it right

on that, it would rip from that really easy. Really easy. Right. And so they didn't release it for a while. The ribbon would rip you, 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 at, yeah, Bell in the Inkwell color shifting 100, a raised, intaglio printing.

genuine bills feel slightly rough, particularly across Franklin's portrait and certain printed areas. You want a lapel? You can feel a lapel? Or you can? Yeah, when you rub your thumb across the lapel, you'll can feel it. That, a famous director who used to, that, a famous director who

“used to pass money. I think it was from that movie. Living Diane Los Angeles, you look at it.”

Money been will you? Well, living Diane LA. Yeah. It's one of the greatest movies ever.

Living Diane LA. Yeah, I love it. It's only counterfeit money. Oh, yeah, this is the guy right here. William, yeah, freaking. Let's, let's just 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. How did you pass to this great 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 used to pass this money, used to go around and spend it. And they had it on the, the money they got. I believe it was from the set of, uh, a living Diane LA. I'd like to get some of that. Yeah. I collect money. I'd love to get my answer. I bet you do. I was actually doing a

“painting of living Diane LA in my gallery in on Mel. So I'm an artist now, right? I told you,”

but I had, I had a, I had a space on Mel. Rose and La Sienga. And I was doing, uh, a living dye in LA picture, right? I was doing the, like, the poster. Then it came up, but I, I made it with money. And I mean, I made it really bad as it was really big. And on Halloween night, I, I didn't go in because I want to take the kids trick of 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 had to go trick of treating.

But I was doing to live in Dino. And I got bull, I got bull holes in my window. What the hell is this, man? But then predict the future, predict like I'm really good. Like Theo goes to heaven. Paint that. Yeah. Um, but yeah. So we, let's go back and do 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, I burned money if it was, if it wouldn't come out, right? You know, I'd get

rid of it immediately. Because it was too risky to pass, try and pass. Yeah. Yeah. And just didn't want it floating around, you know. And like, what's the escalation ladder like once that once you start to make money, you're buying things, you're typing, 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 don't me and Natalie are having the greatest time in our life, right? But

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 don't, yeah, absolutely not, right? But I hadn't been in Chicago in like nine years. So when I went to Texas, I had 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 when I know that, you know, I know I'm from an organized crime neighborhood, you know, something and 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? To get pulled over, 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 sometime? Oh, God, 30,000, 40,000, like it's scary. You have so much, you know. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, even recent, you know, anyway, yeah. So yeah, the money, you have a lot of it gets you nervous. And so I wanted to

live a little bit easier life with it, right? So that's what happens with crime, no, that escalates,

a lot of things, I like play basketball, love basketball. So I was on different teams and we would go

“different neighborhoods. And whereas the Chicago could be a little racy at times, you know, sports always”

healed that, you know, so I could go, I could go to 47th and Indiana, man, and go hoop and then boys love me over there, right? Well, I'd go to Pilsman, and I'd hoop with the me goes over there. I mean, I was able to go in all over the city because basketball got it. And, and I would, you know, I created friendships in all the different areas, man, you know, you're carrying in village. And even now, like I go anywhere. My proud only white dude, they go on her third and walls, you know,

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 go over there with me. I mean, I would leave quick, but I would go. But I'm seeing like, I can move through city because I've 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 shout at that time a little bit like did you get it? Not at that time. Not at that time. At that time, I just wanted

“to sell large chunks of it, right? I wanted to sell 100,000 in a time for 30, right? Or 200,”

I never really wanted to go too high with the number. That's high. Uh, 100,000 was a good number,

right? 100 for 30, you could walk away from that one, right? You start getting into the bigger numbers, you know, I've had people say, I want a million. I had one guy Jordanian dude one and five million, right? Did you consider it? Uh, I did, but I did it, right? Like, I didn't do it, you know, I considered it, you know, you actually showed up. I told me it was full of shit. I'm like, you ain't got that type cash. And he showed up, he showed up, popped his trunk, man. And you know,

who? He had three in the grand? Well, that was five million, so he had like one point five. It was, yeah, it was a lot of money. He had a suitcase of money. Look at a first time I rose Royce to who in a rose Royce. Well, he actually owned a, he owned a, he came pull up in an enemy lock for with that shit. I, he owned the exotic car rental company Chicago years ago. Oh, he's, he's cousin who I was going through actually killed himself on the road in Vegas. There's actually

a video of it. Oh, yeah, he got real weird because they were taking the money to Vegas. His, his, his, his, um, his, um, his, stepmom or something, owned a casino in Vegas, and they were running the money through their. And they would win that money. Oh, and my money. Yeah, it was not spend, right? It was crazy. And then I guess Muhammad, yeah, that's, that was a real wild. Yeah, that sounds like a bad idea. It was a bad idea. Yeah, but that sounds exciting, though. Well, for for for for me, you know, so how much were

you keeping at the house then? Yeah, my, my, I, I, I, so one of my dudes, um, Irish cat from south side, his dad was a big real real real estate guy. He had like, man, he probably had, gosh, he probably had like 60 buildings on the south side. Mm. Big apartment buildings. He had like, you know, 20, 30 apartments and I'm like, yeah, cat was well off. He had a lot of apartment buildings, man. And when he died, my friend got them all. All right. So my buddy inherited like 40 apartment buildings. You know,

and then I sleep everywhere. Why had a department said one time, man? Yeah, yeah, I had something more weird. Yeah, yeah, how many? About eight in one time eight apartments. Yeah, about eight. And so you

would keep money in them? Well, I keep, I keep equipment. And so I never did everything in the,

oh, it's the same place. Right. Like I would print the money on the offset in one area and then I 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. I'm gone. I wouldn't even sit in here if I got caught with that. 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 have money stashed over here and then how did things start to get hot? Just ego, you know, living a life, you know, not the money's common. Yeah, buying extra sandwiches. You go into the clubs, coars, hats, cocaine's blowing in there. You know, I mean, just the whole night. You started popping up. Oh, man, I was an animal. I was a savage. I didn't know what that shit. Yeah, if I can make it sound like you're fucking, yeah, I am now a grown old man, dad.

