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JACK: Frank Bourassa is wired a certain way.

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FRANK: I like things that are going to be challenging and

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difficult that just feeds my mind and my brain.

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JACK: [MUSIC] Frank thrives in complex situations that require tough problem-solving. He needs this

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in his life whether it’s for work or play. He likes playing games that have high stakes like

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either get-rich or go-to-prison type of games, because games like these keep him engaged.

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FRANK: If you fail, that makes it even more real, and those are the basic stuff that

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needs to be in there to grab my interest. If I don’t have that, I’m just not interested at all.

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JACK: He’s been like this since he was a kid in school.

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FRANK: School was a very boring place for me. They just take five hours explaining something

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that we can get in five minutes. You’re just simmering in boredom trying to learn things

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you’re never gonna use in your whole life. I don’t know why you do that. It’s so ridiculous.

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JACK: He grew up in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada. It’s a small city that has about

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130,000 people living there, and it’s a two-hour drive northeast from Montreal.

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Frank’s in his fifties now, and it’s only from this perspective that he can look back

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on a truly remarkable life as a career criminal.

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(INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC] These are true stories from the dark side of

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the internet. I’m Jack Rhysider. This is Darknet Diaries. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

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JACK: When Frank was in high school, he saw that some,

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kids he knew were stealing clothes from stores. And selling them to other kids at school.

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FRANK: Well they were moving quite a bit of stuff.

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JACK: He decided he wanted to be part of this too.

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FRANK: If I can buy some of that and resell some of that,

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then it might be a penny for me in there somewhere.

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JACK: So as early as high school is when Frank started comitting crimes. And you know what,

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it was going pretty good for a teenager. It wasn’t amazing. But it really opened

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his eyes. And he started thinking more like a criminal. But this lead to him getting kicked

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out of high school. And from there he got really into cars and eventually became an auto mechanic.

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FRANK: I really, really enjoyed that too ‘cause there was a lot to learn and

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it was fun. It is food for brain once again. I got into the classic phases;

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I got motorcycles and girls and stuff like that. I devoted myself heavily to that.

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JACK: He thrived in this environment. But he was a bit of a workaholic. He loved

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doing mechanic work doing so much that he started up his own garage,

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but sold that to start up his own car part factory.

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FRANK: We manufactured brake parts for cars.

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JACK: It was a complex business and it checked all the boxes for things

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he liked doing. It was challenging, it made him think, and it expanded his skill set with

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cars and as a business person. Frank worked hard at running this factory.

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FRANK: [MUSIC] I was working twenty hours a day. I wasn’t tired,

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so I didn’t feel like I needed to sleep. [00:05:00] I just enjoyed it so much ‘cause

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it’s very real and dynamic and rewarding. You’re busy doing exactly what you want,

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and you get to drive this thing where you want it to go, and if you do good, you succeed.

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JACK: But at some point during this new endeavor, Frank went criminal again. He

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was seeing that people in his town were making good money selling marijuana.

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FRANK: Some people I knew were dealing that a lot. Then I said well,

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I’m gonna apply kinda the same MO as I did in high school with the clothing stuff. So,

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I say maybe I can buy some off you and then resell it.

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JACK: Now, when Frank finds something he really likes doing, he commits to it 100%. In fact,

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he over-commits. He was spending a crazy amount of hours at this factory. He saw

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that the more he worked, the more rewards there were, so he just spent as much time as humanly

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possible making brake pads for his company. But when he would focus entirely on that,

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it meant that other parts of his life were suffering.

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FRANK: I literally burned myself out. I really did, and damn, did I crash.

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JACK: [MUSIC] It all started one morning.

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FRANK: I just woke up and I just – I was dripping in sweat,

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I was shaking. I didn’t know what the hell was happening.

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JACK: Frank was in bad shape. He knew something wasn’t right with his body.

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He couldn’t even go to work which was his favorite place that he loved going to the most.

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FRANK: I was physically shaking like a leaf twenty-four hours a day,

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literal shaking that you can see with your own eyes. It was horrible.

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JACK: Instead of going to work, he went to the hospital.

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FRANK: The doctor was pumping pouches left and right into me, a bunch of different vitamins

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and minerals and amino acids and stuff. I was out of everything. I drained myself

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out of a bunch of different stuff, and that wreaked havoc on me for a long time.

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JACK: He came home from the hospital more calm,

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but something changed inside him after this. The symptoms would sneak up on

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him a lot more often. [MUSIC] Like, he would have trouble concentrating a lot.

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FRANK: Brain is just on hyperdrive, just too much information, too short a time.

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You can’t function properly. It’s way, way too overwhelming. You think you’re

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going to die ‘cause it’s so unreal how horrific an experience that is. So,

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you can’t make sense of it which is – just amplifies the problem.

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JACK: There was a negative feedback loop; when he couldn’t concentrate, he would get worried

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about his mental health, and this would make it worse and he’d start to shake, and the shaking

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would make him worry even more. All this made him feel like he was headed towards a breaking point.

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FRANK: You can’t make left from right anymore. It’s very, very overwhelming, horrifically.

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JACK: This was Frank’s life day-in and day-out,

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not knowing if tomorrow would be a normal day or one where he couldn’t function at all.

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FRANK: You just can’t live like that. [MUSIC] You have to figure this out. You have to – and fix it.

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JACK: Frank was determined to figure out what was going wrong with him, so he went to another

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doctor, but they didn’t give him a good answer, so he scheduled an appointment for another doctor,

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but they didn’t know exactly, either. He kept making more appointments but wasn’t satisfied

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with what the doctors were telling him. At some point, he couldn’t take it anymore. The

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shaking and worrying was just too much and it was too often, so he looked up the top

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doctor in his province and went straight to their office with no appointment or anything.

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FRANK: I just walked straight into the hospital and I barged

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into his department and into his office.

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JACK: Frank says to the doctor…

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FRANK: You’re gonna take care of me right now. You’re gonna tell me what I have right now.

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JACK: The doctor asked Frank about his symptoms and what he was worried about.

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FRANK: I can’t make sense of it. I think – I’m

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worried about going insane. That’s how it feels like.

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JACK: The doctor talked it out with Frank and told him he wasn’t going insane. Instead,

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he was suffering from panic attacks, and explained more about what means.

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FRANK: It matched with what I was experiencing and what I felt.

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JACK: The diagnosis was a breakthrough moment for

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Frank. Now he knew what was going on, which gave him something to focus on.

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FRANK: So, from this moment, I could put a target on this beast that was trying to hammer me down,

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could put a name to it. Then I knew what it was. Then I could go after it, which is exactly what

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I did. I researched everything about it; what to do, what could fix it, different therapies,

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different treatment, different drugs, different A, and beat the crap out of it until I kicked it out.

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JACK: [MUSIC] This recovery process wasn’t overnight. Frank sold the brake factory and

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took off on a much-needed vacation with his girlfriend. They spent some time

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in [00:10:00] Europe where Frank, who’s a big fan of HBO’s Band of Brothers, visited World War II

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battlefields. After about two years of travel and rest, Frank went back to Trois-Rivières, Canada.

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He was ready to get a job again, but he didn’t want to do something that was super-demanding.

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FRANK: Well, working every day hours on end wasn’t possibly – wasn’t something I could do.

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JACK: It was hard for Frank to take it easy. He likes being immersed in work and being busy. He

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also preferred working for himself and not for some boss, so he started a little side

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gig back up that he used to do. He went back to selling weed. Oh, and just a little tidbit; this

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was around 2005, and since then, in 2018, Canada has completely legalized recreational marijuana.

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FRANK: This grew really, really good and quick,

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so it was hugely successful at the time. It was the most successful anything I had done.

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JACK: [MUSIC] Frank had connections with big-time dealers in another town, and would

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buy big quantities from them and then sell smaller quantities locally. It was very lucrative for him,

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but it didn’t last. Police busted a guy that Frank was in cahoots with. Frank had

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sold him some weed and growing equipment, which led the cops back to Frank. In 2006,

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Frank was arrested on drug charges. He had to spend three months on house arrest from it,

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but being hit with something like this really gave him time to think about what his future would be.

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FRANK: It was either going back to running a business,

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which I had done before, and it led to burning myself out.

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JACK: But there was another idea taking shape in his head. He didn’t mind doing illegal things,

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and he saw that certain illegal activities had big payoffs, so he started to think what

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would be something he could do illegally that a little bit of work could earn him a lot of money?

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FRANK: [MUSIC] What is it I could do? What am I not seeing that I should be seeing? What

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could I create that I could then see, that I could then hop in on? That type of thing.

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JACK: Lots of ideas came to him, but none were right. Like, robbing a bank is just

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too messy and too dangerous. Running drugs got him in trouble already once before,

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so not that. But what else was there? Stealing cars? Cars are just kinda too big to hide,

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and it turns regular people into victims, so that wasn’t right. He just couldn’t think of anything

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that would be the perfect mix of being able to stay safe and be able to make money from it.

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Years go by, and Frank still hasn’t thought of the perfect thing to try. But then one evening,

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suddenly, everything changed. [MUSIC] Frank was out driving around town and he pulled up

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to a red light and stopped. He looked up at the light and just stared at it for a moment.

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FRANK: Then it just – boom, it was this moment where everything – all the fog cleared up,

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everything. It was just so obvious that it was this one thing that I needed to do.

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JACK: Frank felt like this idea was the

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ultimate shortcut to everything that everyone works towards.

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FRANK: Everyone wakes up in the morning so they can have a little

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more money at the end of the day. So, I said well,

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why don’t I just skip a whole bunch of those steps and go directly to money?

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JACK: Instead of finding a way to make money, just make money.

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FRANK: Yeah. It really is the end goal. It really is.

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JACK: [MUSIC] Frank thought going to work to earn money was like a maze that you had

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to solve slowly, and he just wanted to go around the maze and head directly to the

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exit by making counterfeit money himself; just print the cash himself. But he knew

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this would be really complex. He’d have to do a bunch of research, problem-solving,

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and bonus; the consequences were very real. Counterfeiting is 100% illegal in Canada.

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According to Canada’s federal code, counts of making, possessing, and selling counterfeit money

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carry penalties of up to fourteen years in prison. If he got busted doing this,

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he could spend decades in prison. But on the upside, this could make him extremely rich.

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FRANK: I’ve been told by drug exporters that oh, this is scary stuff what you’re

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going into. I just couldn’t believe my ears. They are heavy people doing heavy stuff,

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and they were frightened by – they thought it was extremely edgy and risky,

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and it needs to be taken really seriously. I wasn’t expecting that.

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JACK: [MUSIC] It’s strange how hardened criminals and drug dealers were scared of

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handling counterfeit money. Frank just saw it as another illicit item. Not only that,

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but money is something everyone wants, so every day, he loved the idea more and more.

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FRANK: [00:15:00] It checked all of the boxes in one moment. It was a strange thing.

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JACK: But Frank didn’t have a clue where to begin.

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FRANK: I didn’t know anything about money more than the next guy does.

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JACK: He just had question after question.

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FRANK: What do I need to copy? What do I need to make to make a perfect one? The

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security features and the different elements and the properties and the thicknesses,

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the composition, and chemical properties and physical properties. So, I started from scratch.

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JACK: [MUSIC] The first thing Frank had to figure

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out was what country’s currency should he try to counterfeit?

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FRANK: I had traveled a ton, and you get to realize that there’s not a single place on

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the planet where they don’t take the US bank note. It works everywhere. I mean,

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even the darkest alleys to the largest shopping malls. Anywhere, any country,

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there’s not one place that’s not gonna accept it.

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JACK: Okay, so US currency it is. Even though he’s in Canada, he thinks he can still profit off this.

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Next step; which denomination should he copy? The one-dollar bill? The five-dollar bill? The ten,

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twenty, fifty, or hundred? This was another no-brainer for Frank,

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though. The US twenty-dollar bill was right there in the sweet spot of being

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a very common bill and worth enough to go through the hassle of making.

