The Art of the Steal

by Frank W. Abagnale

  A CHAIN IS ONLY AS STRONG

  AS ITS WEAKEST LINK

  The real travesty here is the chain-link effect of counterfeit documents. What happens is criminals use counterfeit papers as “breeder” documents. A breeder document is a phony document used to obtain a genuine one. Generally speaking, criminals will counterfeit a document that has little, if any, security features and then use that to get far more secure legitimate documents.

  In most cases, a birth certificate contains next to no security features, so it has become an ideal breeder document. Criminals will create a fake birth certificate to obtain a genuine driver’s license, then use those two documents to get a legitimate passport. Once you’ve got that first authentic document, you’re pretty much on your way. After all, the right documents allow people to get unauthorized benefits, to land jobs they’re not entitled to, to gain illegal entry into a country, to construct new identities, and to fraudulently obtain credit cards and loans.

  There’s always been a lot of Mom and Pop document fraud, and there still is, but there are actual document syndicates today that are as well-organized as major corporations. There’s actually a standard counterfeit package that immigrants buy that consists of a resident alien card, Social Security card, and driver’s license. Gangs in big cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles sell these ensembles on the street. The criminals will brazenly approach foreigners in broad daylight and ask, “What do you need?” Estimates are that counterfeit and illegally-obtained documents cost the country something on the order of $25 billion a year. In late 1998, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents raided two storage facilities in Los Angeles and rounded up more than two million counterfeit identity documents. The agency estimated that the street value of that paper was in excess of $80 million. Hardly chump change.

  GOODBYE PEN AND INK MEN

  Technology has made life so much easier for the counterfeiter. Years ago, a document counterfeiter was known as a “pen and ink man.” He worked meticulously by hand and needed steady nerves. That’s all changed. To get an idea of the impact of technology on crime, consider the color copier. In late 1977, Xerox invented the machine called the Xerox 6500 Color Copier. And it was quite a machine. At that time, it was considered the most advanced copier in the world. People were reproducing full-color documents in a matter of seconds. All a forger had to do was lay a real check on the machine, close the cover, push a button, and out would come a duplicate check that looked just like the real thing. Forgers loved the Xerox 6500 so much so that they cashed more than $365 million worth of phony checks color-copied by the machine.

  Twenty years later, it’s an antique. These days, forgers interested in a wide array of documents use a product called the color laser digital copier, again found everywhere. The quality of the color copies produced by this machine is truly remarkable. Nearly anything on paper can be acceptably reproduced: gift certificates, traveler’s checks, birth certificates, college transcripts, car titles, and even money. It can reproduce such magnificent colors that you couldn’t tell the real thing from the fake even in a side-by-side comparison. Color copiers are so proficient at reproducing dollar bills that, in most cases, the bogus bills will go through a vending machine. They’re so realistic that you find them in ATMs.

  If you want to stop document fraud, you have to start building layers of security features into the documents. Because I’m in this business, I even have an array of features on my company letterhead. If Sam Donaldson tried to scan one of my letters the way I scanned his, he’d be in for a rude shock: “void” would show up all over the document.

  YOU DON’T NEED A STORK

  To counterfeiters, the birth certificate is one of the choicest documents of all, because so much can be accomplished with it. Since it’s accepted by just about every government agency as proof of one’s identity and citizenship, it’s the key to getting a host of benefits and other documents. Thousands of state and local registrars’ offices issue birth certificates in the United States. Many of them produce more than one type. Also, states have revised their certificates many times over the years, and both the old and the new variations are all in circulation. Add this all up, and there could be more than ten thousand variations of the U.S. birth certificate in existence. And that’s great news to a counterfeiter. The more renditions of a document, the harder it is for anyone to say that the one that you have is false.

  Some birth certificates have very good security features. Some have none at all. I guess it’s obvious that the best birth certificate to use fraudulently is a genuine one. Normally, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to get one. In many states, birth certificates and death records are part of the public record and are readily available to anyone for the asking. I’ve seen estimates that more than 80 percent of requests for birth certificates are processed through the mail for people who gave nothing more than a name and a return address. Some states have a few requirements, but nothing so onerous that a smart criminal can’t circumvent them. For instance, in certain states, only the next of kin or an attorney can request the birth certificate. But you don’t have to go to law school to become a lawyer. All you need to do is pay a visit to a print shop and get some business cards and letterhead that will transform you into a lawyer, enough of one, at least, to get access to public records.

  As with checks, forgers are adept at altering birth certificates. The biographical information is printed onto the surface of the paper. This means it’s easy for the forger to remove it either mechanically or chemically, substitute new information, and be left with a genuine document imprinted with phony information, which can be very hard to detect. And with document scanners, computers, copiers, and the other technologies I’ve mentioned, it’s quite simple to run off counterfeit birth certificates that will pass muster.

  I’ve designed high-tech birth certificates for a number of states to guard against counterfeiting and alteration. The security features void the document if someone tries to copy it or chemically change it with bleach, acetone, or other substances. But I tell state officials, “This isn’t going to stop an impostor from getting someone else’s actual birth certificate. You need to make it harder for that to happen.” And their response is, “Well, we know that, but that’s another issue.”