No, but you did it sound like in there. Ty thing you guys are just popping in the different malls, there's freaking blessings, synobons in shit. And now you'll be here telling me all how getting it going. I was a dirty Christian as I called. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would pray in, you know, anyway, man. Yeah, I think who who turned that shot a little blue from Transformers, the dirty Christian, the dirty Christian, the dirty Christian, the leading guy, but still still saying, no, you know,

“well, that's what happened, man. Just what, when you, well, one of my boys, he saw I got a really”

badass crew of cats in Chicago. Okay, still do. My dude owned a drink. He was one of the owners of the drink, which was a real fames club in Chicago. Then he had one of the dope is private clubs in

crew of guys. We were like, we were serious. We were badass. You guys were all doing it. Yeah, yeah, dude, I will say this. Some of the dudes that I know that get after the most are from Chicago. Oh, yeah, no, we, we know how to have a good time. Yeah. I mean, it's like, it's impressive. And then

they're always like at some point in the evening or week, and they're always like, oh, if you

tried this, like, sausage from it, it's always like some dudes grilling up some of some homeless Franks or whatever, it's fucking awesome. Some of my dude, Tommy, he, he don't even use his stove. Yeah, and yeah, it's grilling. We got one of our guys, one of our guys, Krista, he's rushing cat, man. He likes to cook indoors, man. And Tommy tries to draw him out the window. He's like, only outside into summer, man. No cooking inside. You know, lyrics that grill is

going on, stop. But yeah, no, I just had a good group of guys, but we were animals were savages. Yeah, well, I'll get an accurate. Yeah, we were doing limos. We were doing just dumb shit, man. Limos are for f***ing stuff. Yeah, well, back then it was kind of cool. Yeah, yeah, no. Well, as you get in, and then all, you got to go all the way, and you got to come all the way out.

“Now, now we do the suburban. So those are the best way. Yeah, it's suburban. But dude, when I'm like,”

sometimes limos, I 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 like f***ing. I just stay out the f***ing song. No, I don't stay in there. Yeah, just stay in there, because it's too long. It's like, it's like a hallway. It was too far to get to the door dude. Yeah, but just things start to get not a hand, man. You don't, you know, you're drinking going out, you're just making mistakes, not it.

With me, you know, my, and then, and then, when I got caught, it was just kind of just freak, right?

'Cause 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, you're meeting people, you're doing more, and you're doing more, and you're doing more, and you put yourself in, and more danger, the more you do, right? And so I actually ended up at the house of Blue Tiger, you know, how this, the whole thing went down, I was at the house of Blue's house meeting somebody. Dude, I've been to that house of Blue's. It's right over there. It's across the river from the Chicago theater.

Yeah, it was awesome back in the day. Was there a band plan? Yeah, no, that was a great night. I mean, we had, so we went, we were actually staying in the hotel, because I had like a little, I had like where I lived, was in Marshall, Illinois, was like three hours or two. I forgot how

south it was on Highway 1, but so like I told you, I'm real weird about where I lean my head at,

and so I, I really ever was in the city, right? Where I laid my head was just the outside of the city, you know, we said at that tall hotel right there by the river. Well, you had the round things, you know, where the round one was, yeah, it went, that's at the corn house. Yeah, it's the corn house, that's when you're saying it, let's go, dude, you want to go, let's go. Anyway, I got the cops, the cops kicked my door and they were kickers and, no, okay, well they kicked mine in and uh,

“what guns? You should've left the sign out there. Ah, no, they tricked me. Did they really?”

Well, what happened is we were at, we were done at the uh, so I'm coming in. I'm selling a hundred grand to one of my dudes. He had me meet, you know, we were going to stay at the house to blue, so I had to meet and set the bar. So I get in and uh, and he's just, he shows up, he's like, dude, I can't really stay, because I got family from, he was a rush at one of my rush friends and he had family come in, they were doing a wedding or something. And he's like,

uh, he was, why don't you come back to my house and we'll party with all my family and then we'll do the deal tomorrow. I was like, all right, cool, let's do it, so I went and we had a great time, but the bartender heard us say party and I guess he was a, a stitch for, you know, some, some dicks downtown, you know, and, and so he called his little, his little, you know, contact and so when me and in my, my, my wife's sister, because I had my wife's sister, she wanted to see the

city and I brought her up and, you know, it was all that, and um, 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 sweets you got those. So the phone rings, like, so we get, we get into the room like two 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 a problem. You got the 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 you have cash in there with you?”

Yeah, I had like 100, 100,000. I had it, I had it in the closet in between the towels. As I put the phone down, I hear the door hitting, and I, and I scream out, don't open the door, right?

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 they think it was? They thought I was selling drugs. So, the bar guy said party. Yeah, party. So it 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. They handcuffed me, they handcuffed my, my wife's sister. She's crying. She's only like 16 years old. But she's scared. She's scared, right? She's, because we were supposed, I was going to take her some museums and it's going to be a great little, like, really nice day. Gosh, she's in cuffs, right? And I'm thinking, oh my God, what is going on? And did 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 Natalie said, man, why'd you take my sister, which is she wants to see the museums and all that? And I'm like, whatever, I bring her and what happens? So, so down here, I am, we're both handcuffed. And she's looking at me, like, not one thing I would say about her. She didn't say nothing, and she was sorry. Yeah, she just stayed there. She was crying a little bit. Then she kinda said, just calm down. It's going to be all right.

She listened to me. Anyway, they're searching the room looking for the cocaine. They find the money in the closet. They got the money, it's a brick money, you know. They said, listen, you're going to go through with the deal. You're going, you're going to call, you're going to contact, and you're going to go through with this deal. And you're going to have him come here and bring the cocaine here. I said, what are you talking about, man?

“Well, that's what you have this money. I'm like, man, you guys are, I ain't doing nothing.”

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

No. He worked at a bank like a toddler before he became a cop. So he wasn't seeing no bread and blue fibers in there. So I didn't have the bread and blue fibers in this, and I'm later ended up putting them in after this because this happened. Yeah. But he didn't cool ramps. Yeah. He didn't have no, he didn't see the bread and blue firehead. Everything else had the watermark had the strip. He's like, man, I don't know what to think about this stuff. It was 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 any way. So they took me and they took her in and then the secret service came.”

A woman's secret service. And she said, oh, why are you in jail? Yeah, they took a town town, right? And what about the kid they let her go? No, hell no, they had her, they put her in a cell too. But the secret service showed up. Right. And you know, she's straightening me, tell me, we know this. We know that. We've been looking, she got 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. Yeah, she's trying, yeah, she's trying it. She wants to know where my stuff is, where my paper's at, where this is at. She's probably trying to meet someone, too, which he's who knows. Yeah, well, who knows with them, right? Because they're so dirt, you know, he don't know.

Yeah, you never know. But one thing she was doing was threatening me with

my wife's sister. All right. She's like, you're going to tell me what I want. She's going to face some charges and face some charges. And I'm like, man, what am I going to do? I did because I had to get my wife's sister out on a good note. Back then, you had like those burn phones. Everyone, you know, you could get them at Walmart, right? A little $20 with the card. Remember, schedule scratched the card off with 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 surveillance anti surveillance shit. I had bug detectors. I had like all kinds of waxed out stuff. And like, you know, just really had, I could find hidden cameras and had this little thing anyway. I was real big into stuff like that. And again, safety, right? Because

here, you know, I did, I, 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. All right, you don't, I don't want her to go down to, you know, because then it takes my, my axis away, right? You all know that I'm 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, Pharaoh said that your mom or her mom is with her sister right now at

your house, but she don't know where the house is. And there's no way she could have known, because it was in Marshall, Illinois, man. They flew into Indianapolis. I was in the cornfield, man, like for real, right? And they said, so we want you to call her, right? So I call Natalie and I said, hey, listen, I'm here in Chicago. I'm not in a good position. You know, they got your sister

you know, this is a serious situation. It looks like I'm going to be going a little away for a while.