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FRANK: There are organizations all over the world that are gonna come after you to stop you. This is

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all they do. This is the purpose of why they were created. You need to be invisible. You

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need to not bring attention. You need to not stand out. So if you want to do a hundred dollars, well

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sure you can do that, ‘cause it’s five times the amount compared to twenty;

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sure. It looks like it makes sense. Doesn’t make sense at all ‘cause everyone’s gonna look

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more and gonna scrutinize more a hundred-dollar bill than they will a twenty. It’s added attention

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that you don’t want. You want less, as less as possible. A twenty is the one denomination that

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they – everyone used. This doesn’t raise anyone’s eyebrows. This is exactly the one you want.

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JACK: [MUSIC] Okay, these were relatively quick and easy questions to answer compared to what

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came next, because Frank had to figure out how to actually copy and print a twenty-dollar bill.

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That was going to take some serious research. He would start his research on the internet,

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but immediately his paranoia kicked in. If he googled how to create a counterfeit twenty-dollar

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bill, who would see that? His computer would have the history of it, but would Google track him for

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typing a search like that? He didn’t know, so he just didn’t want to take any chances,

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and went down to a coffee shop to start his research there. His first search was…

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FRANK: US bank note twenty security features. Something like that.

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JACK: Results popped up on the screen,

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and one of the first results was the US Secret Services website.

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FRANK: It’s literally one of the first sites if not the first site

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that I visited just ‘cause it pops up on top.

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JACK: Yeah, the Secret Service is responsible for protecting the president, but their first job,

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the one that they were actually founded for, is to safeguard US currency and stop

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counterfeiters. Their website’s history page is topped with an old-timey picture

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of an agent busting up a counterfeit coin operation. Further down, you find out that

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the Secret Service got started in 1865. It was just after the Civil War ended and there was a

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lot of counterfeit currency in the country. The federal government stood up the Secret Service

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to help crack down on all the fake money. They didn’t become presidential bodyguards until 1901,

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after President McKinley was assassinated. [MUSIC] So yeah, if you want to learn about US bank notes,

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the Secret Service’s website is a great place to start. They’ve got PDFs and links

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to other websites that explain the major features of all US currency. So, let’s

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take a look at the US twenty-dollar bill, since that’s what Frank wanted to copy.

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That’s the one with Andrew Jackson’s face on it. I’m gonna pull one out myself and walk you

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through what’s on here. Okay, so on the front of the bill there’s a serial number printed in

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the upper-left corner and the lower-right. Also in the lower-right, there’s a special 20 printed with

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color-shifting ink. It goes from copper to green depending on how you look at it. Over on the left,

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just left of the US Federal Reserve seal, there’s a security thread embedded in the

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paper. You have to hold it up to the light just to see it right. Then, that tiny thread, you can

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barely make out the words USA Twenty. Then there are little flags microprinted in the strip. If you

00:18:10.720 --> 00:18:15.360
keep holding the bill up to the light and look over to the right side, there’s a watermark of

00:18:15.360 --> 00:18:21.080
Andrew Jackson’s face. These are all things that servers, cashiers, and bank tellers might look for

00:18:21.080 --> 00:18:25.400
when taking cash. That’s why all this stuff is posted on the internet, so people can actually

00:18:25.400 --> 00:18:31.220
learn how to spot fake money. But for someone like Frank Bourassa, this was a valuable learning tool.

00:18:31.220 --> 00:18:39.180
FRANK: So, you know [00:20:00] more leaving this site than you did going in, which is progress.

00:18:39.180 --> 00:18:45.240
JACK: But still, how do you make all this? If you’re an aspiring counterfeiter like Frank and

00:18:45.240 --> 00:18:50.640
want to know more, the US Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing website is just

00:18:50.640 --> 00:18:57.360
a click away. [MUSIC] Their URL is very fitting; moneyfactory.gov. The Treasury Department is

00:18:57.360 --> 00:19:01.560
responsible for designing and printing the US’s paper money, but not coins. That’s the

00:19:01.560 --> 00:19:06.400
US Mint. On the Treasury’s website, you can read about the entire printing process from engraved

00:19:06.400 --> 00:19:11.760
printing plates to finished bank notes. Frank found this website too and was kind of amazed

00:19:11.760 --> 00:19:16.920
that they listed every step of how they print money. First, engravers scratch a bill’s design

00:19:16.920 --> 00:19:22.760
into different hunks of metal. The designs are then put together into one etching. This master

00:19:22.760 --> 00:19:27.720
gets copied over and over into a bigger metal plate, so that instead of a single engraving, you

00:19:27.720 --> 00:19:32.200
have a bunch laid out in a grid on a plate. For example, when they print the twenty-dollar bill,

00:19:32.200 --> 00:19:37.800
they arrange it in an eight-by-four grid, meaning there are thirty-two etchings or bills per sheet.

00:19:37.800 --> 00:19:42.680
Then these printing plates are loaded into a big industrial printing press where ink and paper is

00:19:42.680 --> 00:19:48.000
added. The site even says exactly where they buy the paper from, a company in Massachusetts called

00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:53.600
Crane & Co. Blank sheets of paper are sent through the printing press, plates get inked,

00:19:53.600 --> 00:19:58.120
and then pressed onto the paper. At the other end, the paper dries, and the sheets go through

00:19:58.120 --> 00:20:02.920
the process again for each color. Then the sheets go through the whole process again,

00:20:02.920 --> 00:20:07.480
printing on the back side. After that, there’s a few more finishing steps; serial numbers are

00:20:07.480 --> 00:20:13.000
added and the money is inspected for correctness. Finally, sheets are cut into individual bills,

00:20:13.000 --> 00:20:19.640
packaged, and shipped out. The US Treasury site says they can print about 8,000 sheets an hour,

00:20:19.640 --> 00:20:24.840
which if they printed twenties, that’s over $5 million printed an hour. Okay,

00:20:24.840 --> 00:20:29.560
that was a lot for Frank to take in. This is not going to be a simple process. But Frank

00:20:29.560 --> 00:20:35.560
thought it still was doable because at the end of the day, it’s just paper, ink, and printers.

00:20:35.560 --> 00:20:44.760
FRANK: The single most difficult feature to reproduce on the bank note is the feel.

00:20:44.760 --> 00:20:52.160
Everyone knows the feel ‘cause everyone is used to handling them every day. So,

00:20:52.160 --> 00:20:58.960
if you take a regular piece of paper and if you take – a bank, well, even in pitch dark,

00:20:58.960 --> 00:21:04.440
anyone’s gonna be able to tell this is not right, this is right. Everyone’s

00:21:04.440 --> 00:21:09.320
kind of an expert at it ‘cause everyone is so used to handling them every day.

00:21:09.320 --> 00:21:14.080
JACK: Getting the feel right starts with a specific blend of paper. According to the

00:21:14.080 --> 00:21:20.080
US Treasury’s website, that’s a 75%-25% cotton-linen mix, and the way the ink is

00:21:20.080 --> 00:21:24.440
laid on also adds a unique feel. It’s raised up off the paper just a little

00:21:24.440 --> 00:21:29.000
bit to give it some texture. You can test this on a twenty-dollar bill by running your finger

00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:34.200
over Andrew Jackson’s collar. You can feel it’s a little rough right there. Frank found

00:21:34.200 --> 00:21:38.560
that there are security fibers and chemicals also added to the paper mix, [MUSIC] stuff

00:21:38.560 --> 00:21:42.540
you have to know about if you want to beat something like a simple counterfeit pen.

00:21:42.540 --> 00:21:49.280
FRANK: You have to dig a ton to find the actual recipe. So,

00:21:49.280 --> 00:21:57.040
it’s just grinding research work that you need to be really good at. I’m extremely good at

00:21:57.040 --> 00:22:02.320
researching. It’s one of the stuff that I’m really good. I can find stuff, I can figure out stuff,

00:22:02.320 --> 00:22:09.400
and you have to apply yourself a ton to it to be able to dig out the recipe.

00:22:09.400 --> 00:22:14.400
JACK: Frank was still in his research phase, trying to understand every detail of what went

00:22:14.400 --> 00:22:19.400
into making a twenty-dollar bill, but he was more than willing to put in all this time and research

00:22:19.400 --> 00:22:25.960
because he knew the rewards were great, and that any tiny mistake on a bill could get him busted.

00:22:25.960 --> 00:22:31.753
He needed this to be exact and precise. He treated this research like rocket science.

00:22:31.753 --> 00:22:31.842
FRANK: You build a rocket or something, by the time you’re up to building that rocket,

00:22:31.842 --> 00:22:32.125
you have to have figured out what you need; this size engine, this place, and it needs to be this

00:22:32.125 --> 00:22:32.298
software. You have to have it figured out by the time you get to that. You can’t just say well,

00:22:32.298 --> 00:22:34.040
I’m gonna walk blindly and see what gives. No, you can’t. It’s tricky business for sure.

00:22:34.040 --> 00:22:39.680
JACK: Frank determined that the equipment used in this process was not consumer-grade stuff. Like,

00:22:39.680 --> 00:22:44.440
some kind of home office Inkjet printer would not make it look right and it would not make

00:22:44.440 --> 00:22:49.460
it feel right. So, he knew he had to get some expensive equipment to get this job done right.

00:22:49.460 --> 00:22:54.720
FRANK: Who wants to invest into something that can land you in jail for fifty years,

00:22:54.720 --> 00:22:56.840
producing something that’s gonna crack or smear?

00:22:56.840 --> 00:23:01.240
JACK: Frank is not the kind of guy who practices with the wrong equipment and

00:23:01.240 --> 00:23:05.960
slowly improves over time. He’d rather get all the right equipment from day one and get

00:23:05.960 --> 00:23:11.280
as close to perfect as possible on his first print. This means he needed to understand the

00:23:11.280 --> 00:23:15.280
process in so much [00:25:00] depth that he could replicate the exact process that the

00:23:15.280 --> 00:23:20.620
US Treasury follows step-by-step in order to make his money look exactly the same.

00:23:20.620 --> 00:23:23.800
FRANK: I had worked, I don’t – thousands of hours

00:23:23.800 --> 00:23:29.946
on it. Thousands of hours. This is what you need to get, and not anything different.

00:23:29.946 --> 00:23:34.840
JACK: [MUSIC] Frank planned to print a lot of money. He was ready to invest hundreds of

00:23:34.840 --> 00:23:40.000
thousands of dollars from his own savings and go into debt to make this work. He penciled out a

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:46.240
plan; by buying this amount of ink and that amount of paper would allow him to print twelve million

00:23:46.240 --> 00:23:54.880
twenty-dollar bills. That’s $250 million worth of fake money. But once he printed all that money,

00:23:54.880 --> 00:23:59.240
then what? He can’t just stick it in the bank and retire; the bank would be too

00:23:59.240 --> 00:24:03.680
suspicious of somebody walking in with twelve million twenty-dollar bills. So,

00:24:03.680 --> 00:24:09.560
he would need a plan to launder this money once he got it. He already had connections with some drug

00:24:09.560 --> 00:24:15.640
traffickers and criminals. His plan was to sell each twenty-dollar bill to them for $6 each. If he

00:24:15.640 --> 00:24:22.880
could sell all twelve million of his bills, this would result in him making $75 million from this.

00:24:22.880 --> 00:24:29.320
He looked at this number; $75 million. That was the goal, and to Frank,

00:24:29.320 --> 00:24:35.560
that was worth going through all this to make it work. Stay with us because after the break,

00:24:35.560 --> 00:24:46.240
Frank goes all-in. Frank pinned that number firmly in his conscious;

00:24:46.240 --> 00:24:53.680
$75 million. He knew that in order to get to that payday, it would take a lot of work, so he

00:24:53.680 --> 00:24:59.520
began his lengthy shopping spree of supplies. The big things he needed to get were the ink,

00:24:59.520 --> 00:25:05.360
the printing plates, the printing presses, and the paper. We’ll start with the printing presses

00:25:05.360 --> 00:25:11.640
because that’s the foundation. Everything has to go through that. What Frank needed was an offset

00:25:11.640 --> 00:25:16.400
printing press. It’s one of the types of printers that the US Treasury uses to print their money.

