4 Useful Things Forging Documents Taught Me About Your World

Once upon a time, I got pulled over. Let's say I was doing something totally innocent, like rushing kittens to a snuggle appointment. I'd just switched insurance companies, and I hadn't put the card for my new policy in my glove box yet. I got a ticket for that, so I went to court and brought my new insurance card with me. I showed them the date of issue to prove I'd been insured at the time of the stop, and they wound up canceling the ticket. That may have happened to you, and you just went about your day, comfortable in the fact that the system works. But me? I couldn't help but notice that all they did was look at the card and dismiss the ticket.

That was the first time I realized it's all just paper. Paper and words.

So I found some nice stock, matched the fonts, and faked my first document in Photoshop. My first sale was a dude I used to get high with who got pulled over sans insurance and ticketed for it. I offered to test my little scheme out on him. It worked. He got out of a ticket, I got a little bag of dope, and that was it: I was in business. Everybody expects something more in-depth from your criminal origin story, but there's no official college course for budding felons ... aside from maybe political science.

From that point on, I offered six months of phony insurance for $30. It was a way better deal than actual insurance, for everyone but the people my often-drugged-up clients hit. They probably took little solace from the fantastic savings I offered, no matter how much everybody loves a good deal.

Like any subculture, meth-heads tend to find each other and congregate, so as to better discuss the pertinent meth-related issues of the day. One of my druggie friends would tell the story of how I thwarted the law with nothing but my trusty clone tool to another druggie friend, and eventually word spread. There aren't many meth-heads with a fine eye for detail and, more importantly, a printer not already sold for meth. So I made my name, and the business opportunities started flooding in. And by "business" I mean "crime," and by "opportunities" I mean methamphetamines.

What's the most important thing to you in the world?

No, it's not "friendship." Haha, what are you, a Smurf?

It's your paycheck.

So it's pretty weird that paychecks are surprisingly easy to fake. There's a simple piece of printing software that small businesses buy, and it already comes with the paper you use to print those checks. So we got the software, nabbed account numbers from real paychecks, and then had something that worked as a free-money slip (for a little while).

IDs are tougher, because they have those little holograms. I managed to beat those by devising an insignia in Photoshop that looked, at least at a glance, slightly shiny and holographic. I'd actually attach it to the plastic laminate, and then put that over the front of the card. Whipping up the actual plastic of the ID card was a little tougher, so I just used the backs of real, expired IDs, and attached my fake one to the front. That's one of the reasons people on the Internet offer to buy your expired IDs.

Note: For the love of our legal defense fees, please do not try this. Or, if you do, tell them you learned it from BuzzFeed.

The payroll method was the most direct way to turn forgeries into cash, but it wasn't the only way. We'd take a small fake personal check to a 7-Eleven and, using the account number, we'd buy a carton of cigarettes. It would run through the machine once, and then it'd be verified in their system. As soon as it was, we'd just look for a store that used the same system, knowing that our phony money was good there. We'd buy a bunch of big-ticket items and sell them to pawn shops for 30 cents on the dollar or, for the sake of efficiency, we'd just straight-up trade them for drugs. Say what you will about them, but drug addicts rival the Germans in terms of sheer efficiency.

Here's the pettiest forgery I ever committed: You know those books of $1 McDonald's gift cards? If not, congratulations on having awesome birthdays as a child. The rest of us got real familiar with the dollar menu. Anyway, those suckers are incredibly easy to fake. Everyone needs to eat, and surprise! Drug users love shitty fast food. So I'd trade $15 worth of McDonald's for 10 bucks of meth or, and this is slightly less appealing, I'd just get $15 worth of McDonald's.

But eventually I slipped up. We paid runners (in meth -- shockingly, the leading currency of meth addicts) to do the purchasing with forged checks. They worked for about two weeks before it was time to get a new batch. Using other people to make the buy and staying under the two-week limit kept me safe ... for a while.

The first time I got arrested, I was trying to cash a check after the two-week "safe" zone had passed. I knew that account probably wasn't good anymore. But we were out of food, so I went to Safeway to buy $30 in groceries. I tried to pay with a fake check and got picked up for it. The weekend before we'd spent $1,500 on electronics with no problems -- one little week was the narrow window between "free everything!" and "jailed for a carton of Hot Pockets."

I served my time and learned my lesson. And while I worry that sharing all this might give someone the idea to follow in my footsteps, I feel everyone needs to know how utterly flimsy the systems we set up to protect our money and identities really are.

Bob now turns his creativity to less destructive ends, Like acting and writing and running a podcast studio here.

Robert Evans twits on his twitter, follow him here.

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