What was awesome? She went right into, she went right into her movement and she got rid of everything. Everything. Like, I mean, I don't even know how she did her. My mom had to help her, right? But like, by the time they got there, Natalie strung him along, right? She kept stringing him 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 said, it's my money, my thing, right? And my lawyer comes and he's telling him, he's telling me the police report, right? And he reads it off. He says, hey, he was, you know,

“they see weed on the, they saw weed on the table, right? And that's why they came in, right?”

That they seen it and boom, that was their probable cause. I said, well, that's impossible,

man, because the the hallway, they'd have to be Superman. They'd have to have X-ray vision to see the weed, right? And because there was a table around the corner. So he had someone go take pictures and then brought in the, um, brought in the security person that actually came with the cops and threatened to put him in jail if he lied. So he told the truth said that there was no, they didn't see no weed. And then he had the pictures. And so when I went back to court three weeks

later, my attorney read off the, put the, to cop on the stand and read off the report, police report. Yeah, we seen weed on the table and that gave us the probable cause. And it was illegal. It was all legal. He said, he goes, you know, officer, he goes, you're saying that you were able to see it. He goes,

why have photos here with the data from the manager of the hotel that says no furniture was moved.

And there's no way you could have seen a table, right? The way the prosecutor, all right? They stopped the hearing, fucking judges missed it and I walked right out. Not, walked right out. You were free? I was free. Yeah, I couldn't believe it. I remember I called, I called, she was way back to Texas because she was from Texas with their mom. I remember calling her, I'm like, and she goes, where are you at? How do you call me with the, you know, because usually

it's like, you got a call from a correctional facility, right? Yeah. There's none of that shit. It's just

“be corner. And I said, man, they let me out today. I just beat my case. She's like, what?”

And so then I ended up going there and then, you know, didn't you kept doing it? Well, no, I stopped. Then I went through, I went into like a real bad depression and shit, man. Just, I couldn't, because now I got sick for service. Don't who I am, you know, and like, and then I felt like I was a lot. If I did, they knew it was kind of hip, something like that. Oh, yeah, but they had to destroy it. They had to throw the money away, you know? And do you have any money hidden anymore at that time?

I mean, I had money to stashed here and I had, but I was scared to go it. I was, I was like, I felt like the trees were watching, man. You know, like it was like, you know, in the secret service, you don't really know what they know. Right. Right. Like you, they got secret weapons in shit, man. They could see underneath. Yeah, their name starts with 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. It was an arm wrestle movie with, so that's the long over the top of the time. Yeah. And it was about a dad and a kid, man. And I just was missing my pops over the top of the game

“movie now, I think. Yeah, is it? 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 wrestle movie. Yeah, I was going over the bottom, I think. Over the bottom. No, we don't want to know bottoms. That's the one I'm thinking now. We don't want to know bottoms. Yeah, this will be I remember. Pressure. Yeah, over the top, man, especially it was awesome. By that. So anyway, I ended up trying to find my pops. I went, I went on, started looking for art. The jibwebs drew your one pops up in, uh,

uh, a lot of your past started catching up with you then, probably. Well, now everything's caveening, right? You know, like, my whole world is like, I can't, I don't want to go near my presses. I don't want to go to the apartments. I don't want to go here. I don't want to drive that car. I don't, you know, like, I'm in a bad depression, man. Like, I don't, I just don't want to move. So you find out where your dad lives. Yeah. So I ended up watching this movie. Now I got this

thing when by so I find out, uh, there's a peel box in it. What was it? Um, it was east of Anchorage. Chickaloon. Chickaloon Alaska. Right. Way the hell up there, man, right? He got far away from you guys. That's crazy. Yeah. Well, it was the lady he took off with, right? She, she, she, she didn't want him to be around his kids. So she made sure she took him as a far away from us as she could, you know? That's crazy. Yeah. It was terrible. But so I find them. And I, I write letter, you know, I say,

man, if this is art Williams boom from Chicago, this is your son, man. Here's my phone number, and I had to burn out phone. And it took about three weeks. He called me. And then when he called me, I was like, you know, I said, hey, you know, I didn't tell him what was going on. I, I just say, man, I like to see him. You know, he said, we come up here. So before the 911, so you know,

You know, so I ended up sneaking off to Seattle. And then I flew out of Seattle to Anchorage.

And I brought Natalie with me. And I, I mean, my dad picked us up with the that chick he took off. And I could just see the, the, the dark dishonor face that I was showing up, you know? Yeah. And he, I remember driving out to his house and just kind of tripping that I was in Alaska.

“Like I'm a straight south side city boy, man. And now I'm in a fucking wilderness, you know?”

And that shit's wilderness out there, you know? Yeah, I thought I heard. Oh, yeah, it's beautiful, though, man. Nothing like it. But like when we, we got to his house. He had another separate, like a little guest house. And then he had like a little trailer over here, you know? And so we went into this guest house. And, and Natalie went out to the trailer, actually. And then in his wife went into their house. And me and my pops just stayed up for like two days, man.

Smoking that Alaska purple, you know, because he, he had the, you know, that purple bud before

people knew it was purple, you know? Oh, he always bent off that iceberg. Yeah, 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 up running money, right, paper, you know? And at that time, so when, 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 two days just catching up and I was telling about everything.

I opened up about what I did. I had some of it on me. I showed them some of it. You break them 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 called Goldfeaver, right? Like when people, when people, when I was showed, that's reason I didn't show too many people because when you showed

“somebody the bills, and even, and like, even my canvas ones now people see, can we put it on paper?”

Right? Because I print on canvas and I paint over it. Right. But even those bills, I've had people

see, man, that looks good. And it's on canvas. It's not even on paper. So when you would show someone the real bill, they get wet, the mouthpiece, they're, their brain gets wet, everything gets wet, you know? Like, yeah, they just, it's, I called Goldfeaver 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 in Alaska. Yeah. Well, he, well, it got wet, got nuts. I mean, he, so he 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 grown bud in, like, truck tractor trailers, they bury him underground, and didn't they, he would tap into the, the power line on the side of the highway. Like, he had some crazy shit going on too. Yeah, y'all are wild. Yeah, no, he was on one. Like, I was like, man, he's just scared to get electrocuted. He's like, I mean, he was actually tapping into the, to the power line.

Yeah. And they were, and then they had this special material that the, the heat's cooked. The airplanes couldn't look through. Like, they were awesome. This is early in the game, you know? And, um, and so we, we were bonded by showing each other what we were doing. Yeah, I'll see you mine. Yeah, I'll see you. Yeah, I'll see you. Yeah, I'll see you. Yeah, I'll see you. Yeah, I'm doing the money,

“you're doing the weeds. I'll see you. My crown me show me. Yeah, that's how we reunited, man. Like, the”

crime things, you know? And, uh, and it was awesome. Man, my dad was cool. Man, it was funny. Man, it was, it was, it 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 have known this cat. You know, like I wish I would have been around him more, you know? Yeah, he probably, you guys probably would have had a good time.