00:25:16.400 --> 00:25:21.040
They’re good for printing lots of pages really fast. It’s the kind of thing that you’d print a

00:25:21.040 --> 00:25:26.747
magazine or newspaper with. [MUSIC] There’s some videos on YouTube which explains how they work.

00:25:26.747 --> 00:25:30.840
VIDEO AUDIO: A sheet-fed offset press consists of four main sections…

00:25:30.840 --> 00:25:35.080
JACK: There’s a feeder, a printing system, delivery system, and control system. These things

00:25:35.080 --> 00:25:40.680
are huge. The printing system consists of two main parts; a place to put ink and a place for these

00:25:40.680 --> 00:25:45.560
metal plates. Basically, a metal plate has an etching of what should be printed, and a layer of

00:25:45.560 --> 00:25:50.280
ink is spread across that, and then it’s pressed down onto the paper. So, paper comes through,

00:25:50.280 --> 00:25:55.360
gets printed, then it has to dry, and then it goes to another color and does it again, and then it

00:25:55.360 --> 00:25:59.920
has to get flipped over, and new plates have to be added for the back side of the bills, and then the

00:25:59.920 --> 00:26:04.640
backs get printed. After that, the paper has to dry again, and then it can be cut into individual

00:26:04.640 --> 00:26:09.320
bills. I think what you really need to know here is that buying an offset printing press is totally

00:26:09.320 --> 00:26:14.040
legal and they’re fairly common. Any large print shop that prints magazines or newspapers will have

00:26:14.040 --> 00:26:18.640
one, and you can buy a used printing press for a few hundred dollars up to a few thousand dollars

00:26:18.640 --> 00:26:23.200
depending on what year it was made and what colors it prints, and accessories. But Frank

00:26:23.200 --> 00:26:29.305
was out of his element here. He did not know how to shop for a printing press, so he needed help.

00:26:29.305 --> 00:26:34.240
FRANK: [MUSIC] You gotta find someone who knows everything about it. Like a used car; is this one

00:26:34.240 --> 00:26:39.320
a good used car or is it a – junk? It’s the same thing, so you gotta find someone who knows about

00:26:39.320 --> 00:26:45.320
it, who’s gonna go check him out, inspect them, and tell you yeah, this one’s good, this one’s

00:26:45.320 --> 00:26:52.760
crap. This dude that you need to do that, well, I didn’t know any such dude any more than you do.

00:26:52.760 --> 00:26:56.880
JACK: Frank had to find a guy, which he did, but he wanted to be careful.

00:26:56.880 --> 00:27:02.320
Frank couldn’t say he needed a press to make counterfeit money, so he came up with a story,

00:27:02.320 --> 00:27:07.200
telling this guy that he was given a contract to print pamphlets for a shampoo company,

00:27:07.200 --> 00:27:11.480
and he needed help buying a printer and to learn how to use it. With this guy’s help,

00:27:11.480 --> 00:27:17.560
Frank bought a used Heidelberg four-color offset printing press, and this thing was huge, like the

00:27:17.560 --> 00:27:23.600
size of a truck. With it, Frank could pretty much print anything; the shampoo pamphlets, posters,

00:27:23.600 --> 00:27:29.240
magazines, or millions of fake twenty-dollar bills. Frank rented a large building from a

00:27:29.240 --> 00:27:34.480
farmer near Trois-Rivières, the Canadian town where he lived. It was a little bit outside of

00:27:34.480 --> 00:27:40.720
town. The building looked like a warehouse; there were no windows, no signs, nice and discreet. It

00:27:40.720 --> 00:27:45.800
even had a little bit of green paint on it, the perfect place to print some money. They cut a deal

00:27:45.800 --> 00:27:51.600
on a no-questions-asked basis. It would become Frank’s hideout and headquarters for the rest of

00:27:51.600 --> 00:27:56.800
the operation. [MUSIC] He had the printing press delivered into the building and closed up the big,

00:27:56.800 --> 00:28:02.580
roll-up doors. Then Frank paid this printing guy to show him how to run everything.

00:28:02.580 --> 00:28:06.240
FRANK: You need to become an expert at printing one thing. There’s a bunch of

00:28:06.240 --> 00:28:11.160
different things you could print that implied [00:30:00] different skills and

00:28:11.160 --> 00:28:16.460
different techniques which I don’t know, but this one, I need to know everything about.

00:28:16.460 --> 00:28:20.280
JACK: Frank got busy learning and practicing.

00:28:20.280 --> 00:28:26.200
FRANK: You gotta practice and you gotta know when – how does it look when this is too far off,

00:28:26.200 --> 00:28:31.840
then when this dial is too high or too low, and when this – so, you gotta practice, practice,

00:28:31.840 --> 00:28:37.200
practice, which is what I did. At the same time, well, you’re just fine tuning until

00:28:37.200 --> 00:28:41.680
you get to oh yeah, now I’m getting – now I’m getting – oh, this – yeah,

00:28:41.680 --> 00:28:46.600
now I’m getting it. Then you come to a point like anything else; if you just keep at it,

00:28:46.600 --> 00:28:52.720
well, you get good, then you say alright, now I’ve got this. Now you’re good to go.

00:28:52.720 --> 00:28:57.960
JACK: There were still lots of supplies Frank needed for his counterfeit scheme, like ink. He’d

00:28:57.960 --> 00:29:04.360
need the CMYK inks and color-shifting inks. These were relatively easy to get, though. He looked

00:29:04.360 --> 00:29:09.360
around online and placed an order. There’s nothing fishy about ordering some ink, even if it’s the

00:29:09.360 --> 00:29:15.320
exact same kind that’s on money. Next, he needed eight separate metal printing plates, one for each

00:29:15.320 --> 00:29:20.840
color, and one set for the front, and one set for the back. Each plate contains a grid of what the

00:29:20.840 --> 00:29:26.640
twenty-dollar bills will look like, just like how the US Treasury does it. This was tricky though,

00:29:26.640 --> 00:29:31.920
because these metal plates actually have the lines etched into them. The ink is put on them and then

00:29:31.920 --> 00:29:37.280
pressed onto the paper. Frank doesn’t have the machine to etch these metal plates themselves,

00:29:37.280 --> 00:29:41.840
so he had to order these somewhere. But printing plates are actually pretty common,

00:29:41.840 --> 00:29:45.320
so it was actually easy for him to find a company willing to make these without

00:29:45.320 --> 00:29:49.880
them making any kind of fuss. He just needed to figure out what kind of file they needed,

00:29:49.880 --> 00:29:54.340
and then create the etching and get it all worked up in Photoshop, and then send it to them.

00:29:54.340 --> 00:29:58.360
FRANK: This is by far the trickiest part of it

00:29:58.360 --> 00:30:01.960
all. [MUSIC] It is insane to get that. It really is.

00:30:01.960 --> 00:30:06.920
JACK: Because the bills themselves are very intricate; they’re flowery and ornate, and with

00:30:06.920 --> 00:30:12.880
multiple colors. Getting it exactly right wasn’t straightforward and took time and precision. He

00:30:12.880 --> 00:30:18.680
spent a long time zooming far into photos of twenty-dollar bills and analyzing every inch of

00:30:18.680 --> 00:30:24.100
it. By the time he had his plate drawings done, he knew more about twenties than ever before.

00:30:24.100 --> 00:30:29.880
FRANK: I mean, every pixel of it looks like a twenty-dollar bank

00:30:29.880 --> 00:30:36.640
note ‘cause it’s what it is. It couldn’t be more obvious that it’s what it is.

00:30:36.640 --> 00:30:39.600
JACK: Okay, at this point he has the printer, the ink,

00:30:39.600 --> 00:30:45.160
and the metal plates. The last step is to get the paper. If you ask any counterfeiter,

00:30:45.160 --> 00:30:50.080
they’ll say that this is the hardest part. This was going to be the biggest obstacle.

00:30:50.080 --> 00:30:54.820
Frank searched the internet to try to find someone who can make this exact blend of paper.

00:30:54.820 --> 00:31:00.240
FRANK: You gotta find someone who’s gonna want to do it for you, ‘cause you can’t go

00:31:00.240 --> 00:31:07.320
with Staples and say hey, could you get me that? It’s just not gonna happen, right? So,

00:31:07.320 --> 00:31:13.460
you gotta find someone somewhere who’s gonna want to do that for you without it looking suspicious.

00:31:13.460 --> 00:31:18.560
JACK: The US Treasury gets its paper from Crane & Co. According to their website,

00:31:18.560 --> 00:31:22.760
Crane has been around for over two hundred years and they’ve been under a contract

00:31:22.760 --> 00:31:29.160
to make the US bank notes ever since 1879. So, why not just buy the paper from Crane?

00:31:29.160 --> 00:31:35.520
FRANK: If you call Crane Paper and you say hey, dude, could you sell me a couple of

00:31:35.520 --> 00:31:41.280
pallets or a couple of rolls, or a – well, who’s gonna want to call them specifically

00:31:41.280 --> 00:31:45.866
to have that specific type of paper? They’re gonna call the cops right away.

00:31:45.866 --> 00:31:49.720
JACK: [MUSIC] So, Frank started looking at other paper mills, but with this step,

00:31:49.720 --> 00:31:55.360
he needed to be very careful. He figured paper mills would have an eye out for counterfeiters,

00:31:55.360 --> 00:31:58.320
that this paper thing was a particularly risky part of

00:31:58.320 --> 00:32:02.440
the entire scheme. He didn’t want to burn himself before printing a single dollar.

00:32:02.440 --> 00:32:09.240
FRANK: Law-abiding people don’t like criminals. It’s just the nature of the thing, and it’s fine

00:32:09.240 --> 00:32:16.000
that it’s like that. It’s supposed to be like that. Law-abiding people who see something illegal

00:32:16.000 --> 00:32:20.560
going on, they’re gonna call, they’re gonna tell, they’re gonna – they – this is what they do,

00:32:20.560 --> 00:32:27.320
‘cause they see something that needs to be stopped. It’s just how it is. You have to

00:32:27.320 --> 00:32:34.280
be mindful of that. You need one screw-up and it’s gonna be the same as if you screwed the

00:32:34.280 --> 00:32:40.160
whole thing up. Any single point you screw up, it’s the same results; the end of you.

00:32:40.160 --> 00:32:45.680
JACK: To keep a low profile, Frank didn’t even try to ask any paper companies in the US or

00:32:45.680 --> 00:32:51.560
Canada. That’s too close to the US. He wanted to find a paper company far off in a distant land.

00:32:51.560 --> 00:33:01.160
FRANK: So, you end up looking further away. So, you end up in Europe or Asia or something,

00:33:01.160 --> 00:33:06.320
which is exactly what I did and why I did it, ‘cause it’s the obvious thing to do.

00:33:06.320 --> 00:33:10.760
JACK: Again, he came up with a fake story as to why he needed [00:35:00] this paper,

00:33:10.760 --> 00:33:13.600
just to convince any suspicious paper company why

00:33:13.600 --> 00:33:18.280
he’s asking about this exact kind of paper that the US money is printed on.

00:33:18.280 --> 00:33:26.240
FRANK: I had set up a fake company. We were this investment firm. I was one of the people

00:33:26.240 --> 00:33:32.760
in charge of some department over there, and I was given the task to – they wanted to produce

00:33:32.760 --> 00:33:41.960
a new bond for one of the clients that this firm had that I created. So, I was the one in

00:33:41.960 --> 00:33:49.426
charge of creating this new bond along with the client so that everything is perfect.

