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.

This entry was posted in Dirty tricks and tagged Chemistry by Sean. Bookmark the permalink.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Peugeot 2008 DKR | Reveal Dakar 2016

Fish - Credo - Internal Exile

MERRY CHRISTMAS

BLACKOUTS GRAPHITE GRENADES

Explosive Potential of Graphite Dust
Combustible dust is identified as, "Any finely divided solid material that is 420 microns or smaller in diameter (material passing a U.S. No. 40 Standard Sieve) and presents a fire or explosion hazard when dispersed and ignited in air."² The elements of fire include fuel, oxygen and ignition. A dust fire or deflagration occurs when sufficient concentrations of fine particulates are suspended in air and then exposed to a source of ignition such as a spark or welding igniter. This ultimately results in the igniting or combustion of the dust.
THE REST OF THE GRENADE COMPOSITION: 
High speed automatic mechanical pressing is commonly used to volumetricaHy load small quantities of primary explosives into blasting caps and detonators and to make small explosive components. Primary explosives may be mixed with graphite to improve flow and antistatic properties, or may be desensitized with waxes, stearates, or polymeric compounds. Secondary explosives and explosive mixtures may be pressed to form booster pellets or to load components directiy as in the case of armor-penetrating projectiles. Where the explosive is too sensitive in its pure crystalline state to permit press loading or lacks the requited mechanical properties in its compressed state for subsequent use, it is coated with polymeric materials such as polystyrene and polybutadiene, to form mol ding powders, often referred to as plastic-bonded explosives. Desensitization is obtained when the explosive crystals are thoroughly and uniformly coated. A typical procedure for making PBX-type explosives involves making a lacquer of a solution of the organic polymer in a solvent, eg, ethylacetate, and a dding it to a water slurry of the explosive. The solvent is distilled off under vacuum while the mix is agitated, precipitating the polymer on the explosive. The coated explosive forms small agglomerates as the solvent removal process continues. It is filtered, washed, and vacuum dried to form a free-fiowing, dustiess, high density powder. Bi- or trimodal size distributions of spherical shaped explosive particles are often used to improve the flow characteristics and packing density of the mol ding powder. Antistatic agents (qv) such as carbon black may be added to prevent dust explosions. In another coating technique, the requited amount of low melting wax is added to a water slurry of the explosive at a temperature high enough to melt the wax. After agitation to distribute the wax on the crystals, the temperature is lowered, the water decanted, and the remaining mass filtered and dried

NON METALLIC COMPOSITES

How are ceramic blade knives detected through airport security

Best Answer:  By the metal pins used to attach the handles

If you're sending it through the X-Ray machine, very easily. X-Rays are blocked by things that have high molecular weights. Most ceramic knives are made from Zirconium Oxide. Zr has a molecular weight of 40. Much higher than the 26 of Iron, the principal component of a steel knife. Another common material is Aluminum Oxide, but these are stabilized with Zirconium or Yttrium (39), making them easier to detect. 

Beryllium Copper Springs http://www.indiamart.com/hyderabadsprings-components/compression-springs.html#beryllium-copper-springs

the tiny springs are made from Beryllium Copper to eliminate any magnetic signature. Its handle is made from fibre resin and the razor sharp, partially serrated blade is made of 33% glass fibre Nylon 66

Hybrid long glass+carbon fiber reinforced composites http://www.plasticomp.com/hybrid-long-glass-carbon-fiber/ 

Audi A8 spare wheel recess employs reinforced polyamide http://www.materialstoday.com/composite-applications/news/audi-a8-spare-wheel-recess-employs-reinforced/

Portable, open source Fusion 3D Printer now available for $249, Kickstarter forthcoming http://www.3ders.org/articles/20150907-portable-open-source-fusion-3d-printer-now-available-kickstarter-forthcoming.html

Non-metallic, high-tech materials
Some of the most common non-metallic high-tech materials manufactured and used in the making of knives are:

* black woven graphite composite: so hard it has to be cut with a diamond-tipped blade, using water for a lubricant
* carbon fibre sheet - Immensely strong crystalline filaments of carbon in resin
* celluloid - transparent plastic made from camphor and nitrocellulose
* delrin - a very strong, pure white, plastic material used for knife handles
* kydex - a very strong and sophisticated acrylic-PVC alloy thermoplastic material... ican be heat-moulded, sawn, ground, milled and polished and may also be joined to itself or other materials with an unbreakable bond using a hot glass welding technique
* neoprene a rubber-like compound used as a non-slip knife handle grip
* polyvinyl chloride (PVC) - a durable plastic which can be machined and worked to manufacture knives with standard tools
* zytel - a hard and durable form of nylon used to make many kinds of knives and weapons
* Blackie Collins CIA Folder. There is no steel whatsoever in this spring-assisted, folding lock knife. This assisted opening feature is made possible by a patented internal strut mechanism. The tiny springs are made from Beryllium Copper to eliminate any magnetic signature. Its handle is made from fibre resin and the razor sharp, partially serrated blade is made of 33% glass fibre Nylon 66

CIA Letter Opener
Manufactured from high-tech composite materials with over 60% glass fibres, the CIA Letter Opener's marketing blurb describes it as 'a completely non-metallic knife that provides superior plunging power as well as a hard edge. The scalloped serrations on both sides of the blade give additional opening power on fibrous materials'. For many years the CIA Letter Opener has been described as a lightweight security device capable of being driven through over 12 mm of plywood without breaking. The Cold Steel CAT Tanto, meanhwile, is marketed as being 'black, silent and totally undetectable'. The CAT, as it's known, is made from UV and heat-stabilised, glass-filled zytel nylon. This knife, with its sure-grip handle, reinforced Tanto point and skull-crushing pommel is a super-light, full-size killing tool that is invisible to metal screening devices and would probably pass unnoticed through any security checks. The CAT has all the cutting and penetrating power of its steel sisters. The Cold Steel Vietnam Delta Dart is best described as a vicious weapon designed as a covert operations last-ditch, self-defence tool. The Delta Dart is 8" long and 1/2" in diameter, yet it weighs only half an ounce! The handle is knurled for a positive grip and the butt smooth and rounded, so it's perfect for both thumb and palm reinforced grip positions. The triangular blade geometry gives it incredible puncturing ability. The Delta Dart is made entirely of 43% glass-filled zytel nylon, which is easily sharpened with a nail file. Then there's the Lansky LS17. Although marketed as a general-purpose knife, the LS17 or 'The Knife', as it is sometimes referred to, has become known as a clandestine fighting weapon. The Knife is made from ABS plastic with a 31/2'' double-edged spear point blade with a serrated edge on one side. The non-slip handle has finger grooves and a thumb rest for extra thrusting grip. The LS17 is invisible to metal screening devices.

The Ace of Spades
The Ace of Spades is a very nasty push dagger made from ABS plastic. It is an extremely robust one-piece construction, capable of massive penetration with its razor sharp, spear point configuration. Of course not all non-metallic knives are manufactured as weapons. There are many companies that use advanced ceramics to create cutting tools and products which combine elegance and strength. Ceramic products using materials such as zirconium oxide and aluminium oxide for applications requiring chemically inert, non-magnetic, non-conductive or non-contaminating materials are also perfect for general applications requiring superior edge retention or wear resistance. They're also ideal for special applications such as EOD work. Many of these weapons have been designed and manufactured for no other reason than to compromise security and endanger life. As I have said many times before in my writings and my training programmes: "You cannot rely on technology alone when it comes to weapons detection, and it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever how much sophisticated state-of-the-art detection equipment you have at your disposal... If you have not trained your personal to understand what kind of weapon they are looking for, what they could be made from or even what they look like, they will not find them!"