Good time. Yeah, you know, but, so anyway, he started, um, he started asking me if I, if he could make, if I could make more, right? And, and, and I was like, man, yeah, of course, and then, and then it's my dad's all going to make them proud, you know? And so, but I came clean with them. 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 said, 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 they don't know what'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 playing it on doing it? Uh, there was a thought, because I knew I couldn't use the same recipe, you know, were you planning on making more of it? 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, I just wanted my pops. I didn't want to make no money, you know? Damn, it's kind of crazy then that he asked you. Yeah, well, he's crying, he's a crime crime guy and, you know, and then we're bragging about it. Hey, look, this, you know, right, so then maybe he thinks my son thinks it's cool too. Yeah, you know, and then 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 what you're at. All right, fuck him. Let's go. Let's go. Right. So, so I told him I said, listen, I'm going to do this.

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 them. And so I said, I said here, listen, I'm going to leave this,”

let's leave most of it here and let's fly in the 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. All right. And I'm spending a little counterfeit cash and you know, yeah, enjoy. Yeah, go to Chicago, get the material ship it back, and we did. We, you know, he, so he left the stuff with his wife, though, and she hated me. And so she started spending

in Alaska, giving it to her friends, telling her friends who made it, telling it was fake, you know, I am moose meat and shit. Just yeah, boost speed probably. Yeah, yeah, for her hat's fish, for fish, fish made out of fur. But they were spending it. And I had specifically told him, you can't, I'd spend this here in Alaska, you can't, you know, because it's fucking way up here, man. You know, you're done. At least in the lower 48, you know, you moved 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, my sister, my dad, they get into it. My sister is, is forgiving as I am. She's kind of like, man, but that's, yeah, 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 the caddy left us, you know? Yeah. And, uh, and so I didn't go back with him. I shipped every, all the stuff, and I said,

I told him I had to go to Texas to get one thing, uh, and while he fly back, and then I'll come, and I ended up leaving that Lee in the baby up there, and she was pregnant, right, with, with,

with, in Alaska, in Alaska, okay? And so when I finally called her, I went back to Texas,

she goes, why, why aren'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 then I flew back to Anchorage, but I stayed with a nieces daughter in Anchorage when he, when he was out there. And, um, when it's so, so, so weird how things happened and how fast, but I was, I was getting a bad feeling. I don't know

it was weird, like I just wanted to get out of there. So I'm telling Natalie, I'm like, hey, we're leaving,

“we're out here. And, and, oh, that's what it was. When, when, when I went to visit him,”

he took me, uh, he took me to this biker party. His house angels, right? He, he was real cool friends, but one of the big dogs up there. And, uh, and we went to this crazy ass, like gathering, and he introduced me to the dude, and then he, then he told the dude that I was the one that made the money, and I looked at him, like, what are you telling this cat that I don't know that I'm making money, man? I got pissed with them, man, real bad. That's pretty shitty. Yeah, it was terrible,

man. He started showing me colors of reason why he left. You know, there was a reason he left, because he wasn't that, that, that, that cool, lafity dude, there was something wrong, you know, you know, and I'm seeing it, right? And so after that happened, when I got back to, to the house, I told A pack up or leaving, we're getting out of here. And, uh, and so then I ended up flying to Houston, and one of my dudes picked up at the secret service was waiting for me in Dallas. So I'm

but knows to me, as I'm wanting to get out of Anchorage because I know how he is, and Neese is working with the, the secret service the whole time. His wife, his wife. Oh, yeah, so they're getting ready to, why? Why would she do that? She just didn't want me around. She didn't want her, 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 him out of here, you know? So once you had Houston, yeah, once I hit Houston,

my boy drives me up to Dallas to where Dallas, my 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 fellow in possession, and uh, and then she, she was the, the confidential informant, but when she went to court, she, she pleaded insanity, and they, oh, this is a woman,

it was crazy, right? She pleads insanity. I get three years. My dad gets six years, or no, he got four and a half years, and then she pleads insanity, and the judge takes her to trial and gives her six. Wow. She gets six years. Because she was lying about it. Because she was lying about it.

I got less than everyone. It was wild. On the day I get out, at least you finally knew where your

dad was before an half years, you know? Yeah, he was in Sheridan federal correctional, but yeah. But anyway, well, sads part, those, the day I got out of prison, he died. No. Yeah, had a heart attack that

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 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, I, 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 to get your freedom back, right? And you walk out the door and then you get handed, you know,

“a phone and they tell your dad's dad. And so you go from one hide 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 13 year old, whose mom's a cop. And she's calling me pissed off because he's putting $20 bills at her house off her little printer. Probably just trying to relate to his dad. Exactly, right? Because I just got a prison. So now I got this kid, you know, that I'm taking

care of because she don't want them 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, for what I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You weren't arrested at the same time. No, we weren't arrested at the same time. So, so he's 13 for a, I am. Yeah, so it's crazy. Dr. 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 set the picture to your dude with my son, Rapid, and prison. There it is right there.

Oh, he wraps. Yeah, he wraps. He's a badass rapper. Yeah, now this is a crazy situation because in prison, it's real racing, you know. Yeah. And I would imagine. American greed did a show on me. American greed. Yeah, they did. Yeah, absolutely 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, Rapid, and they do shows in prison like on on the holidays.

“Yeah. You know, that's how Johnny Cash came in there in jam. 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, brothers would do stuff on. Yeah, there's like, I think it's like a red, white and black, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like that, right? Yeah. And so they came to him and they stayed, man, we heard you on TV, like, right? Because we were like prison celebrities in there, right? Yeah. Because we were on TV,

then I was trying to print money. Yeah, we were pretty, yeah, we were like to close cats. I mean, she guys were in prison together. Yeah, we were selling together. Yeah, we were selling together. Yeah. What are you selling? Yeah. So you were your son, we're the head, we're a little boy 18 years old, it was nuts. Okay. Yeah, well, I tell you, there was you and him were sell mates for going in jail for counterfitting together. Yeah, so when I, so after my dad died and I get out, man,

long story short, my son and me, we're not really getting along, right? He's being tough kid. His mom can't take care of him because she's a cop, she can't have that shit in her house. And uh, and we connect through music, you know, like he was real good musician, you know, he looked, and he was only like at that time, like 13. And so I knew Johnny K who, who, uh, he had group sounds and he did like disturbed fallout boys, those guys came out of Chicago. It was his studio,

and that was my dude. Okay, he's a producer, big producer. Good time. You know, he did disturbed fallout boys. 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 is at this bad as studio, you know, and he's, and he's, and he's, they're letting them wrap it there and make beats in there and just do some really cool shit. And, 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 M&M, got it, right? And uh, and so he made some songs, he made four songs, and then started getting expensive. My boy was like, hey, look, let's keep it going, but you, you got to throw me a little something, right? Because