00:33:49.426 --> 00:33:53.720
JACK: [MUSIC] His cover story was that his company was printing bond certificates,

00:33:53.720 --> 00:33:58.320
which is not so common anymore, but some companies still do print these. Think of a bond as sort of

00:33:58.320 --> 00:34:03.800
an official IOU or a loan from a company to a person. These bonds look really special,

00:34:03.800 --> 00:34:08.880
sort of like a stock certificate. They have floral borders and big numbers printed on them and that

00:34:08.880 --> 00:34:14.640
kind of stuff, and it’s completely legal for someone to create their own corporate bonds. So,

00:34:14.640 --> 00:34:19.720
this was a good story as to why he needed a very specific paper that looked and felt

00:34:19.720 --> 00:34:26.600
prestigious. So, what Frank needed specifically was paper that is a 75%-25% cotton-linen blend

00:34:26.600 --> 00:34:32.520
with a 21 lb. thickness, with a watermark, and a security strip going through it. He thought

00:34:32.520 --> 00:34:38.000
if he asked for all this at once, it might raise suspicion, so he researched tirelessly online,

00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:41.720
but nobody was selling paper like that. So, he knew he needed to find someone to

00:34:41.720 --> 00:34:47.240
make it for him custom. He called up places and started asking some vague questions.

00:34:47.240 --> 00:34:55.640
FRANK: I’m looking to get a custom-type paper for a client of mine who’s looking for this. So,

00:34:55.640 --> 00:34:59.000
is that stuff that you do or not? Or how does that work?

00:34:59.000 --> 00:35:02.760
JACK: Some said we don’t do any custom orders. Others said…

00:35:02.760 --> 00:35:05.080
FRANK: Yeah, sure, we can do custom. Alright,

00:35:05.080 --> 00:35:09.740
so, what’s the quantity? How does that work? What’s the minimum quantity that you can do?

00:35:09.740 --> 00:35:15.040
JACK: Then they might say something like, our minimum for a custom order is twenty truckloads.

00:35:15.040 --> 00:35:17.866
FRANK: So, I said well, that’s not gonna work.

00:35:17.866 --> 00:35:21.240
JACK: [MUSIC] Frank couldn’t afford that much paper, but also, his warehouse couldn’t hold

00:35:21.240 --> 00:35:27.120
twenty truckloads, and getting that much delivered would also be harder to keep secret. He needed a

00:35:27.120 --> 00:35:31.960
smaller run which made him one of those annoying customers that large paper companies don’t like

00:35:31.960 --> 00:35:37.720
dealing with. He looked around online for smaller companies, even looking at maps to find mills and

00:35:37.720 --> 00:35:42.840
small buildings, hoping that they’d be willing to do a limited run. Finally, he found a paper

00:35:42.840 --> 00:35:49.320
company in Switzerland that was a good match. This company was willing to do a custom batch just for

00:35:49.320 --> 00:35:54.760
him, and they were willing to sell him just a few pallets of paper. So, he started asking for one

00:35:54.760 --> 00:35:58.760
thing at a time. First, he would say something like he wanted the feel to be just right,

00:35:58.760 --> 00:36:03.000
and that he likes the feel of a cotton-linen blended paper, and asked if they can make it like

00:36:03.000 --> 00:36:07.680
that. They said yeah, sure, what kind of blend are you thinking? He’s probably acting like well,

00:36:07.680 --> 00:36:12.840
50%-50% is probably too floppy, so I’m thinking like, 75%-25% blend. That’s probably good for

00:36:12.840 --> 00:36:18.080
a bond certificate, right? What do you think? They said yeah, well, 75%-25% blend is doable.

00:36:18.080 --> 00:36:24.480
FRANK: Then you have to have special security fibers that are in the bank note with specific

00:36:24.480 --> 00:36:30.480
ratios, so you gotta find those fibers, you gotta source them somewhere, you gotta send

00:36:30.480 --> 00:36:37.520
them to the paper mill. You got chemicals that you need to send to them to add to the mix,

00:36:37.520 --> 00:36:45.020
‘cause the bank note got chemical properties that no other papers have. There’s a reason.

00:36:45.020 --> 00:36:47.960
JACK: That reason, of course, is to prevent counterfeiting.

00:36:47.960 --> 00:36:51.080
FRANK: It’s all stuff that you need to tell them. Well,

00:36:51.080 --> 00:36:54.500
if I send you this, could you possibly add that to the mix?

00:36:54.500 --> 00:36:58.000
JACK: Then there was the watermark. On an official twenty-dollar bill, there’s

00:36:58.000 --> 00:37:03.360
a picture of Andrew Jackson’s face [MUSIC] sort of etched into the paper itself. It’s not printed on;

00:37:03.360 --> 00:37:09.320
it’s pressed into the paper when the paper’s still wet. It’s not something that Frank can add later.

00:37:09.320 --> 00:37:11.480
FRANK: Just to have the watermark,

00:37:11.480 --> 00:37:18.160
you have to have a whole drum that rolls on the paper while it’s in the pulp state.

00:37:18.160 --> 00:37:23.000
JACK: So, Frank needs to get someone to make him a drum that the paper company can use to

00:37:23.000 --> 00:37:27.240
add the watermark. He figured it was better for him to get the drum made and then send that

00:37:27.240 --> 00:37:32.360
to the paper company. So, he shopped around online for people who make watermark drums,

00:37:32.360 --> 00:37:36.880
and he specifically looked for people who would not know what Andrew Jackson looked like.

00:37:36.880 --> 00:37:43.760
FRANK: Andrew Jackson to you, I mean, is this whole – everything character. He’s a lot of

00:37:43.760 --> 00:37:52.920
things to you. Well, the dude from Kazakhstan, on the bank note, well, he’s a dude to them,

00:37:52.920 --> 00:37:57.160
too. He’s got a date of birth, he’s super important, he’s – well, you know nothing

00:37:57.160 --> 00:38:01.920
about this dude. You don’t know. You don’t care. You have no clue what he looks like,

00:38:01.920 --> 00:38:06.280
what he does. You don’t, so if someone from Kazakhstan calls you and say well,

00:38:06.280 --> 00:38:11.000
you want to do this watermark of this dude, [00:40:00] you’re not gonna know about it.

00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:14.760
You’re not gonna care. It’s not illegal in your country. You don’t know the dude. You’re

00:38:14.760 --> 00:38:18.680
not gonna think twice about it. You’re just gonna – yeah, sure, I can do that. Send me

00:38:18.680 --> 00:38:23.986
whatever artwork you want of your dude, and I – yeah, I’m gonna make this watermark for you.

00:38:23.986 --> 00:38:27.760
JACK: [MUSIC] So, now that he had the watermark drum made, he simply sent it to the paper company

00:38:27.760 --> 00:38:32.880
in Switzerland and asked them to use this drum to add a watermark. They were fine with this request

00:38:32.880 --> 00:38:37.760
since their machinery supported that, and this plan was working. They didn’t ask any questions

00:38:37.760 --> 00:38:41.920
about who it was or what was on the watermark, and if they did, he was prepared to say it was

00:38:41.920 --> 00:38:46.400
the portrait of their CEO or something. At this point, the paper company has the order

00:38:46.400 --> 00:38:51.840
of the specific blend with 21 lb. thickness and the watermark. He tells them that’s it;

00:38:51.840 --> 00:38:56.560
that’s perfect, but he needs to check with his boss one more time before approving it to be

00:38:56.560 --> 00:39:01.960
made. But he was really lying; he really needed one more featured added, but his tactic is just

00:39:01.960 --> 00:39:07.360
to slowly add these little features one by one so that it doesn’t raise any concerns at the paper

00:39:07.360 --> 00:39:12.920
company. The last thing he needed to get right was the security strip, the little strip inside

00:39:12.920 --> 00:39:17.920
the paper that can only be seen when you hold it up to the light. It says USA Twenty on it,

00:39:17.920 --> 00:39:23.620
and has an American flag. This was a very important feature that Frank really wanted to add.

00:39:23.620 --> 00:39:27.780
FRANK: When you get to the security strip, that’s something else.

00:39:27.780 --> 00:39:31.920
JACK: It’s almost like a thread. It’s very thin and needs to run across the

00:39:31.920 --> 00:39:37.480
paper. Asking for it to say USA Twenty was really making Frank nervous. This might

00:39:37.480 --> 00:39:42.240
be too obvious of what he’s requesting, that it looks an awful lot like US money.

00:39:42.240 --> 00:39:47.800
FRANK: The deeper you go into the different components of the paper,

00:39:47.800 --> 00:39:53.000
well, the more specific it becomes, and it looks like bank note paper.

00:39:53.000 --> 00:39:57.280
JACK: His trick here was to first ask them to make a security strip that

00:39:57.280 --> 00:40:01.380
says something else, which would seem less suspicious to the paper company.

00:40:01.380 --> 00:40:06.720
FRANK: The conversation that I had with them about the strip [MUSIC] until the

00:40:06.720 --> 00:40:13.360
very last minute was that it was going to be USA thirty’s and forty dollar bonds. It wasn’t

00:40:13.360 --> 00:40:18.400
going to be twenty. There was no mention of twenties until the very last second,

00:40:18.400 --> 00:40:25.080
‘cause twenty tells immediately what it could be. Maybe they pick up on it,

00:40:25.080 --> 00:40:29.560
maybe they wouldn’t. But if you wait a little bit, then you’re building

00:40:29.560 --> 00:40:36.100
on this rapport with this person, then you have some – a kind of a history with them.

00:40:36.100 --> 00:40:40.120
JACK: Frank then called them and made the final adjustment to the paper;

00:40:40.120 --> 00:40:45.440
the boss changed his mind and only wants it to say Twenty on the security strip. That worked.

00:40:45.440 --> 00:40:50.480
Maybe they trusted Frank. Maybe they believed his story, or maybe they just didn’t care. Either way,

00:40:50.480 --> 00:40:55.680
they met all of his requests and made the paper. They shipped it across the Atlantic

00:40:55.680 --> 00:41:02.280
to a port in Montreal, about an hour and a half from Trois-Rivières where Frank’s operation was.

00:41:02.280 --> 00:41:07.240
This would be the last major step in Frank’s plan, but getting the paper from the port to

00:41:07.240 --> 00:41:12.720
his headquarters still needed to be done. First he had to wait a few weeks for it to arrive,

00:41:12.720 --> 00:41:18.080
but he ordered it under a fake name and to an address far away from him, so he needs a plan

00:41:18.080 --> 00:41:24.120
for picking up this paper. To do that, he needs to be extremely careful in case the paper company

00:41:24.120 --> 00:41:30.160
tipped off authorities. He had to plan to pick up the paper assuming it was under surveillance.

00:41:30.160 --> 00:41:34.920
FRANK: It’s a critical step of the operation where you can go

00:41:34.920 --> 00:41:42.280
from anonymous to being known by everyone who might be doing surveillance on it.

00:41:42.280 --> 00:41:45.760
JACK: Yeah, up to this point, the paper company didn’t know Frank’s real name,

00:41:45.760 --> 00:41:50.280
and if he just comes and picks it up himself, now his real identity is connected to it, and if

00:41:50.280 --> 00:41:53.880
authorities were following the paper, they could arrest or question him or whoever’s

00:41:53.880 --> 00:41:58.380
picking it up and possibly nab Frank, so he needed to be careful picking it up.

00:41:58.380 --> 00:42:05.240
FRANK: There might be fifty people having eyes on it. There might be zero. Both scenarios are gonna

00:42:05.240 --> 00:42:10.760
look exactly the same ‘cause there’s no chances of them stopping you. They’re gonna

00:42:10.760 --> 00:42:15.520
want to roll with it and see where you’re going. This is what they want to know.

00:42:15.520 --> 00:42:18.920
JACK: So many scenarios went through Frank’s head about how the authorities

00:42:18.920 --> 00:42:22.800
might try to catch him if they were watching the paper. He worked really

00:42:22.800 --> 00:42:26.160
hard to get to this point and did not want to screw things up now.

00:42:26.160 --> 00:42:32.720
FRANK: So, you gotta try somehow to find out if there’s surveillance on it or not.