  I no longer get involved in securing a state’s birth certificate or driver’s license, if they’re not going to close the other loopholes. A few years ago, I worked on the Florida certificate. Florida makes it very hard to get a legitimate birth certificate. But the document itself was easily counterfeited. And with all the illegal immigrants down there, it was a highly desirable piece of paper. In Miami, a Florida birth certificate had a street value of five thousand dollars. So I designed a very secure document, and the counterfeiting problem has abated.

  PICK A LICENSE, ANY LICENSE

  Driver’s licenses were initially intended simply to confirm that the holder had the right to drive in the state. But our customs have transformed them into commonly requested identity documents as well. And that has made them of keen interest to criminals.

  The validity of a license is hard to determine, because there are so many in circulation and they differ so much. There are hundreds of variations, depending on when and where they were issued. In many states, you can get a legitimate driver’s license simply by showing a driver’s license from another state. Virginia, for instance, does that. So if you get away with passing off a counterfeit Kansas driver’s license in Virginia, bingo, you can obtain a real Virginia one.

  In California, they spent a fortune on their new driver’s license. They put holograms on them, used sophisticated sealants in the printing, just poured a ton of money into the design. And a few months after the new license was introduced, the police arrested a forger with fifty licenses in fifty different names. Why? Because it was still easy for someone to go to the Driver’s License Bureau and get a license with false identification. I told the state, “All you’ve done is stop some ki
d from changing the birth date on his license in order to buy a beer.”

  Either close all the loopholes, or you’ve closed none.

  FEELING SECURE?

  Another case in point is the U.S. passport. We all know how handy a fake passport is to a crook on the lam. So it makes a lot of sense to really secure it. The passport has long had some good features, and I added a new one a few years ago. For the U.S. passport, I helped develop with Standard Register a technique called Mirage Image, which adds encrypted information onto the passport photo. When you put a special piece of milled glass over the photo, your name and birthday are visible. The passport has become a hard document to successfully counterfeit, which is why a fraudulent American passport commands ten thousand dollars on the streets.

  Unfortunately, the other loopholes haven’t been closed. Nearly anyone can acquire a fake Social Security card and birth certificate that are good enough to get a genuine passport. Until these other documents are made more secure, the passport remains at risk. Right now, the U.S. Social Security card is about as vulnerable as it gets. Border Patrol Agents routinely intercept thousands of fake Social Security cards every year at traffic checkpoints. In 1999, they collected something like a hundred and twenty thousand of them, more than one every five minutes. This is frightening, because the Social Security card has become our ad hoc identity card, enabling the holder to collect government benefits and to certify that he’s eligible for employment. When you flash a Social Security card, people know you’re for real.

  At the moment, there are more than twenty different versions of the Social Security card, and they vary a great deal in their security features. Earlier cards, meaning those issued prior to October of 1983, have no security features whatsoever. Those issued since then contain various things like intaglio engraving and microprinting. But criminals know that it’s possible to get a genuine Social Security card if you have one of two other documents: a birth certificate or a resident alien card.

  In recent years, the INS has been steadily tightening its own documents. Just a few years ago, the INS had twenty different types of Permanent Resident and Employment Authorization cards that were valid, too many for comfort. Now there are just five. No longer are the cards good for a lifetime, the way Social Security cards are, but expiration dates have been added, which enables the agency to update photos and implant new security features when a card is replaced. One new feature is a personalized engraving of the person’s photo, signature and biographical data right on the optical stripe. These are important steps in the right direction, for they make it just about impossible for counterfeit cards to be mass produced.

  BALL PARK PRANKS

  Large public events of any type—sporting, political, religious—invariably draw a great many uninvited participants: crooks. Con artists go where the money is. Wherever there are crowds, there are opportunities for scams. You’d be amazed at how common it is for criminals to make counterfeit tickets and passes. It routinely happens at the World Series, the Super Bowl, and big golf tournaments. Two disasters at soccer matches where scores of fans were injured, some seriously, were attributed to stadium overcrowding. Why were the stadiums so crammed? Because thousands of people had gotten in after buying counterfeit tickets from scalpers.

  I’ve worked on a lot of golf passes and the Disney World pass. Generally, I put an invisible dot on them. Then the guard at the entrance gate has a reader that reveals it. Disney also has cruise ships. Most of the employees are foreigners who need a special pass that allows them to get on and off the ship, and so I designed a secure version of that, too, which is printed by the Standard Register Company. With these documents, it makes no sense to incorporate the level of security features that you would put into a check, because you have to consider the value of what you’re securing. If a pass is worth $30, it only pays to put maybe one security feature on it. But a check can cost you millions of dollars.

  I served as a consultant to the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, which, from my perspective, I envisioned as a possible gala fraud festival. Before I even got on a plane to go there, I realized that there were bound to be millions of dollars in losses from various cons at the games. At the Atlanta games, traveler’s check fraud alone totaled more than $4 million, and there had been enough improvements in technology during the four ensuing years to make life easier for criminals.