“it's not like now where you can have a home studio, you know, you got big boards. And so that's what”

brought me back into print. And because I was like, okay, you know what, I'm gonna make as much money as I, I'm gonna do one big blast, and I'm gonna help my son make it, you know, and uh, yes, there's artists now that I think their parents are helping to make it, I think. Oh, no, yeah, why knew a lot of people plus I was, you know, so 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 work in myself anyway. So you're ready to travel when we're go at it. I was ready, I was like, let's do it, you know, and then I got my work. You can vent

him or he convinced you. I 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 month, you were gonna make some money anyway. Yeah, yeah, I was already at that point, but this was a perfect reason to do it, because we need a money for his career. Yeah, for his career. Sure. Yeah, so anyway, now, but at this point, man, all the technologies changed. They had scrapped all the freaking presses, you know, they had, what year is this? Ah, that was like 2003, 2003, 2004, okay, because I went to prison in

2000, and the 2005, 2006, so it was hard to get the equipment at night. At this time, you got to hook up

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 all, we're proud of all the idiots to break into a paper”

company. Yeah, like we cut a hole in the thing where they're like in a rope. And it was really those nuts, man. And what's really nuts about it, the paper company only closed one day a year, one day a year, I guess what day that was, Christmas, fucking Christmas. We watched it. So on Christmas, you and your brother broke into the paper company. Yeah, with the fast we got onto it, we cut a hole in the ceiling in the, in the, in the tin metal, it was on Christmas. We blow it ourselves down.

We actually got into a fight in there because they had these big, uh, potato sacks, right, and these these rolls were massive, right? Like I had always got little butt rolls, right? You know, but the real roll was massive and weighed thousands of pounds, and they were stacked up real high. So me and my brother had to, we had to scale all the way up to the thing. And then we're sitting here with our legs up in the air, and we're pushing the roll off the thing. And when it hit, it cracked the concrete. And then me,

like a madman, when we get down, when you cut the roll, it makes a snap low and real loud, right,

“'cause that, 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 it, kept stuffing it. My brother grabbed me and said, Bro, we got to go, we got to know if 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 said, well, I'm leaving here, man, I'm out of here. Anyway, he waited for me, but we, we got all the paper. We had everything ready to him. 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 a rolling stone magazine. Right. So you were doing public speaking? I was doing public about being of counterfeited as I'm counterfitting. This is what was so bizarre about it. It's addiction,

really addiction. All of that could stop. Well, they flew me out to Rochester, right, documented security systems. It was a, uh, 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 I got the same, uh, assistant that Frank Abigail had, right? Frank Abigail was the check guy from catch me if you can't, well, he had retired. And so they wanted me to step in his place.

All 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 to, you know, they, they would send me product. It was a document security systems. Okay. Yes. And they told her, but you're still doing crime at this point. I am. Yeah. They don't know. Right. I don't know. So you get there and what had. So I get there, man, and I'm sitting in the hotel, uh, bar with the assistant. And I'm

looking around. I'm like, man, all, everyone in here looks like a cop, right? Like, and I ask her, I'm like, hey, isn't this, uh, like a corporate check security thing? She was, oh, this is a whole lane security conference for, for fraud. I'm like, well, what do you mean? Like, everyone in here is an agent? She's like, yeah, these are all federal agents. I'm like, what? I wanted to run out the door, man. I couldn't believe it. I was like, oh, this can't be happening. This

cannot be real. You speak at the conference? Yeah. Yeah. But it was not easy, though. I'll tell you what happened. So here it is. I don't even really drink much, man, right? But I'm pound and whisky, right? Yes, sounds like it. I'm proud. I get to the room. She was worried about me. She's like, she's like, you're gonna be all right. I'm like, yeah, man, I'm all right. You know, I'm just glad it finally at some point in the story that somebody was worried about you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

you know what I'm saying? Like, we got to have somebody be worried about us. I got, I got people now that love me, man. So good. It all worked out. Sure. But this is the first time I heard you say

that in all of this. Oh, my mama always did. Yeah, mama was always there. And so anyway,

so here I'm at the conference. And I go up to the room. She wakes me up at like six to the morning and tell me what to not eat, what to eat, what I can eat, you know, and we go what you worried about you died for? Or did you speak that thing? Yeah, that morning. I was first to be in nervous. Yeah, she don't want me to be in nervous. Got it. I was the first speaker was they did clock at the morning, right? So I go into the hall where it's all set up. And I walk into the front

and I'm looking at who's speaking. It was the guy 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 eight in the morning. They're not going to be here. Maybe 10, 2015. Not too many people are

“going to show up. So I'll be all right. Yeah. It would fit a thousand people, right?”

Literally, man. I'm not kidding. Like that hall stayed empty to like two minutes before eight. Yeah. I thought I won. It was only like just a few people. And I'm like, oh, yeah, they're still sleeping. This is their vacation. They're not going to be getting up at eight in the morning to watch some counterfeiter, right? Man, bro, like in the matter, like two minutes, man, it started filling up

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? And so she gives me some water. She sees me sweating. I said, man, I gotta go with 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 present, the present, the guy that was presenting, everybody who came up, because, hey,

you are right, he goes, you know, let's test the mic. And you know, we're about, this is how I'm going to do this. I'm going to say this. And this is how I'm going to call you up. Okay. I'm like, all right, cool. You know, I said, can I use the bathroom real quick? And she's like, yeah, it's right out the door. So I go out to the bathroom and I, and I just start throwing up. I'm in the bathroom, just throwing up. There was a door that went outside. I kind of stumbled

“out the bathroom, went outside. And I'm talking to myself. I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

What are you doing? You fucking, man. Like, I'm really like insane talking to myself and they can hear you. And they fucking heard me. She comes out. She comes running out. She goes, dude, dude. She grabs the thing. She goes, we're canceling this. You're not going to, you're not speaking. And I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, they've listened to everything you just said right now. I killed him all over that guy. He's like, I killed him all. Who was that guy?

I 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 walk back in there. We're not going to 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 something. Robert Durst muttered, killed them all, of course. So I go back in there and it's silenced now.

And they're all staring at me. U.S. the first question you asked me, how does it feel when people are staring at you and all that stuff you were talking about? He had like the moon. Yeah, like the moon.

“Yeah, that's what I was going through. Right. That's what it felt like. And 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, this 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, there was an older woman that had this silver

here. I'll never forget her. She was about 15 rows in. And she just slipped, slipped it.