00:42:32.720 --> 00:42:37.760
JACK: Frank sat and thought for a few days and came up with an elaborate plan to get the

00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:43.600
paper to his warehouse. He was going to need multiple vehicles and drivers. He rounded up

00:42:43.600 --> 00:42:47.680
what he needed, explained the plan to the other guys, and it was time to start the

00:42:47.680 --> 00:42:55.320
mission. All was set. [MUSIC] He began phase one; surveillance. Once Frank heard the paper arrived,

00:42:55.320 --> 00:42:59.640
he went down to the port and spent a few days just watching the port and

00:42:59.640 --> 00:43:05.040
where the paper was. He wanted to sit and see what cars came in and out of the port,

00:43:05.040 --> 00:43:09.120
and if someone looked like they were also watching the paper. Now, keep in mind,

00:43:09.120 --> 00:43:13.720
he ordered [00:45:00] multiple pallets of paper, so it’s a big load, and it was sitting at this

00:43:13.720 --> 00:43:18.880
port which handles shipments like this all the time. But after a few days of watching,

00:43:18.880 --> 00:43:25.440
everything seemed calm there. Phase one was complete. Onto phase two; get the paper from

00:43:25.440 --> 00:43:31.540
the port onto the truck. Frank got a truck and a driver to go down and get the shipment.

00:43:31.540 --> 00:43:35.586
FRANK: So, my guy went to pick it up, and then he left.

00:43:35.586 --> 00:43:38.800
JACK: [MUSIC] At this point they’re on the road, and three vehicles are involved;

00:43:38.800 --> 00:43:43.920
there’s the truck with the paper in it, Frank is driving his car behind that, and there’s a

00:43:43.920 --> 00:43:49.840
third person driving another car. They were all communicating with each other through radios.

00:43:49.840 --> 00:43:57.120
FRANK: So, I had hired a different guy. His job was to follow my first guy who

00:43:57.120 --> 00:44:03.460
was in the truck with the paper. He was to follow him in a car right behind him.

00:44:03.460 --> 00:44:08.100
JACK: So, it was the truck, and directly behind that truck was this other driver that he hired.

00:44:08.100 --> 00:44:16.360
FRANK: So, I had planned out a route going from the port leading to the highway. I said,

00:44:16.360 --> 00:44:23.790
I cut a route where the entrance to the highway, at one point, it narrows down to one lane.

00:44:23.790 --> 00:44:27.480
JACK: The plan was that when they got on this narrow bridge, Frank would have the truck over

00:44:27.480 --> 00:44:31.800
first, and then the guy right behind the truck would block the bridge as soon as the truck went

00:44:31.800 --> 00:44:36.540
over, like fake a breakdown or something and block all the lanes so no cars could get by.

00:44:36.540 --> 00:44:39.800
FRANK: So, whoever was following behind, well,

00:44:39.800 --> 00:44:46.040
they couldn’t follow anymore ‘cause he was stuck in traffic with cars piling up behind.

00:44:46.040 --> 00:44:51.840
This guy was paid to stall his car twenty minutes right in that one-lane thing there.

00:44:51.840 --> 00:44:56.840
JACK: Then Frank would watch the other motorists to see how their reaction was to the situation.

00:44:56.840 --> 00:45:01.080
FRANK: If you see people jumping out of their cars and running

00:45:01.080 --> 00:45:06.180
on foot to try to switch vehicles, you can say well, this is not good.

00:45:06.180 --> 00:45:10.840
JACK: So, they got on the bridge, the truck went over, and then Frank’s other driver hit

00:45:10.840 --> 00:45:15.400
the brakes in the middle, causing all lanes of traffic on the bridge to come to a stop. The

00:45:15.400 --> 00:45:19.280
guy got out and popped the hood and threw his hands up in the air. Frank watched as

00:45:19.280 --> 00:45:24.080
the traffic started to pile up. Motorists were angry, but nobody was doing anything

00:45:24.080 --> 00:45:27.520
like jumping on the roof of their car with binoculars on the truck, or people

00:45:27.520 --> 00:45:32.080
on some kind of radio telling other cars that they’re stuck at the bridge. Then Frank craned

00:45:32.080 --> 00:45:37.840
his neck skyward and looked for a helicopter or airplane, but he didn’t see anything. Everything

00:45:37.840 --> 00:45:43.560
seemed fine. He radioed to the guy stuck on the bridge to pack it up and move on; it’s all clear.

00:45:43.560 --> 00:45:48.000
FRANK: So, the only thing that was left, possibly, was electronic surveillance,

00:45:48.000 --> 00:45:53.880
like a bug somewhere in the box or in one of the pallets or something like that.

00:45:53.880 --> 00:45:57.640
JACK: Frank had a plan for that, too. They weren’t going to take the paper directly to the print

00:45:57.640 --> 00:46:02.640
shop. Instead, he asked the driver to drive the truck around for a while and then park it in a lot

00:46:02.640 --> 00:46:07.820
about a half-hour from Trois-Rivières. Then they’d leave the truck parked there for a few days.

00:46:07.820 --> 00:46:14.480
FRANK: We put surveillance on the car for three days there, see if anyone would come close or

00:46:14.480 --> 00:46:20.120
circle around, cars that would come back a couple times, anything that would stand out,

00:46:20.120 --> 00:46:24.560
once again. Not that there was necessarily going to be anything, but you gotta try.

00:46:24.560 --> 00:46:30.040
JACK: After three days, nothing. So, onto the final phase. They wanted to switch the

00:46:30.040 --> 00:46:35.000
paper from that truck to another truck. By this point, Frank hired a few guys that he

00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:40.120
trusted to help do the printing. He had them thoroughly go through every box, looking for

00:46:40.120 --> 00:46:45.360
any kind of electronic tracking device. They checked the paper, the boxes, the pallets. It

00:46:45.360 --> 00:46:50.420
all looked good. They loaded these boxes onto new pallets and put them in the second truck.

00:46:50.420 --> 00:46:59.960
FRANK: So, by now, I was sure that we were free. I was sure enough to the point where I drove the

00:46:59.960 --> 00:47:09.266
truck to my print shop. This is how sure – how safe I felt about it being not bugged.

00:47:09.266 --> 00:47:14.200
JACK: [MUSIC] This was the moment Frank had worked towards for months and months. He says he spent

00:47:14.200 --> 00:47:22.040
about $320,000 of his own money getting all this equipment and supplies. But now, everything was

00:47:22.040 --> 00:47:27.580
in place to start printing counterfeit money. He was giddy with excitement at this point.

00:47:27.580 --> 00:47:34.880
FRANK: Jesus fuck, I mean, this is really it. It’s like the official beginning of the race,

00:47:34.880 --> 00:47:38.320
is what it is. You have all you need, you don’t need anything else,

00:47:38.320 --> 00:47:42.140
no one can stop you at this point ‘cause you haven’t sold anything.

00:47:42.140 --> 00:47:44.600
JACK: He taught the other guys how to use the printer,

00:47:44.600 --> 00:47:48.080
and they practiced with regular paper, but now they were ready to do their

00:47:48.080 --> 00:47:54.025
first test run with the right paper and the right ink. It was showtime.

00:47:54.025 --> 00:47:57.120
FRANK: [MUSIC] Now just a matter of re-tuning everything until you hit

00:47:57.120 --> 00:48:01.960
everything perfectly where it needs to be. Then you’re fully dialed-in,

00:48:01.960 --> 00:48:09.023
exactly the right color, perfectly the right paper, everything. Now you’re good to go.

00:48:09.023 --> 00:48:12.960
JACK: [00:50:00] The test print looked good. The money felt right. The plan

00:48:12.960 --> 00:48:17.520
was working. Frank says the results were impressive and that they’d shuffle real

00:48:17.520 --> 00:48:20.360
bills in with the fake ones to see if they could spot the difference.

00:48:20.360 --> 00:48:25.120
FRANK: Try to tell which is which. You can’t tell. Just no way to tell.

00:48:25.120 --> 00:48:28.280
JACK: The plan was going good, but there was a lot of work still needed

00:48:28.280 --> 00:48:33.400
to be done. Printing twelve million twenty-dollar bills takes a long time.

00:48:33.400 --> 00:48:40.520
FRANK: It sure wasn’t party mode. At this point it’s just factory work. That’s exactly what it

00:48:40.520 --> 00:48:48.760
is. You just go in and yeah, you put your suit on, and then you print, print, print all day,

00:48:48.760 --> 00:48:55.600
all day, all day, and then you leave. Then the next day. It’s literally grinding factory work.

00:48:55.600 --> 00:49:00.000
JACK: [MUSIC] Frank had his helpers doing a lot of work. This operation was just too much for

00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.160
one person; opening boxes of paper, feeding it into the printers, loading up the ink, getting

00:49:04.160 --> 00:49:08.340
the metal plates in place, printing one side, letting it dry, then printing on the other side.

00:49:08.340 --> 00:49:15.480
FRANK: I mean, printing presses just spew out paper. You just feed trolleys at the end of it,

00:49:15.480 --> 00:49:19.560
and then it will stack up trolleys a couple feet thick.

00:49:19.560 --> 00:49:23.600
JACK: Then they take big stacks of paper off the trolley carts, cut the bills,

00:49:23.600 --> 00:49:28.280
and put some finishing touches on them. It seemed that Frank had made some very

00:49:28.280 --> 00:49:33.160
convincing twenty-dollar bills. He was counterfeiting millions of US dollars

00:49:33.160 --> 00:49:37.600
and he wasn’t slowing down. His plan was to print the money as fast as he could,

00:49:37.600 --> 00:49:42.425
then stash it somewhere, and then hide all the evidence that this ever happened.

00:49:42.425 --> 00:49:46.700
FRANK: [MUSIC] Well, you don’t want that sitting there. You want to get rid of that yesterday.

00:49:46.700 --> 00:49:55.080
JACK: Frank and his crew were able to print 12.5 million twenty-dollar bills. That’s $250 million

00:49:55.080 --> 00:50:02.840
worth of fake money, and that’s incredible. It looked real, it smelled real, it felt real. Now,

00:50:02.840 --> 00:50:08.680
Frank paid his crew real nice for this. Nobody was allowed to take any of this fake money home

00:50:08.680 --> 00:50:14.040
or anything, and Frank sure wasn’t going to spend this money himself. That’s just too risky. You

00:50:14.040 --> 00:50:17.960
don’t want to show up at a gas station, buy gas for twenty dollars, and then when the fake bills

00:50:17.960 --> 00:50:21.840
get discovered, there’s all this surveillance footage of him pulling the money out. You don’t

00:50:21.840 --> 00:50:27.580
go through all that to get caught over twenty dollars. He needed to sell this money, and fast.

00:50:27.580 --> 00:50:33.200
FRANK: So, you got tons of money piled up. It’s good ‘cause it’s a possible profit,

00:50:33.200 --> 00:50:38.360
but if you were to get caught, well, it’s evidence against you. So,

00:50:38.360 --> 00:50:43.360
you’re in a hurry to get the paper, you’re in a hurry to get printed, you’re happy when you do,

00:50:43.360 --> 00:50:48.480
and when you do, you’re in a hurry to get rid of it. ‘Cause if you get caught with it,

00:50:48.480 --> 00:50:53.720
it’s not good. It’s a end-of-your-life scenario. [MUSIC] This is how serious it is.

00:50:53.720 --> 00:50:58.200
JACK: To make selling fast and efficient, Frank actually lined up clients before he

00:50:58.200 --> 00:51:02.240
started printing. He tapped into his criminal network of drug traffickers

00:51:02.240 --> 00:51:07.520
who exported overseas. Frank didn’t want his cash getting out into the states. Instead,

00:51:07.520 --> 00:51:12.920
he wanted it pushed to Europe, Asia, Africa, somewhere far away. He made contact with

00:51:12.920 --> 00:51:17.920
four potential clients that could help make this happen. Now that the printing was done,

00:51:17.920 --> 00:51:22.760
he followed up with those clients to offer free samples of his product. Yes,

00:51:22.760 --> 00:51:27.720
Frank gave out nice little free sample packs of money to show potential buyers how it looked.

00:51:27.720 --> 00:51:37.040
FRANK: The whole line from the initial exporter down to the last people in his crew, operation,

00:51:37.040 --> 00:51:41.640
whatever it is, well, I want them to have it. I want them to try it,

00:51:41.640 --> 00:51:47.080
I want them to test it, I want them to know for a fact that it is perfect,

00:51:47.080 --> 00:51:53.180
and I want them to tell me oh yeah, we are fine. It is perfect. We are in.