All you need to know about PS5
PS5is a nationally-recognised, specialist security consultancy and training provider to the law enforcement, defence and security industries worldwide. The company's training wing 'REACT' delivers highly specialised training protocols to professionals operating across the private and public sectors with specific focus on weapons awareness and personal protection from violence, aggressive behaviour and terrorism. In order to carry out certain aspects of its work, the company has been granted a UK Government Home Office Authority directly approved by the Secretary of State under Section 5. Due to the highly sensitive and sometimes restricted nature of PS5's work, and in order to maintain a high level of security and confidentiality, the company has its own in-house, fully comprehensive, design, photographic and video production capability. This department's primary remit is the design, production and publication of training and educational material as well as the creation of the company's own corporate in-house journal, PCW Review. This PS5 publication is distributed to law enforcement and security professionals in over fifty countries. PS5 also designs, develop and produce a range of security related safety products and training aids.

radio frequency detection of guns ( 3mm of metal for 100mm of range) jamming antennas

DIRTY BOMB PART IV

FOR A DIRTY BOMB ITS NEEDED 100 UNIT CURIES, AS YOU SEE THIS GOODS HAVE 1.0 UNIT CURIE, NEVERTHELESS IT ONLY WORKS IF ACHIEVES VERY HIGH TEMPERATURES BESIDES THE PETN ITS ALSO NEEDED ETHYLENE GAS.
FOR SEARCH FOR THIS KIND OF PRODUCT IT HAS TO BE SEEN ON THE FEATURES FOR "SENSING TYPE"
THE TUTORIAL HERE:

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Obtain-and-Extract-Americium/step6/How-to-Obtain-and-Extract-Americium/

RED MERCURY DIRTY BOMB PART III (BASEBALL SIZED)

Red mercury, also known as ‘cherry red’ because of its color, is a semi-liquid compound of pure mercury and mercury antimony oxide. It could be used to make a baseball-sized neutron bomb capable of killing everyone within 600 meters (approximately 0.37 mile) of the explosion."
"In the early 1990s, Delta-G made a cash purchase for mercury from
another former state-owned company, Thor Chemicals, a SADF front company that was involved in the network of corporations working to provide materials for the covert CBW program. What this mercury was used for remains unknown. The prosecutor in the Basson trial investigated this purchase since mercury can also be used for the production of sassafras to produce Ecstasy. Others speculate that this purchase was related to the production of Mandrax. However, mercury produced by Thor Chemicals has also been linked to the mysterious nuclear substance"
"eading to the production of so-called red mercury (RM 20/20, chemical formula Sb2O7Hg2), the basic material for producing cheap, miniaturized neutron bombs. Red mercury is a kind of highly thick gel. It serves as the detonator for a small amount of tritium (super-heavy hydrogen), which when exploding produces a wave of pulsing neutrons....the price of a kilogram of RM 20/20 exceeded $400,000...of so-called red mercury (RM 20/20, chemical formula Sb2O7Hg2), the basic material for producing cheap, miniaturized neutron bombs"

Introduction

Ballotechnic materials are materials that react very energetically when subjected to a shock, without losing their solid (or liquid)¹ form. Unlike common high-order explosives, these materials do not release hot gases, but rather stay solid when they release this energy. An often discussed example of this is red mercury.

Red mercury is a type of mercury salt, with the formula Hg₂Sb₂O₇, which is then irradiated in a nuclear reactor. It is claimed that this substance has a densityof over 2.0x10⁴ kg m^-3, which is extremely high, especially for an oxide. And, as mentioned, it is a ballotechnic material, which means it releases unimaginable amounts of energy when subjected to a shock.

Great, but why is this interesting?

The main reason why this is so interesting is that if red mercury does what it claims, it can be used in the construction of powerful hydrogen bombs. A normal hydrogen bomb works by using a fission explosion to compress a deuterium-tritium mixture so it ignites by fusion. This is rather inconvenient, as created by afission explosion is not something one does with stuff found in the shed. Deuterium and tritium are very easy to obtain, although I won't give pointers how. The idea is to use red mercury, or another ballotechnic material to create the high temperatures and pressures necessary for fusion. Such a device is called aballotechnic nuclear bomb, and if were to exist, it would be as dangerous and powerful as it would be small.