You're going to be alright. I could read her lips. It was weird. She goes, you're going to be alright. That's what she kept saying. And then I just came out of it. I said, you know, I'm a little frozen right now. It's the first time I've ever been in a room with this many agents. Usually I'm getting hauled off to jail and they all laughed. Okay. Right. And once they laughed, then I just started like going in with everything. And it was amazing. I ended up speaking for like

45 minutes. I took questions for like 30 minutes. They ended up sitting me next. They sit me at the head table next to the Homeland Security Secretary. Right. And we were joking about how he was making credit or fake IDs when he was in high school. And so like it 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 print 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 going to do this? You know, when I actually got this opportunity right here, that maybe could actually take care of me, you know. Right. And when I get home, you know, my son's being whatever. And I, I do a few things. And when I come back to the house, he's

printing money 20s. We get it. He's one of his friends. We get into it. He runs out. I run out of after him. You know, I'm trying to tell him he don't have to do this. And he throws the money at me and while, while cop is passing by. Yeah. Yeah. And the cop gets out. I'm trying to pick the money up off the ground. And the cop, I tell the cop, my name and right away, boom. And it was over. Right. They

“called the secret. He arrested me, called the secret service. Secret service was toying with me actually”

because they, they were like, you know, we know this is your son's money and all this. Like we're not, we're not looking at you. But I had some, I had some of that old money that I got busted with, you know, from that was buried. And then I played with it a little bit. And, and it popped. Right. And they knew. And so they, they pulled me in and they said, we, we know, we know what you're doing. We know you got a whole new off, you know, a whole new place and you got paper and you got the

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. God, for sure. Yeah, you're done. Right. So what is this? Well, what happened is they ended up, they ended up, um, they said they knew where it was at. They, they took me in and, and my boys let me

fucking busted in my space. Wow. But what happened? Oh, it's three weeks before that.

The old man did own the building, Rick and Benny. He owns Rick and Benny's. It's a British shop. He's dead now. But he had sold it. It was an old warehouse. So did you warehouse? Mm-hmm. 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 want to be sitting here right now if there was. Yeah, they, and they were messing with me. They're like, we gotcha now. We gotcha. We're going in and there was nothing. The press was gone. The paper was gone. Inque was gone. Everything was gone. It was, it was so, like, blessed and cursed, bro. It's kind of like this perfect mix, bro. It's perfect mix, man. But

“did you have to testify against your son or anything? No, no, no, he didn't go jail. So how do”

you and your son end up in jail together? So after this happens, they kick in the doors, whatever. I go ahead and take the beef, right? I got probably the shortest paragraph federal indictment in history. Literally one paragraph, right? They give me seven years, 105 months. I go down. My son's left. He's 15. Well, he kept doing it. He got, he's smart kid. He's seen some of the style. He gets the paper. He's like, he's getting everything. My brother's still out there playing with them. So him and my brother,

whatever, right? And I'm in prison. And I'm gone for like three years now. We gave it a help, give him advice and suggestions about it from prison. No, no, we didn't really talk much. You know, that was it. You know, I didn't see him at all. I saw him three years later. So what happens is I get a call. I call home and my sister says, hey, you need a call, Karen. The date, 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? They're like, these charges don't that good if you're a kid. Yeah, your kid, none's going to happen. As soon as he hit 18, they hit his stories. He got a crazy

story, how they grabbed him. But he was on a run a little bit and they grabbed him finally. And so

“I caught my sister tells me what's going on. And he gets sentenced to, I think it was like 36 months.”

So now I'm already been gone for three years. Now he's 18 and they ship them to force city Arkansas. I'm in big spring Texas at a real shit hole. I'm trying to get out of there and they end up transferring me from there to force city. Wow. Yeah. And it was crazy because when I got there, I knew he was there. I knew he was there, right? So as soon as I went through processing, you know, go through all that shit all day, as soon as I hit the, hit the dorm,

some of the white guys came up to me. Hey, you know what you're saying? I told him he's like, oh, your son's here. And I'm like, yeah, I know. And I need to see him as soon as I hit the yard tomorrow. Right? They were like, shit, you don't have to wait to the yard. Your son's in the dorm. I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, he's, he's here in this dorm. He's in TV room right now. Damn. I'm like, what? So I haven't seen my son for three years, right? And I, I, I, I, I'd be lying to the, to the,

to the, uh, the TV room. And when I opened up the, the, the TV door and he, he was sitting right there on the, the front thing, looking up at the TV with his little headphones on. And when he seen me, man, he just, he just, he got up and just ran straight to me, man. I'm tiering up because my boy's in prison. So it's happy as I am to see him. I'm devastated inside that he's here. That both of you are there. Yeah, just devastated. Why could handle me, right? My life's been

hell. I don't want him to go through, you know? And what this was cool though, man, here it is some of the hardest cat span 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 embraced and I just held them, man, damn. And that's where I learned to become a dad, man. The next two and a half years, man,

“I started, I've been painting. I paint, you know, and so on prison, that's what I did. And then my”

son was music. So he, he was right in lyrics. And so our plan was, yeah, that's being a prison

with one of my first pieces, you know? And so, so the, the plan, the grandmaster plan was, you know,

they, they, he was going to do music and I was going to do art, you know? And, um, and so, you know, when I, I got out in 2013, I got out a month before him, they let, they wouldn't let us out together. The, the therapist, the counselor said, we're going to let you out first. So you could get yourself situated there. We're going to let your son out, okay? And so when I got out, you know, I just, I, I had an unbelievable, I had a unbelievable community around me, you know,

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 a CDL and then he started driving a trash truck.”

Now, he's doing amazing. He's been out 13 years. We've opened out 13 years now. He just bought his

first house. Yeah, it's amazing. He, he got, just had a baby, you know, he's doing amazing. He's

writing new music. Now, his music is freaking awesome. Like he's really getting down on his music. And then me, you know, I, I went through the art thing. You know, I first two years out, I almost actually went back to print and he busted me. He busted me with some, with some chemicals and your son did. Yeah. Yeah. So like two years after this, I said this ain't it. Yeah, I well, it just, like, it was a bunch of things. Like, I, you know, I, I just met someone was about to have

a baby, you know, and it just felt like deja vu all again, right? And so I ended up walking away from it and, um, and I ended up, one of, a big time cat in Chicago, his name is Joel catchtor. 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, um, and damn here it is 13 years later, you know, and I've had five galleries. I've had unbelievable shows from Rose Warris to

Saty. 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 for this man. Really, like, what about, um, tell me about, like, when you look at like crime in the effect that it's had, like, on your family overall, like, what do you think about that? I mean, for me, like, what, what I, what I, what I, because I've met to guys get not a prison, I speak at schools,

I've spoken schools, you know, to talk about how to overcome stuff, whether it's mental illness, whether it's drugs, whether it's crime, right, because crime can be addictive, too. And yeah,

never thought of it as an addiction and so I spoke with you about it. And it almost seems like a

familial addiction, too. Yeah, well, they say it's worse than heroin. Counterfitting? Hmm, if you looked it up, I think it says that counterfitting is more addictive than heroin, you know, wow, bring that up. Yeah, there's, there's some sand on it. You know, for me, it's like, it, so, so I, I have a few cats that I've kept in touch with that I was in prison with. Yeah. But sadly, almost, you know, 78% of people go back. Small percentage of us that make it out.