00:51:53.180 --> 00:51:57.680
JACK: The deal was that Frank was offering to sell this fake money for thirty cents on the

00:51:57.680 --> 00:52:04.040
dollar. So, for $3,000 you could buy $10,000 worth of Frank’s money. That’s pretty good considering

00:52:04.040 --> 00:52:09.360
Frank’s money looked so good. The free samples paid off because Frank’s clients started agreeing

00:52:09.360 --> 00:52:14.800
to buy fake cash from him. They were so convinced the bills looked real that they wanted more, which

00:52:14.800 --> 00:52:20.560
was good for Frank because by this time, Frank had spent every last cent he had to get to this point.

00:52:20.560 --> 00:52:26.080
FRANK: I’m down to no nickel left. I sunk everything into this. Then you start making

00:52:26.080 --> 00:52:31.520
the sales, and then you’re seeing profit coming back from it, which is really, really nice.

00:52:31.520 --> 00:52:36.440
JACK: People started agreeing to buy fake money from him, but everyone was a little skittish

00:52:36.440 --> 00:52:41.840
at first. Neither buyer or seller really made these kind of deals before. But it sort of went

00:52:41.840 --> 00:52:46.720
down like a typical drug buy. [MUSIC] First, Frank didn’t want to be there for the deal,

00:52:46.720 --> 00:52:52.000
so he had another person do the sale for him. They would show the buyer a box of fake twenties,

00:52:52.000 --> 00:52:55.960
and the buyer would have a duffel bag of real money. It’s a little tense when so

00:52:55.960 --> 00:53:00.680
much money is being exchanged. Frank would offer to sell smaller quantities at first,

00:53:00.680 --> 00:53:04.580
like thousands of dollars at a time just to show them he was trustworthy.

00:53:04.580 --> 00:53:11.480
FRANK: You cannot be more upfront than this, and this matters [00:55:00] ‘cause it shows

00:53:11.480 --> 00:53:17.720
that no part of you wants to screw them over. You’re in for doing solid,

00:53:17.720 --> 00:53:20.840
proper business, and it’s important you do that.

00:53:20.840 --> 00:53:25.520
JACK: After his clients were able to take these samples and make some smaller buys,

00:53:25.520 --> 00:53:29.240
they were coming back for bigger buys. The plan was actually working.

00:53:29.240 --> 00:53:33.880
Frank quickly made back his $300,000 that he invested into this scheme.

00:53:33.880 --> 00:53:39.640
FRANK: It’s a really good place to be; you’re back to where you were, and then you got this

00:53:39.640 --> 00:53:45.700
whole pile in front of you that you can profit from. Now, that felt really good.

00:53:45.700 --> 00:53:50.640
JACK: Things were going good; more buyers were in and he knew from here on out, all

00:53:50.640 --> 00:53:56.200
was profit. He ran his calculations again, and if he could sell his entire inventory at this rate,

00:53:56.200 --> 00:54:02.160
yeah, he could make 75 million real dollars from it all. It was just a matter of time to

00:54:02.160 --> 00:54:06.920
get through it all, and he needed to get this fake money as far away from him as possible

00:54:06.920 --> 00:54:12.800
as fast as possible. Of course, Frank was real careful with every buy, too. He set up a network

00:54:12.800 --> 00:54:17.960
of runners to shuttle cash to his clients. The main stash was at a hidden location, and there

00:54:17.960 --> 00:54:22.400
were smaller stashes spread around different places. When a client needed to make a buy,

00:54:22.400 --> 00:54:27.600
a runner would go to a stash, grab the money, and deliver it. If one of the smaller stashes ran low,

00:54:27.600 --> 00:54:32.880
a runner would simply resupply from the main stash. Frank set it up this way to distance

00:54:32.880 --> 00:54:39.265
himself from the operation and make it so that not any one person knew what the whole operation was.

00:54:39.265 --> 00:54:44.160
FRANK: [MUSIC] Now you got stuff on the streets. Any one of those bills

00:54:44.160 --> 00:54:48.960
is added risk to you ‘cause all those people, any one of them can be under

00:54:48.960 --> 00:54:55.080
investigation for any number of things. You want to be beyond invisible at that point.

00:54:55.080 --> 00:55:00.360
JACK: There was a bottleneck, though. Frank didn’t want to advertise this sale to everyone,

00:55:00.360 --> 00:55:06.720
because he wanted to limit the exposure. He only told a few drug traffickers about this money,

00:55:06.720 --> 00:55:11.200
and out of them, only four were repeat buyers. The amount of money

00:55:11.200 --> 00:55:15.825
bought by these four clients, well, it just wasn’t moving fast enough.

00:55:15.825 --> 00:55:21.160
FRANK: [MUSIC] It was going a little slower than how I thought it was going to go.

00:55:21.160 --> 00:55:24.100
JACK: So, Frank decided to add another client.

00:55:24.100 --> 00:55:29.480
FRANK: So, I said we’re gonna add a fifth one. We’ll see if that works,

00:55:29.480 --> 00:55:35.160
and maybe a sixth one. We’ll see. But we need to at least add one.

00:55:35.160 --> 00:55:39.440
JACK: So, Frank checks in with one of his guys to help expand the network. Turns

00:55:39.440 --> 00:55:45.440
out that Frank’s guy knew someone that might be able to help; a guy named Éric.

00:55:45.440 --> 00:55:50.140
FRANK: I had him checked out and all that. He was solid. I okayed it and it was fine.

00:55:50.140 --> 00:55:56.480
JACK: This guy Éric ran a gang that trafficked stolen construction equipment. Even better though,

00:55:56.480 --> 00:56:02.680
Éric knew a guy who wanted to buy counterfeit cash. So, he got Frank connected, but Éric

00:56:02.680 --> 00:56:08.400
helped out by being the middle man. He’d get the money from Frank and then pass it off to this new

00:56:08.400 --> 00:56:15.820
client. Things were rolling. [MUSIC] Frank sold him a chunk of $100,000 for $30,000 in real cash.

00:56:15.820 --> 00:56:21.280
FRANK: I sold him a first order and the next day he said well, we’d like to buy some more. I said,

00:56:21.280 --> 00:56:25.860
fine. Then next day, then next day; did that for four or five days or something.

00:56:25.860 --> 00:56:30.680
JACK: Normally, Frank would have a runner deliver the cash, but this deal came together quickly,

00:56:30.680 --> 00:56:36.120
and Frank wanted to oversee it himself, so he broke protocol and handled the cash himself,

00:56:36.120 --> 00:56:40.720
delivering the cash himself. Now, at the time, Frank was living with his girlfriend,

00:56:40.720 --> 00:56:44.760
but he had a very strict policy on what she was allowed to know about this,

00:56:44.760 --> 00:56:47.480
which was nothing at all. The more she knew, the more trouble she could

00:56:47.480 --> 00:56:50.700
be in if things didn’t go well. So, he didn’t want to get her involved at all.

00:56:50.700 --> 00:56:59.200
FRANK: Girlfriends knowing anything that you do makes no sense unless there’s an absolute need

00:56:59.200 --> 00:57:05.080
for anyone to know what it is that you’re doing. It makes no sense for them to know.

00:57:05.080 --> 00:57:09.800
JACK: The fake bills started making their way through the system, showing up in strip clubs

00:57:09.800 --> 00:57:14.440
in Illinois and Michigan at first, then grocery stores and restaurants along the

00:57:14.440 --> 00:57:19.480
East Coast of the US. It was very hard for people to detect this fake money,

00:57:19.480 --> 00:57:23.120
so it would often pass a few times without anyone knowing it was even

00:57:23.120 --> 00:57:31.920
fake. [MUSIC] In the early morning hours of May 23rd, 2012, Frank was asleep at his

00:57:31.920 --> 00:57:40.184
girlfriend’s house. At around 5:00 AM, he heard a loud noise which jerked him awake.

00:57:40.184 --> 00:57:44.720
FRANK: Just waken up by tons of people banging on every door and

00:57:44.720 --> 00:57:49.360
window all around the house. Bang, bang, bang. So, you’re startled; you wake up,

00:57:49.360 --> 00:57:56.680
your heart’s racing, you know something’s totally different. After two seconds of being awake,

00:57:56.680 --> 00:58:10.818
then you come to realize oh fuck, that’s today? Damn. There’s nothing you can do.

00:58:10.818 --> 00:58:12.880
JACK: [01:00:00] He looked out the window and his heart sank. It was the Royal Canadian Mounted

00:58:12.880 --> 00:58:18.500
Police and they had completely surrounded the house. Frank knew he had no way out.

00:58:18.500 --> 00:58:23.640
FRANK: So, you just go up to the door, you open up, they come in, and they flood in.

00:58:23.640 --> 00:58:29.540
They search, they seize, they take everything, everything. They cuff you, they leave with you.

00:58:29.540 --> 00:58:35.440
JACK: According to an RCMP press release that came out the next day, it was a joint force of RCMP,

00:58:35.440 --> 00:58:40.200
Quebec Provincial Police, and the US Secret Service that raided six different locations

00:58:40.200 --> 00:58:45.560
and arrested four people, including Frank. The sting was part of something called Project

00:58:45.560 --> 00:58:50.200
Cranium which was the investigation into Frank’s operation. When they searched Frank’s house,

00:58:50.200 --> 00:58:54.720
they found almost one million dollars in counterfeit twenties in his safe. They

00:58:54.720 --> 00:58:59.800
also found printing equipment used to add holographic details to fake bills. In a CBC

00:58:59.800 --> 00:59:04.840
article that also came out on the following day, the RCMP spokesperson described the operation as

00:59:04.840 --> 00:59:09.720
highly sophisticated and that the counterfeit bills were basically undetectable to the naked

00:59:09.720 --> 00:59:15.360
eye. [MUSIC] After the raid, authorities brought Frank to an interrogation room.

00:59:15.360 --> 00:59:20.840
FRANK: You get into the interrogation and now they’re trying to squeeze you,

00:59:20.840 --> 00:59:26.060
and you try to tell them nothing ‘cause this is what you gotta do.

00:59:26.060 --> 00:59:31.200
JACK: Frank was so careful and spent so much time on this operation that he wasn’t gonna

00:59:31.200 --> 00:59:35.960
let them just squeeze answers out of him. He kept quiet and had a stoic look on his

00:59:35.960 --> 00:59:42.180
face with any questions they asked. But then the cops brought up his girlfriend.

00:59:42.180 --> 00:59:50.400
FRANK: They used the girlfriend. They said well, this was into the house, the house under her name,

00:59:50.400 --> 00:59:59.520
so she’s in on it. We can charge her. Then you’re really in a bad spot ‘cause you can’t let that

00:59:59.520 --> 01:00:08.140
happen. So, now they’re really squeezing you good. They really are. It’s a tough spot to get out of.

01:00:08.140 --> 01:00:13.200
JACK: Piling on the bad news, authorities in the room told Frank he was facing counts

01:00:13.200 --> 01:00:18.960
of fabrication, possession, and distribution of counterfeit money. Since it was US money,

01:00:18.960 --> 01:00:22.720
they were saying they would extradite him to the United States where he could face

01:00:22.720 --> 01:00:27.480
twenty years for each count, a total of sixty years in federal prison.

01:00:27.480 --> 01:00:32.720
FRANK: There’s no part of you who doubts that they’re gonna extradite you, ‘cause the Secret

01:00:32.720 --> 01:00:42.040
Service, with their bulletproof vests written Secret Service on it, were in my living room. So,

01:00:42.040 --> 01:00:49.466
you know they are here, they are taking it seriously, and they mean to pursue it.