The terrorists will kill us all!

The idea of a nuclear bomb that is constructed from readily-available materials plus some red mercury and that is as easy to conceal as, say, the kilos of drugsthat are readily smuggled into every country of the world, would no doubt make Evil People very happy. There is, unfortunately for them, a small if: all of it depends on the magic of our ballotechnic material. I will now try to show you why the existence of a ballotechnic material is not very likely, based on the above claims. There is little info available on how such a ballotechnic material would do its thing, so I'll give two possible scenarios. I am a physicist, but not really an expert in explosives, so it could be I missed an elaborate explanation for this phenomenon.

Or won't they?

A ballotechnic material, as mentioned, is characterized by releasing enormous amounts of energy while remaining solid when subjected to a shock. Releasing lots of energy when being subjected to a shock is hardly an uncommon property of materials, in fact, that's how explosives work. The shock breaks molecular bonds, and the material turns into a hot, high-pressure gas due to the heat released.

However, a ballotechnic does not turn into a gas, at least, not instantaneously. It is claimed to be capable of holding its solid state while being heated to fantastic temperatures, while having its chemical bonds ripped to shreds and reorganized. This is very unlikely. Furthermore, the temperature needed to produce fusion is many millions of K, not something even remotely reachable with the energy density in the chemical bonds in solids, not to mention the fact that a solid will turn into a rapidly expanding plasma in nanoseconds when subjected to such temperatures. This can be readily seen when one considers a typical chemical bond represents an energy of a few electronvolts, which corresponds to a temperature of a few tens of thousands K-far less than the millions needed for fusion.

Slightly less unlikely is the suggestion that the the energy is nuclear in origin. It is, however, consistent with the fact that the suggested material, red mercury, is neutron-rich and therefore probably unstable. This does ignore the fact that nuclear reactions tend to require enormous amounts of energy to trigger, orders of magnitude more than conventional explosions. Furthermore, this material will also not remain solid when subjected to the kind of temperatures needed to initiate fusion.

Apart from the physical argument, there is a second argument which may be more appealing to the lay person. A normal scientific discovery is published inscientific journals or maybe a conference. Especially in the former case, they are scrutinized by the editor, and subsequently by one or more peer reviewers. The more outrageous the claim-and ballotechnic properties are quite outrageous-the more serious the scrutiny. A search for papers revealed exactly one serious hit, and that is a theoretical study rather than experimental evidence. One would expect that something as shocking as a ballotechnic material would receive more coverage, in respected journals, if it were real.

The fact there is little if any peer-reviewed evidence, the fact that it seems to fly into the face of conventional physics and the fact the claims are quite wild, but lack detail, suggest that this is not a real material, but rather, a scare tactic. The fact that there are a lot of things written in nonscientific publications on red mercury, but nothing in scientific publications ² is almost the litmus test for a scientific hoax. The main propenent of the existence of these materials, Sam Cohen, the father of the neutron bomb, stands alone in his opinion, and his opponents include physicists such as the great Edward Teller, who calls it "nonsense".

Conclusion

If they exist, the properties of ballotechnic materials make them very suitable for the creation of small but very potent nuclear weapons. However, as their properties seem to defy the laws of physics, and there is no evidence whatsoever, despite the attention to the subject, it is almost certainly a hoax.

Sources:

1. http://www.quackgrass.com/roots/ddp95.html
2. http://chemistry.about.com/cs/chemicalweapons/f/blredmercury.htm
3. http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_42a.html

1: When you are dealing with intense shocks and high temperatures, the difference between liquid and solid behavior is not important on the short time scales we are interested in, and I will not make this distinction in this WU. It's mainly density that matters.
2: If we exclude the red mercury salt HgS, which has a nice red color but has no claimed ballotechnic properties

http://everything2.com/title/ballotechnic+material