There's even a smaller percentage that make it into something really big. You know, so what I've done with my art, what my life and what, you know, is, is very unusual. Right. You know, that part I get. Yeah. But do you think what effect do you think that crime had, like, on just like your, like, you know, I'm saying, because you had it, it's, it's very wild that you had this happen in your own

“father's son relationship and they'd 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 crime. It's the whole aspect of the streets and the, and the mental illness, what my mom, those things I think make, make allow me, they, 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, from the, the first time breaking into the meters, I, I was, the training was to just like an animal to hunt. Right. You'd learn that. Yeah. I learned that. That's what, that's where, yeah, I don't blame you. And, and so there, there wasn't, like, there wasn't the guilt. There wasn't

the shame. There wasn't that part of it. But the crime and the streets and everything I went through, it's, 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, room, was there any situations that you call us, like, by passing all that fake money, like, did it, like, did it ruin some people's

“business or anything like that? Do you have to make any, like, a man's with that sort of situation?”

No, the, the, the, the more of the men's that I needed to make was with my, my, my son, you know, in, in my kids and in, in the people that that relied on me that that that that I, you know, I wasn't there for, right? Like, even when I went back for seven years, you know, Natalie was still had the three babies down in Austin, you know, and I didn't even know, I didn't even get to, to meet the, the young one, to, like, four years later. Wow. And so the things that

I regret are, are more, family, you know, I, I, I, I didn't sell drugs, and I wasn't into all the other stuff, you know, so for me, the money was almost like, well, they're doing it shit, you know, like, why can't I, you know, and, and then I was always doing good with it. So, whether that was to justify me doing or not, I just, I didn't ever feel that guilt for, you know, and, you know, did anyone ever come to and say, hey, you passed this much fake money with me,

and I loved it, right? Like, people, even now, there's a couple of people in the city that had

had some of them that actually framed them. Are they still in circulation? No, I, I don't know, maybe, you know, the money was good. But if you even have one, we send it to me, so I can have one. I will. You will. Yeah. I actually brought you one. No, you didn't. No, I brought you 100, but not what it is. I brought you something though. No, I mean, it was, it was, it was a wild time, man, you know, and then like, oh, yeah, here we go. Yes, counterfitting money can be come 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. The high of counterfitting comes from the combination of chemical rush to 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. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, cocaine. No, the money, man. Like even now, so when I, I print sheets of money right now, like, but it's for work, right? It's for your own. It's canvas and I paint over it. 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 bands. Do you think that people should be a lot of counterfitting money?”

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Well, because money is just like a, it's like a, it's like a kind of a social construct that we have. It's like this, you know, we'll see the thing about money. You know, like my, my, my things, I think we should be a lot to keep more of it. So, so I think that we're tax too much, right? I agree with that. You're taxed on what you do your taxed on, what you buy your taxed on your car, your taxed on this, like before the 1900s,

there was no tax, right? And so like, like, even me, I love the barter. I barter a lot, man. I trade paintings for cars for this, for that. I love the barter, right? So, like, it should people be allowed to print, no, and either should have, 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're giving money away to these different, like, um, um, I think they gave up. I think they gave up.

But I think I think that they, they, they knew that this thing is going to collapse the society, you mean? Well, that the financial system that they set up is 40 trillion in the whole, man. Like, you can't, there's no way to get out of it, right? Impossible, right? And they know that. And so, like, for me, I look at it and I analyze, like, I think they gave up already. There's going to have to be a reset.

“There's going to 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'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, it's, if you look it up, digital currency, how I'm looking up in, it's all programmable, which means they could say, 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 to, right? 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 that would be issued and backed directly by the Federal Reserve as a digital form of physical cash. Government backed unlike decentralized cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin or private stable coins, a CBDC, the central bank digital currency, uh, would be official legal tender backed by the US government. It would

represent a direct digital liability of the Federal Reserve available to the general public. Wow. Ask if it's programmable. They don't want to tell you that part. Just put in there. Is it programmable? Because this for sure is. And that's the thing that people need to be asking questions about. Is it programmable? Whether a US 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 do you say in that means? So what happens is that just like they got these cars coming out where they could turn them off, they'll be able to turn your money off. Really easy. Like easier than it's ever been in human history. So throughout human history, it started with barter and then coins and then paper, right? The

human has always had the ability to trade something for something, right? And you can do it in a

private setting or a public setting, right? With this, there'll be no more private ever. That's gone. And some people say, well, if you're not doing anything wrong, but what happens is, is you can see through time that laws change where you thought it wasn't wrong this day is not wrong this day, right? And that's where this gets dangerous because like explain it to me a little bit better. We think it's kind of like the the truckers that were in Canada that were protested and then the Canadian government

“turned their accounts off. Got it. Right? I'm sure you remember that. Yeah. And it's just like Kanye West”

when he was like speaking out against, um, I don't know exactly what it was, but I don't know if it was like Jewish people or it's just some things he said or things about the record industry. Yeah. It's on

debank you. Let's just turn it off. It's just programmable. Yeah, it's going to the same right?

It's not being too honest right now about this because it's seeing it possibly because these cats here, they they don't tell you the truth all the time. And and but there's the engineers believe me they're putting the programmables in the digital dollar. With the digital dollar, then be counterfeitable or no. It's a good question. We could try it. I would love to try it. We can't use pain on this though. No, we just have to figure out a break into the system.

“But no, I mean this is it here's the thing. I hope that through you'll have the states that”

that pass like Florida's past laws where you can't refuse cash, you know, but you know there in other countries there are you see all these kids are raised on their phone paying what they're 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. 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 it. 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 the depth of the surveillance, you know. Well, now they got flat cameras going up. They got, you know, they mean it's it's getting it really interesting, you know. And you know, for me because I was a ghost, I pay attention to that stuff real carefully. Yeah. Now because I'm doing anything wrong, it's because I want to be free. Yeah. At the end of the day, you know, this is what I look at this

country. You know, like, I love this country. I've been on every road that there is probably. Right. I've been in so many towns in this country, man. And I've watched the middle of the middle part of the country just disappear, right? Where there was a time where I would drive through a town and it looked a little bit alive. And then five years later drove through it and it had boarded up when everything. We've seen the same and that's it. Yeah. Oh, it's heartbreaking. Well, like

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. I think they gave up. I think they gave up.”

I think I don't did they give up or were they? I mean, it seems a lot more like they were, um, well, they were siphoned and dialed it gave up, right? Now they're looking like, oh, just let's give what we can. It's going, it's going to get reset. The digital dollar divide right here. It says, the anti-CBDC Act would bar the Federal Reserve from issuing piloting or implementing any digital currency design for general public use. The bill's supporters led by representatives Tom

Emma, French Hill. Uh, well, this is also that they're fine with Bill for this. This is the

first time. You see, this site risk 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. 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 a money where they don't like it, or you're paying for a service that they don't like, they could cut your money off. If it's something that they deem that isn't right, or if you're even paying to see, say you're paying to see a speaker that says things that the government doesn't like, they could cut your money off. Yeah, it's terrible, man. I mean, that's super scary. Yeah, no, it's, you know, like,

what, you know, my hope is it's like, you know, well, the good thing is I'm learning how to create currency with my art, right? So, so now that I'm an artist, you know, like I, it's been 13 years,

10 years professional artists, you know, the first time, you know, that I got into the industry was

when I met Arnold Schwarzenegger. I got to go out to his house and have a show sold a bunch of art. Oh, wow. Oh, it was badass, man. I mean, here I am two years out of prison, shouldn't work in, can't get nothing going. You know, the catch there means Arnold right there. And here it is. I feel like I'm about to go back to print and catch Tory kind of, you know, scoops me in. I work for him a little while. And then I end up going to Florida.