01:00:49.466 --> 01:00:53.840
JACK: [MUSIC] Frank later learned that Éric, the guy who he was selling hundreds of thousands of

01:00:53.840 --> 01:01:00.120
fake bills to, it was his crew that had been infiltrated by an undercover Canadian cop,

01:01:00.120 --> 01:01:04.560
and the cop was actually the guy Éric was passing the money to. He didn’t know that

01:01:04.560 --> 01:01:10.680
Éric was compromised, and this is how Frank got caught. Frank had a hard choice to make;

01:01:10.680 --> 01:01:14.480
if he stayed quiet, it was likely that his girlfriend would be charged with all kinds of

01:01:14.480 --> 01:01:20.000
criminal activity. He did not want his girlfriend tangled up in this. He took huge measures to make

01:01:20.000 --> 01:01:24.373
sure she had nothing to do with this so she could not get in any trouble for this. So,

01:01:24.373 --> 01:01:28.880
his other option was to fess up to the operation in hopes that they’d let her go.

01:01:28.880 --> 01:01:37.660
FRANK: But what are you gonna do? It’s your thing. It’s you, so you gotta take it.

01:01:37.660 --> 01:01:42.440
JACK: Despite the consequences, Frank talked. He admitted that yes,

01:01:42.440 --> 01:01:46.640
he’s the one who printed the money, and he told them his girlfriend had no clue

01:01:46.640 --> 01:01:50.980
and was innocent in this whole deal. He knew this was all being recorded, too.

01:01:50.980 --> 01:01:58.560
FRANK: You’re literally hanging yourself and there’s no way out of it. You leave the

01:01:58.560 --> 01:02:06.000
interrogation room thinking and feeling that the – it’s the end of your life. It’s you getting locked

01:02:06.000 --> 01:02:18.226
up stateside. It’s the floor vaporizing from under you, literally. There’s no future ahead of you.

01:02:18.226 --> 01:02:19.880
JACK: [MUSIC] This was the last thing Frank wanted

01:02:19.880 --> 01:02:24.440
to do, but he felt like he had no choice. Once questioning was over,

01:02:24.440 --> 01:02:31.020
authorities booked Frank into a jail and denied him bail. He was stuck for now.

01:02:31.020 --> 01:02:39.880
FRANK: By design, you have to know going in; you have to tackle any criminal operation going in

01:02:39.880 --> 01:02:47.640
that it is possibly going to stop, if not likely going to stop, ‘cause there are people whose job,

01:02:47.640 --> 01:02:53.520
whose sole job is to stop you. They’re gonna come take everything from you so that you cannot

01:02:53.520 --> 01:03:01.360
maneuver. This is what they do. So, it’s not a pleasant time for sure, but you have to know that

01:03:01.360 --> 01:03:07.720
going in. It’s part of the deal. Anything you’re gonna need to have access to, you need to prepare

01:03:07.720 --> 01:03:12.560
for it. [01:05:00] So, if you need phones, if you need this, if you need money, if you need – you

01:03:12.560 --> 01:03:19.440
need to prep ahead of time. You gotta plan for the exit strategy ‘cause you can crash at any time.

01:03:19.440 --> 01:03:24.000
JACK: Frank had previously set up a lawyer in case a situation like this were to happen, and his

01:03:24.000 --> 01:03:28.760
lawyer got busy trying to get Frank out of jail. The Canadian courts were considering extraditing

01:03:28.760 --> 01:03:34.640
Frank to the US to be tried there, but Frank says his lawyer was able to block extradition,

01:03:34.640 --> 01:03:39.560
and that’s because the lawyer pointed out that the RCMP did not have adequate surveillance footage of

01:03:39.560 --> 01:03:44.840
Frank. Here’s what happened; [MUSIC] on one of the days that Frank delivered cash for the undercover

01:03:44.840 --> 01:03:51.480
RCMP officer, a helicopter was hovering overhead and it was recording video of this transaction.

01:03:51.480 --> 01:03:56.880
But at the meeting location, Frank instinctively parked his car underneath something that had a

01:03:56.880 --> 01:04:01.520
roof over his head where he could unload the cash without anyone seeing from far away. He

01:04:01.520 --> 01:04:05.660
says that’s why he picked this spot in the first place, because it was a good place to hide.

01:04:05.660 --> 01:04:09.520
FRANK: So, they lost sight of me for a bit and because of that,

01:04:09.520 --> 01:04:16.700
they couldn’t justify having eyes on the boxes of counterfeit 100% of the time.

01:04:16.700 --> 01:04:22.680
JACK: This meant the cops didn’t have actual video evidence of Frank handling the money,

01:04:22.680 --> 01:04:28.880
and Frank says this is why the extradition got thrown out. Frank’s lawyer then negotiated bail.

01:04:28.880 --> 01:04:34.720
After six weeks, Frank got out on $10,000 bail. But Frank still had to answer to the

01:04:34.720 --> 01:04:39.560
Canadian government or the Crown where he was looking at hard time for the same charges;

01:04:39.560 --> 01:04:45.880
fabrication, possession, and distribution. Since this was Frank’s first counterfeiting offence,

01:04:45.880 --> 01:04:48.940
he was hoping his lawyer could negotiate some kind of deal.

01:04:48.940 --> 01:04:55.440
FRANK: So, if you do something one time and then you get caught, then you drop out of it.

01:04:55.440 --> 01:05:02.760
This is the least amount of consequence that you can have for an offence. So,

01:05:02.760 --> 01:05:11.440
my counterfeiting days were over for the rest of my life. Whatever money I had left,

01:05:11.440 --> 01:05:15.680
well, I wasn’t gonna start selling it ever again.

01:05:15.680 --> 01:05:21.120
JACK: At this point, Frank had only sold a few million dollars in fake money out of the $250

01:05:21.120 --> 01:05:27.840
million that he printed. He knew that there was a stash of $200 million still out there,

01:05:27.840 --> 01:05:31.720
and he knew that the cops didn’t find it. In fact, the cops didn’t know about it at

01:05:31.720 --> 01:05:36.080
all. They thought they seized all the fake money. Only Frank and one of his closest

01:05:36.080 --> 01:05:41.600
guys knew about it. Frank’s plan was to get his sentence reduced as much as possible,

01:05:41.600 --> 01:05:47.680
then use the $200 million in counterfeit cash as a bargaining chip to cut an even better deal.

01:05:47.680 --> 01:05:50.320
FRANK: Hopefully this will work,

01:05:50.320 --> 01:05:54.080
but this is the one thing that I had left. It was the only thing I had.

01:05:54.080 --> 01:05:56.840
JACK: [MUSIC] So, court appearance after court appearance, and the

01:05:56.840 --> 01:06:01.520
lawyer is trying to negotiate with the Crown to get the punishment reduced.

01:06:01.520 --> 01:06:06.480
FRANK: I want it as close to zero as possible, so the only way to let it

01:06:06.480 --> 01:06:13.380
go as close to zero as possible is to string every bit of the talent that my lawyer has.

01:06:13.380 --> 01:06:18.720
JACK: The lawyer gets the sentence down from decades to a handful of years, and this was all a

01:06:18.720 --> 01:06:23.160
plea bargain. If Frank admitted that he was guilty at this point, he would just get a few years of

01:06:23.160 --> 01:06:27.860
prison without even a trial. It’s quite amazing that the lawyer was able to reduce it so much.

01:06:27.860 --> 01:06:33.500
FRANK: Sheer, grinding work. All him; nothing else but him. He’s a legend.

01:06:33.500 --> 01:06:38.720
JACK: But even though his sentence was reduced to a handful of years, Frank still didn’t take it.

01:06:38.720 --> 01:06:44.160
FRANK: I could see every court appearance that we went to was getting nastier and

01:06:44.160 --> 01:06:48.800
meaner ‘cause everybody was pissed, ‘cause all I kept saying to them out there was no,

01:06:48.800 --> 01:06:51.780
I don’t want this deal. I want lower, I want lower.

01:06:51.780 --> 01:06:55.680
JACK: According to Frank, the Crown’s prosecuting attorney had enough at

01:06:55.680 --> 01:06:59.720
this point. Frank wasn’t going to take the plea deal, so they said…

01:06:59.720 --> 01:07:02.720
FRANK: Well, fuck it then. We’re going to fucking trial.

01:07:02.720 --> 01:07:07.280
JACK: Which was risky for Frank. He felt nervous because of this, because if he was acquitted,

01:07:07.280 --> 01:07:11.600
well, great; he got out of the whole thing. But if he was found guilty, he’d probably end up with

01:07:11.600 --> 01:07:16.480
a much bigger prison time than what this plea deal was. [MUSIC] So, this was the moment for

01:07:16.480 --> 01:07:22.460
him to play his last-ditch card, the bargaining chip that he was waiting this whole time for.

01:07:22.460 --> 01:07:27.200
FRANK: Then take out my Ace, which is exactly what I did.

01:07:27.200 --> 01:07:33.480
JACK: Before the trial began, Frank finally told his lawyer that he’s got $200 million in

01:07:33.480 --> 01:07:39.280
counterfeit twenties and he’s wondering if they can use that to bargain with at all. His lawyer

01:07:39.280 --> 01:07:43.800
was willing to give it a try. But Frank wanted to move the money to a new hiding spot before

01:07:43.800 --> 01:07:48.200
telling the courts about it. This way, he’d have it all ready in case they wanted to make the deal.

01:07:48.200 --> 01:07:53.480
FRANK: So, I made my call, set up my plan in motion, called my guy. My guy went over

01:07:53.480 --> 01:07:58.360
there. I had set up ahead of time that he was gonna put them in the truck and put the

01:07:58.360 --> 01:08:04.120
truck in a particular place in a parking lot. I hid the truck right next to the

01:08:04.120 --> 01:08:08.660
main boulevard in the city. It was sitting there for [01:10:00] a couple of months.

01:08:08.660 --> 01:08:15.080
JACK: In the back of this box truck was $200 million in counterfeit cash and the printing

01:08:15.080 --> 01:08:20.200
press. Now he was ready to bargain. On the first day of court, they started with this,

01:08:20.200 --> 01:08:23.840
saying that Frank knows where $200 million in counterfeit money is,

01:08:23.840 --> 01:08:28.520
and he’s willing to turn it over if he can get his sentence reduced. The court was shocked with

01:08:28.520 --> 01:08:32.520
this news. They thought they had confiscated everything and didn’t know that there was more

01:08:32.520 --> 01:08:39.840
money out there. But this worked. The Crown was willing to negotiate one more time. Frank worked

01:08:39.840 --> 01:08:46.160
out a deal that he’d turn over the $200 million and his Heidelberg printing press. In exchange,

01:08:46.160 --> 01:08:51.520
the Crown would drop the counterfeiting charges. But there was a tiny catch; the Crown didn’t want

01:08:51.520 --> 01:08:57.320
this stuff immediately. They set up an exchange for a month out. Frank thought that they were

01:08:57.320 --> 01:09:02.825
doing this to try to find the money before the date, which would get him in even more trouble.

01:09:02.825 --> 01:09:08.440
FRANK: [MUSIC] They wanted to get that money, but they wanted to get it themselves so that

01:09:08.440 --> 01:09:17.040
they could keep the charges on me. So, by giving this drop date, a later time, well,

01:09:17.040 --> 01:09:23.840
in their heads they said well, somewhere, somehow he’s gonna have to do something to

01:09:23.840 --> 01:09:30.240
get this money to move places. He’s gonna have to do something. So, we’re gonna try

01:09:30.240 --> 01:09:37.880
to catch him doing it. The deal was if I got caught before that drop date with anything,

01:09:37.880 --> 01:09:43.280
I was getting hammered with it. My lawyer said do you understand what that means?

01:09:43.280 --> 01:09:49.520
They’re gonna be on you like your own fucking shadow. I said alright, where do I sign?

01:09:49.520 --> 01:09:54.080
JACK: Frank didn’t care because he already stashed the money and the printing press in

01:09:54.080 --> 01:09:58.680
the back of that box truck and thought for sure nobody would look there. So,

01:09:58.680 --> 01:10:04.860
all he had to do was lay low for a month. Frank says the cops were all over him during that month.

