COUNTERFEITERS STOCK UP ON HAIRSPRAY

This story from the Los Angeles Times describes the bust of a counterfeiting operation making high-quality queer. The counterfeiters used hairspray on their bills to fool anti-counterfeiting pens.

On Tuesday, federal authorities announced that Stroud and four other men have been arrested and charged in connection with a massive counterfeiting scheme that U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O'Brien called "one of the largest, if not the largest, counterfeit currency rings we have seen in Southern California."



The ring is responsible for printing and distributing nearly $7 million in bogus currency over the last two years, authorities said.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Tracy L. Wilkison, the prosecutor on the case, said it was unusual not just because of the amount of money, but because agents were able to go up the food chain in their investigation.

"Most of the time what we have is a handful of poorly crafted bills in small amounts," she said. "When we're able to trace it all the way back to the source and stop the printing, that's a big coup."

The bills, allegedly produced with computers and ink jet printers, were of particular concern to agents because they had proved difficult to detect and were passed in locations across the United States.

A search of Talton's home turned up "a full-scale counterfeit currency manufacturing plant" and more than $1 million in completed and partially completed fake bills, according to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Among the evidence found in the baldheaded suspect's trash were 20 bottles of Aqua Net and White Rain hair spray.

Authorities say the hair product is commonly used to coat fake bills to block the counterfeit-detecting pens used by merchants.

As he was being taken into custody, Talton admitted that he had printed between $5 million and $6 million in fake currency, authorities said.

To read the complete article, see: Five arrested after Secret Service probe into Southern California counterfeit ring 

http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v11n20a23.html

Does vitamin C defeat counterfeit test pens

From left to right, test sheets have been treated with 0.000, 0.007, 0.015, 0.030, 0.060, and 0.120 M ascorbic acid from ground vitamin pills, allowed to dry, ad marked with a counterfeit test pen. The 0.030 M solution produces a stable color that is very close to the mark on a real US $20 note, top. That color only becomes stable after about 30 seconds, however, and the visible color change over time is not seen on authentic bills.

Well, sort of.

Some time ago, a friend reported to me a rumor he’d heard that Aqua Net hairspray could be applied to regular paper to defeat a counterfeit test pen. I tested it, and found it wasn’t true, at least not with the kind of Aqua Net I used. But in the course of reading up to perform that test I learned that counterfeit test pens work by the common starch-iodine reaction: Iodine and starch create a complex species that has a distinct blue-black color. Currency paper has no starch in it, whereas most common paper does. So if your paper turns blue on exposure to iodine that’s a pretty good sign it isn’t real currency paper. That, or some jerk has treated your real money with spray-on laundry starch which (though I haven’t tested this, yet), would probably make real currency paper test as counterfeit.

Anyway, so I knew from that little experiment how the pens work, and when a buddy at MAKE recently rehashed our invisible inkjet printer project from Vol 16, I realized that the chemistry in use there, in which vitamin C inhibits the starch-iodine reaction to develop an invisible ink, might well imply that a solution of vitamin C would also defeat the same reaction when it’s used in a counterfeit test pen.

Turns out I was kind of right. Just kind of. A 0.030 M solution of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) made from ground-up vitamin supplements gives the counterfeit pen a stable color on normal office copy paper that is hard to distinguish, visually, from the color of the pen on a real banknote. Trouble is, it takes awhile to reach that stable color. Like 30 to 45 seconds. It’s darker, at first, and then fades. Stronger solutions of vitamin C make the mark fade more rapidly and to a lighter color than is “correct,” whereas weaker solutions do not fade the mark as much and leave a darker color than is “correct.” Specific experimental details are in small print below.

So, it appears to me that vitamin C does not actually “inhibit” the starch-iodine reaction; rather, it out-competes it energetically. The product of the reaction of vitamin C with iodine is, I think, more stable than the starch-iodine complex, but the starch-iodine complex forms faster. So you get a visibly dark starch-iodine reaction which fades to a lighter color as the iodine is drawn off to react with vitamin C.

10 x 1000mg vitamin C tablets were ground in a mortar and pestle and stirred overnight with 2 cups carbon-filtered tap water to prepare a 0.120 M solution of ascorbic acid (and possibly other pill ingredients that have not been identified or controlled for). Serial dilution produced solutions of 0.060, 0.030, 0.015, and 0.007 M concentrations. Water from the same source was used as a control. Bill-sized pieces of Office Depot copy paper were cut, rolled, and each soaked overnight in a test tube containing one of the six test solutions. The next day, the rolled papers were removed from the test tubes, unrolled by hand, and couched on separate folded paper towels to dry overnight. They were then taped to a piece of plate glass and an approximately 1-inch mark was applied using a commercial counterfeit test marker. A new US $20 note was also marked for comparison. The samples were photographed immediately, and after one-half hour. The samples were marked again, and each mark filmed to record the first 30 seconds of the color reaction’s time course. The 0.030 M solution was found to give stable color that very closely matched the marked reference bill by visual inspection. Weaker solutions gave darker marks that were not deceptive, and stronger solutions gave faint or completely absent marks.

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