“I remember you tell me about some of this and be in a show. Yeah, I was in a show before we”

get into something else. Let me just, I want to go a little bit further about like because like Bitcoin is like, because say something is a money, right? It's just because we all agree that money has value, right? Like if tomorrow, everybody just agreed it didn't have value, then it wouldn't. It wouldn't. And that goes for a lot of things. Like, and I referenced art because like really, what does, how do I sell a painting for 10 grand at, I sold for 1,000, 5 years ago? Right?

And actually on the old money, the 1800s money, it looks like little pieces of art.

“And the reason they did that is because in old timers didn't want to give up their gold, right?”

So they had to make the paper look valuable, right? So if you look at, look at this money, man, some of this stuff is beautiful, right? Look at, look at the educational series, the 1896 educational series. I mean, that thing is is just unbelievable. And so they had, they had to make this stuff look valuable and then they may go to legal, 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 has seen no $5 bill like that.

Look how beautiful that is. It looks like a piece of art, right? So it's all about really kind of trickery a little bit, little sire up, right? You give, 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? How America would loan money to different countries and then they would buy goods and then it would create the system, right? But what happens,

“is they just dug too deep into it, right? I mean, it could have been unbelievable system. Right?”

But then people sort of manipulating things that happen in certain countries. There's sort of this. I mean, we just had a guy on who was talking about secret societies that like manipulate things at a higher level. So now this country has to like, we have immigrants that are going from here because we call a starvation here, or we stopped off, we put a like a fuel embargo here. And so now this country is going to behave like this. And so it's like, and they're all betting on that

at a higher level. I want to, I want to get this point out there, Franklin. President Franklin

Roosevelt signed Executive Order 60202 on April 5, 1933, which largely outlawed the private ownership of gold, coin, boolean, and certificates in the United States. The Great Depression, widespread bank failures caused citizens to hoard gold, shrinking the circulating money supply. So then when they bought it back, sorry, 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. Let me see that Americans had to turn in their gold to a federal reserve bank by May 1st, 1933. The government paid citizens 20.67 dollars per Troy ounce of gold. Yeah, 10 years in prison if you didn't do it. Yeah, as Elvis has violations, violations carry penalties of up to a $10,000 fine or 10 years in prison. And then in January 1934, FDR raised the official price of gold to $35 per ounce, increasing the Treasury's value

and devaluing the dollar. So they gave 20 and they raised it 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 really was fascinating to me that I was able to create something that caused them to change the whole system, you know? Are you sure that that was the cause? Oh, yeah, I mean it, yeah, they need the paper, you know, the paper,

there was too many people doing it, you know, they had it, they had to fix it, they had to fix it, you know. But, you know, 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 going to be historical. Because a lot of it's printed on an actual money.

Oh, yeah, I love the print. Yeah, maybe one time you're in town, I'll print which, they're yo, there's a sheet of money. Oh, 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 on my hand, that's just popping up. Oh, no, it's awesome, man. I love it. Yeah. So, so I still get the print, you know, like, it's just, it's just awesome that I get to do it,

but, you know, soon, soon currency will be gone, you know? And it'll be digital and it's going to be an interesting time in humanity, like big time, like it's going to get, it's going to get, like, I get more nervous about that than AI. I think AI is kind of a little bit of hoaxy because the shit don't really work well. Yeah, great. The shit's kept. The Los Senators are for the robots. I'm telling you, they're making that shit for the robots. Oh, the data center just, I think it's

to store a lot of information from all the surveillance information. When you think about that too, you're activating surveillance and how 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 for 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. Or like you

bringing it to people so they understand it so we can go into it the right way, right? I really is about this 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 podcast, Tom, because you”

guys get to actually inform people about things that are happening so that maybe it could change,

surveillance that somehow humans will find a way to thrive, right? And we need a heat, we need like

“a new male, gifts, we need a new patriot, you know? We need a new patriot? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.”

But, Art Williams, you have your studio now, people can find it. Yeah, I got a Julius DeVinci.com. I got Julius DeVinci.com. Yeah, and I got a R to J Williams, Junior.com, my name, and then I got a gallery in Chicago on Clark and Diversity, and just started showing other artists, which is kind of cool, because that's cool stuff. Yeah, and 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 presser. Do you? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, I got a pretty press there. And, uh, one thing I wanted to go into real quick,

“what are the top, what can you look up, Kevin, what are the top things that can be counter-fitted?”

Close bags. Okay. The medications are a big thing. The ten most counter-fitted products in the world, let's see them. Food products. Food. All this time. I think that food products and well-known brands of food could be counter-fitted, but that is increasingly the case, especially as food prices around the world, continue to rise and companies charge. Yeah, it's interesting, right? And companies charge your premium for the brands, whether it be coffee, chocolate, or fruit.

For example, in Canada, the most popular and profitable coffee store chain is named Tim Horton's

“after hockey player. However, in South Korea, people are sold Tim Horton's coffee, which is a blatant”

knockoff of the popular Canadian caffeine product. Designer labels tags. That's pretty obvious. Computers, I wouldn't have thought that, but I guess it makes sense, because you do hear people like on Facebook, Marketplace, and stuff like I went to buy this computer, and it was cat.

Pharmaceutical drugs. Movie still. Fake pills. Oh, movies. Yeah, like in third world countries,

sneakers and shoes that make sense. Smart phones, jewelry, and accessories. Money's not even on there. Watches for sure, handbags, versus wallets. No money. No money. Man, I got to get money on there. Yeah. Hey, yeah, figure out the digital. You'll figure it out. I'm done. I'm tired, man. Look, Art Williams, man, thanks so much to you 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 I'm just an artist, but yeah, it's an artist that went through some shit. We, if you're an artist and you're locked in your stuck in like criminal type shit, then of course, you're going to start your art in criminal type shit. And these days, dude, everybody should be able to make their own fucking money. You know, I'm saying it, the government's just printing that shit and just hanging it out. We could give classes. Yeah.

Dude, it might not be a bad idea. Yeah, I'm going to make your money classes. Hey, TBD, man. And you have a book. I don't want to forget the last counterfitter. Art, man, thank you so much, dude. Yeah, appreciate this. It's been awesome, bro. Yeah, appreciate it. The top and alley I said was so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, I'm just falling on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be calm and stoned. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this piece of my life. I'm not confused.

Can I fall?