01:10:04.860 --> 01:10:10.360
FRANK: I mean, surveillance was on me 24/7 at that point. Helicopters and all

01:10:10.360 --> 01:10:13.800
that everyday. I opened up the curtain; they were right in front of me. They

01:10:13.800 --> 01:10:19.400
weren’t hiding. They just figured we just need to tail this dude 24/7. [MUSIC] He’s

01:10:19.400 --> 01:10:23.640
gotta do something at some point, then we’re gonna cuff him. Then he’s done.

01:10:23.640 --> 01:10:31.920
JACK: As long as they didn’t find that truck, Frank was safe. So,

01:10:31.920 --> 01:10:36.460
January 31st, 2014 rolls around. It’s the morning of the drop date.

01:10:36.460 --> 01:10:45.120
FRANK: My guy left the key ring to the truck behind a specific tree in a little wooded area,

01:10:45.120 --> 01:10:52.160
and so I went to the court with them following me. I stopped, I grabbed the key ring,

01:10:52.160 --> 01:10:57.400
and then I headed onto court. Then once I got there, I gave the key ring to my lawyer. I said,

01:10:57.400 --> 01:11:04.520
here it is, all of it as promised. They were pissed, extremely pissed.

01:11:04.520 --> 01:11:08.920
JACK: They were mad because he had hidden this information from them. They were mad

01:11:08.920 --> 01:11:13.040
because he wasted a lot of the court’s time. They were mad because they didn’t find this

01:11:13.040 --> 01:11:19.360
money themselves. Frank outsmarted them. They wanted him to drive to the pickup location,

01:11:19.360 --> 01:11:25.120
so he got in his car and a convoy of black SUV police cars followed him through town.

01:11:25.120 --> 01:11:28.920
It was weird being followed by that many police through town.

01:11:28.920 --> 01:11:33.640
FRANK: There was a K-9 unit, plus there was the bomb squad,

01:11:33.640 --> 01:11:39.440
people in hazmat suits and bomb suits and stuff. It was packed, packed,

01:11:39.440 --> 01:11:47.600
packed. I said damn, for me? I was really, really surprised by that. It was ridiculous.

01:11:47.600 --> 01:11:53.560
JACK: He slowly drove through town and watched people on the street looking back at him,

01:11:53.560 --> 01:11:57.000
and wondered what they were thinking. Maybe the president is in town,

01:11:57.000 --> 01:12:01.520
they thought. Maybe this is a big drug bust. Helicopters were flying over him,

01:12:01.520 --> 01:12:06.200
following him. Nobody watching from the street thought that all this was to pick

01:12:06.200 --> 01:12:12.720
up some counterfeit money, that’s for sure. He arrived in the parking lot. He got out of the

01:12:12.720 --> 01:12:18.320
car and stood in front of the box truck where the money was, and he told the police this is it. The

01:12:18.320 --> 01:12:23.320
police did not trust the situation one bit. A bomb squad came in first and swept the truck,

01:12:23.320 --> 01:12:27.720
and then asked Frank to unlock and open the truck in case it was booby-trapped.

01:12:27.720 --> 01:12:32.120
FRANK: Would you be willing to open up the doors? Yeah, sure. I’ll open the door. Would

01:12:32.120 --> 01:12:39.040
you walk inside just in case it might be a trap? Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Then, would you start

01:12:39.040 --> 01:12:45.580
the truck just in case something’s – yeah, sure, sure, sure. I started the truck. So, that’s fine.

01:12:45.580 --> 01:12:49.560
JACK: At this point, the police felt like it was safe enough to go into the back of the truck and

01:12:49.560 --> 01:12:54.200
check it out. I saw pictures of what it looked like back there. In the back of the truck was

01:12:54.200 --> 01:13:00.000
the printing press. When you look behind that, there were pallets of boxes. Inside the boxes

01:13:00.000 --> 01:13:05.840
were stacks and stacks and stacks of fake twenties. So much money was in this truck.

01:13:05.840 --> 01:13:09.200
Frank’s in the pictures, too. He’s wearing a dark blue [01:15:00] sweatshirt with a black,

01:13:09.200 --> 01:13:15.320
puffy vest over it. He’s got a goatee and his hair is pushed up in a faux-hawk. He looks tired,

01:13:15.320 --> 01:13:20.400
maybe a bit relieved. There are two cops in the photo going through the boxes and sure enough,

01:13:20.400 --> 01:13:23.840
this truck was loaded up with millions of fake twenty-dollar

01:13:23.840 --> 01:13:27.800
bills. Once the cops confirmed that this was what Frank said it was,

01:13:27.800 --> 01:13:33.800
then the cops had one more request. They wanted him to drive the truck back to RCMP headquarters.

01:13:33.800 --> 01:13:42.160
FRANK: I drove the fucking truck. [MUSIC] I was alone in the truck surrounded, surrounded by

01:13:42.160 --> 01:13:50.480
black suburbans full of cops, helicopters, tons of police force blocking every road.

01:13:50.480 --> 01:13:55.520
JACK: Frank says the cops were worried about a bomb still and that maybe he had an explosive

01:13:55.520 --> 01:13:59.840
set to a timer or that if the truck went over a certain speed, it would blow up.

01:13:59.840 --> 01:14:04.200
FRANK: This is by far the strangest thing that – even to me,

01:14:04.200 --> 01:14:09.140
even to this day, this is really, really strange.

01:14:09.140 --> 01:14:15.440
JACK: As he drove down the street, the irony of the scene wasn’t lost on Frank. If he had done

01:14:15.440 --> 01:14:20.280
this just one day before, they would have tried to bust him and throw him in jail.

01:14:20.280 --> 01:14:28.600
FRANK: So, the same action carries a totally different weight to it, right? This was the very

01:14:28.600 --> 01:14:37.720
same money. The very same counterfeit action that I was being charged with now was totally okay. So,

01:14:37.720 --> 01:14:49.200
the exact same criteria are horrible one day and then okay the next day. Because of some papers,

01:14:49.200 --> 01:14:55.760
it made it okay. I said Jesus fuck, this is a strange world.

01:14:55.760 --> 01:15:01.720
JACK: In this strange and twisted story, the Crown dropped all counterfeiting charges against Frank

01:15:01.720 --> 01:15:08.000
after he turned this money and equipment in. He says they did charge him a $1,500 fine for a

01:15:08.000 --> 01:15:12.960
drug-related charge. Numerous articles say that when the cops raided Frank back in 2012, they

01:15:12.960 --> 01:15:18.080
found drugs in his car. Otherwise, the only time served that he had for this counterfeiting scheme

01:15:18.080 --> 01:15:23.480
was the six weeks he spent in jail waiting to get out on bail. The other guy that he sold money to,

01:15:23.480 --> 01:15:28.360
Éric, the one who ultimately got him caught, he was sentenced to thirty-one months in prison over

01:15:28.360 --> 01:15:36.360
his stolen construction equipment and his ties to Frank. [MUSIC] These days, Frank says he’s

01:15:36.360 --> 01:15:41.960
gone totally legit. In fact, he turned the skills gleaned from counterfeiting into a real business.

01:15:41.960 --> 01:15:45.680
FRANK: Right after my court case, I got involved into consulting

01:15:45.680 --> 01:15:50.940
for counterfeiting protection. I’ve been doing that ever since.

01:15:50.940 --> 01:15:54.360
JACK: If you go to Frank’s website, frankbourassa.com,

01:15:54.360 --> 01:15:58.680
you can read more about his trademarked MASTERY AEGIS™ program. It’s his method

01:15:58.680 --> 01:16:02.360
for evaluating and giving feedback to organizations to stop fraud and

01:16:02.360 --> 01:16:07.280
counterfeiting. He feels he’s uniquely suited to help identify counterfeit operations.

01:16:07.280 --> 01:16:17.680
FRANK: It’s a nice challenge, it’s new stuff all the time, and I need to hit it dead-on

01:16:17.680 --> 01:16:27.520
‘cause if I’m going to do it, well, I want it to be perfect, and it impacts the people I do

01:16:27.520 --> 01:16:38.160
it for a lot, [MUSIC] ‘cause I know what makes it impossible to counterfeit something, and I make

01:16:38.160 --> 01:16:46.920
sure to do that. So, I affect the bottom lines a ton to the people I do it for, so I know I have a

01:16:46.920 --> 01:16:55.720
lot of positive impact on those people, and that I really like. I call it my redemption through

01:16:55.720 --> 01:17:03.480
protection effort, ‘cause how I turned it, it sums up the essence of what I like about it.

01:17:03.480 --> 01:17:06.800
JACK: Frank says he’s even reached out to the US about their currency.

01:17:06.800 --> 01:17:11.120
FRANK: I even offered them to redo your currency,

01:17:11.120 --> 01:17:17.280
where not a single soul will be able to counterfeit it, ‘cause I know what would

01:17:17.280 --> 01:17:23.840
stop me dead in my tracks, and I could do that. So, I even offered them that.

01:17:23.840 --> 01:17:27.720
JACK: Frank says they turned him down on the offer, though. Now,

01:17:27.720 --> 01:17:33.320
there’s something about Frank’s story here that’s missing, and if you’ve been paying attention,

01:17:33.320 --> 01:17:40.000
you might have noticed that the numbers don’t add up. You told me you printed $250 million.

01:17:40.000 --> 01:17:41.480
FRANK: Yes.

01:17:41.480 --> 01:17:45.880
JACK: That’s what the authorities say that they counted up how much paper you ordered and stuff;

01:17:45.880 --> 01:17:48.660
they were able to calculate you had printed about $250 million.

01:17:48.660 --> 01:17:49.760
FRANK: Yes.

01:17:49.760 --> 01:17:53.000
JACK: You gave up $200 million to them.

01:17:53.000 --> 01:17:55.040
FRANK: There’s a mismatch.

01:17:55.040 --> 01:17:56.553
JACK: Where’s the other $50 million, Frank?

01:17:56.553 --> 01:18:04.760
FRANK: [LAUGHING] Wait, there’s a mismatch.

01:18:04.760 --> 01:18:10.902
JACK: Yeah, it doesn’t add up.

01:18:10.902 --> 01:18:17.760
FRANK: [01:20:00] Damn, I need to look for that somewhere. Let me get back to

01:18:17.760 --> 01:18:22.904
you on that. I’m gonna look into that, I’m gonna look into that.

01:18:22.904 --> 01:18:32.480
(OUTRO): [OUTRO MUSIC] A big thank-you to Frank Bourassa for coming on the show and telling us

01:18:32.480 --> 01:18:37.640
this incredible story. You can learn more about him at frankbourassa.com or check out the show

01:18:37.640 --> 01:18:42.040
notes for links. If you like this show, if it brings value to you, consider donating

01:18:42.040 --> 01:18:46.600
to it through Patreon. By directly supporting the show, it helps keep ads at a minimum and

01:18:46.600 --> 01:18:51.040
it helps create the show, and it tells me that you want more of it. So, please visit

01:18:51.040 --> 01:18:57.520
patreon.com/darknetdiaries and consider supporting the show. Thank you. This show is made by me,

01:18:57.520 --> 01:19:02.880
the never-fake Jack Rhysider. This episode was produced by the cash-clenching Charles Bolte,

01:19:02.880 --> 01:19:08.400
sound design and original music by the key-tickler Garrett Tiedemann, mixing done by Proximity Sound,

01:19:08.400 --> 01:19:13.720
editing help by the sunny Damienne, and our theme music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

01:19:13.720 --> 01:19:17.800
There was this one time where I went to New York and I had a fake fifty-dollar bill. It was like,

01:19:17.800 --> 01:19:21.640
twice the size of a normal bill, and someone on the street came up to me and said hey,

01:19:21.640 --> 01:19:27.640
do you want to buy a fake Rolex watch? I said hell yeah, is fifty dollars good? They said yeah,

01:19:27.640 --> 01:19:32.600
and I pulled out my giant, fake fifty-dollar bill and said okay, here. They were like,

01:19:32.600 --> 01:19:41.720
what the heck? I’m like hey, fake watch for fake money, right? This is Darknet Diaries.