  I knew Australia was receptive to fraud. I had heard that there were something like three million more federal tax ID numbers issued in the country than there were actual Australians, which is not a promising sign. Plenty of counterfeit money was bound to be put into circulation—not the Australian currency, but American bills. Forgers don’t do the local currency, because people are familiar with it. American bills were ideal, because newly-designed five-dollar and ten-dollar bills had just been released the month of the Olympics. Even Americans weren’t familiar with them. When I visited the major Australian banks, they already had plenty of samples of fake bills that had crossed their teller windows.

  At any event where there are limited tickets for which there is great demand, bogus tickets are always a nettlesome problem. I advised the organizers of the Olympics to use Australian printers to print the tickets for the games, because my experience has been that Australia has some of the best printers of secure documents in the world. In fact, I have all of my corporate checks and personal checks, even my business cards, printed in Australia. The printers there are not only good at making documents secure, but they’re true craftsmen.

  For whatever reason, the organizers of the games didn’t follow my advice, and the contracts were given to a small company in Arkansas and another one in England. I thought that was an unwise decision. Even if those printers did a stellar job, there was all the handling of the tickets from America and England to Australia that presented opportunities for fraud.

  WHAT TO DO

  Since you can’t expect ticket holders to differentiate between genuine and counterfeit tickets, electronic verification systems are necessary at the entry points to big events. As an added precaution, ticket holders should always carry their receipts with them in case someone turns up in their seat with a fraudulent ticket. And I tell people to be wary of anyone who offers to sell tickets for less than their true value; it’s usually a sign that they’re fake.

  Because I’m always interested in how prepared people are for con artists, I went around with a reporter to some of the shops in Australia. We dropped in on a clothing store, and the reporter asked the clerk, “If someone came in here and wanted to buy a sweater and all they had was a hundred-dollar American bill, would you take it?”

  “Oh, no,” the clerk said, “I’d tell him to go to the currency exchange and bring back Australian money.”

  Satisfied that the man was on the alert, the reporter was ready to leave, but I wanted to rephrase the question. I asked the clerk, “Suppose someone came in and said, ’Gee, I really like that sweater. I see it’s the equivalent of seventy-five American dollars. Listen, I’m in a big rush and I don’t have time to get change. Why don’t you take this hundred-dollar bill, and we’ll call it even.’ What would you do?”

  “I’d take it in a minute,” he said.

  He would have sold a sweater for nothing. And the con man would have gotten a sweater for a bill that probably cost him ten cents in paper. See, the con man knows that the clerk wouldn’t take the money. And he knows how to exploit human nature and go to the next step. That’s why you can never let your guard down.

  And the tricks never cease. A couple of years ago, I was hired by Go Transit in Toronto, the metropolitan transit agency, because they were being hindered by ticket fraud on their buses and trains. The ticket they used was a thick piece of paper, with the same fare information printed on both sides. Kids were taking tickets home and putting them in the freezer overnight. When they took them out, the paper was split perfectly in two. Most paper will split when frozen. So they now had two tickets. Go Transit was losin
g something like a couple of million dollars a year from the scam. I redesigned the ticket using a special paper that won’t split, making for a lot of grumpy kids who had to start paying the full fare again.

  MY DENTIST FOR LIFE

  There’s nothing that you can look at today and be certain that it’s real. And that opens a lot of doors. Interested in getting some drugs? That’s not a problem. You put on a nice suit and go down to a dental office in a wealthy part of town at eight forty-five in the morning and tap on the glass. “Excuse me,” you say, “I woke up this morning with this abscessed molar. I’m in serious pain.”

  The receptionist asks if you’re a patient. “No,” you say. “I just moved to town, but everyone told me he’s a great dentist and if I can slip in this morning and see him, he’s my dentist for life.” The receptionist checks with the dentist, and comes back and tells you that he’s booked up solid, but he’ll stay late and squeeze you in at the end of the day. He’s sympathetic to your anguish, she says, so he’s given you a prescription for a painkiller. You take the prescription, make fifty copies of it, go to fifty pharmacies, and you’ve got fifty bottles of painkillers to sell on the street.

  For a new college graduate to get a good job, or to get into a top-notch graduate school, he needs the best transcript possible. But if his actual transcript doesn’t quite pass muster, that’s easy enough to rectify. He scans his transcript into his computer and, in a revisionist touch, improves his 3.0 grade point average to a perfect 4.0. Many employers and graduate schools require applicants to send in their transcripts through the registrar’s office, but that’s fine. You simply call your university and ask them to mail you a university application. When you get the material, which comes with a nice letter from the registrar, you scan the university’s logo, letterhead, registrar’s envelope and signature, and mail it off. One thief had the nerve to put a counterfeit degree and transcript from the University of South Florida up for auction on eBay. He offered it for fifty dollars. Seventeen bids later, it went for $356.