The King of Counterfeiters: Jeff Turner

If you were in a bad place, hard up financially, looking for work, and some sorta lifeline... how far down your list of options would be the idea: should I start a counterfeiting ring? For Jeff Turner that was his number one idea. And that's how he became the King of Counterfeiters. But it's also how Jeff ended up on this show, so clearly there were some challenges he didn't expect. For example, a duplicitous Cleveland heroin dealer.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (00:04):
There. How you doing, I'm good? How you doing?

Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'm doing, darm good. I'm fired up and been drinking
all my pepper juice. I'm right to go. How about you?

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Okay? Yeah, I'm good.

Speaker 4 (00:13):
You look at Yeah, I look like an executive. Yeah,
I look like a captain of industry.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
You do? You have tycoon energy? So I got to
ask you, tycoon, what I do.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Johnsonville Brats teamed up with Doctor Pepper to make.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Sausages just going just right in the gut like that.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
Huh Yeah, I run Dr Pepper being you know, made
up of twenty three different flavors and it's gonna listen,
but you know it's to hell with it.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
But why did they combine with a what.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
Johnson pork sausage?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Doctor porker? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (00:52):
I mean you cook, you cook sausages and beer. Some
people cook them and cook cola.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Really. Oh yeah, this is all new to me. So
why did they decide to do that?

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Why does anyone do any Why did you want to
tell me? I just wanted to.

Speaker 4 (01:06):
Get that one over with. Sophia Smith from Instagram gave
it to us Doctor pepper sausage is boom done.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Oh man, Okay, I'm gonna skip past that because Elizabeth,
you know I recently told you the story of the
King of bank Robbers. Yes, George Leonidas Leslie. Yes, this
week I have a follow up. It's the modern twenty
first century story of the King of counterfeitters. Oh, mister
Jeffrey Turner.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
Oh hello, Well, I.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Think the best way of I'm just trying to sum
up or express why jeff Turner is both the King
of counterfeiters and also why I love his story can
be summed up in one sentence. Okay, and I quote
I used Bible paper to print over two million dollars.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
That's fair. That's layered like the Bible.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and
one hundred percent ridiculous. Yes, sir, Elizabeth, you're ready to
get wicked with it.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
I'm gonna get so wicked right now.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
This one's thick like a stack.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Of radical batical let's do it.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Look we're getting wicked with funny money, a bunch of
Cleveland heroin dealers and some counterfeit money printed on Bible
papers sideways immediately. Okay, well, if I got a story
for you today, I warn you this, Like I said, supersize,
so buckle up, BUTTERCA meet Jeffrey Patrick Turner. Hello, as
the Tennessee And reported on December twenty second, twenty seventeen,

(02:54):
the criminal road for jeff Turner came to a sudden,
surprising end real quick. You see, it had all been
going so well, Elizabeth. He had no idea, no even
clear foresight of this ever occurring, and boom, suddenly his
road ended. Now he's already done his time inside and
he's since been released and he's rebuilding his life. Part
of that involves telling his story online. In fact, Elizabeth,

(03:16):
you know how you told me a story about a
fraudster named Matthew Cox. Yes, well, yes, he said he
had a true crime book series.

Speaker 4 (03:23):
Yeah, he wound up becoming like true crime dude on
YouTube and the Internet.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
And yes, he interviews his fellow former jailbirds.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Tell me how you got their number two? He knows
the deal.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
They opened up to him in a different way because
he's been inside. They respect that. It's like con to
con so Matt Cox, he spoke with Jeff Turner. It
was a live conversation. Oh yeah, a lot of inside baseball.
But not only did he talk to your boy, Matt Cox.
Jeff Turner's also spoken with a number of other podcasts,
and he now has his own YouTube channel.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
He makes videos explaining what he did, how he became
the king of counterfeitters. He basically faces the camera and
just didn't run on sentences. In heroin dipp Street Talk,
he tells his story. Okay, it's wild. Anyway, there isn't
much reporting on this guy in the local news, which
is kind of wild. Like, I went looking and I
tried to find the federal indictments and they're basically like difficult,
but it's like only a few available easily online and

(04:20):
then you have to like go digging into pacer. It's interesting.
So I did, though, watch every video I could. I
transcribed his quotes off of various podcasts, YouTube channels, and
I pieced together what I think is his crime story.
First things first, Elizabeth, can you imagine telling a judge
in the South that you printed two million dollars on
Bible paper?

Speaker 3 (04:39):
No, I cannot think. I just simply cannot so.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Where to begin. Well, as the old jazz heads used
to say, let's begin at the beginning. Jeff Turner starts
out in Florida. As he tells it, I guess it
all started when I was probably like sixteen years old.
I would say, I started counterfeiting driver's licensees, fake id's,
and it's just from my own thing to like buy
beer as a kid, you know what I mean. So
he's start small, just king. I'm in. I don't know
about you. Did you have a fake ID? Do you

(05:03):
know anyone had a fake ID?

Speaker 4 (05:05):
I'm sure I knew people who did, I guess, but
I didn't have one.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Okay, well I had a fake ID. I actually bought it.
And it was a friend of mine who was twenty one.
He just sold me his driver's license. And problem for
me was he was this Jewish cat, like a white
Jewish cat, so like the only thing we really had
in common was dark curly hair. But I used it.
And most of the times when I presented, the people
would just be so amused. They'd just let me go,

(05:29):
Oh okay, you buy the stuff, or let me in
the club or let me in the bar. It was
awesome and anyway, Jeff Turner's like, no, we're doing legit
fake IDs, And so he made real clean forgeries of
Florida IDs. Like he would go down to the print
shop and he was like he got good at photoshopping,
and so he'd be printing up these IDs, laminating the
fake IDs like they would basically trick anyone but a cop. Yeah.

(05:52):
So at this point he's like, you know, maybe I
should go bigger than that. Maybe I should like, you know,
counterfeit some money.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
Why not?

Speaker 2 (05:58):
And I mean, you're young, you do need to challenge yourself. So,
as Jeff Turner puts it, by the time I was
nineteen years old, I started attempting to counterfeit currency. And
I think originally it was just kind of like a
photocopy type thing. I didn't know what I was doing.
I had no experience in it. They looked horrible. Oh no, Yeah,
but this didn't really matter because he wasn't really going
to like stores and trying to like you know, bust

(06:19):
his bills and get back cash. He was just trying
to trick drug dealers, like oh yeah, he didn't have
to worry about security features.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yeah, he was just like, they don't pull out the
yellow pen.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
No, yeah, the counterfeit pen. No. He was like basically,
you know, as he puts it, first time I started,
I wasn't even worried about security features. Like my thinking
was just print these bills so I can go like
buy weed, you know, in a parking lot in the dark,
and just hope to get away with it. So, yeah,
this whole plan is to rip off drug dealers.

Speaker 4 (06:48):
Yeah, who are they gonna tell? Well, they may come
after you, but there is that risk.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
There's always that risk. They may get mad, they may
try to beat the money out of you. You know,
there's options. He's nineteen years old, and he didn't have
much of a plan, or is he put it, I
didn't really have a plant or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
So yeah, he didn't have much of a plan.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
No, brother, I've been there, But Providence showed him a
new way. Now, as Jeff Turner recalls, quote, I ended
up going to a Barnes and Noble and finding this
book The Art of Making Money, about a counterfetter up
in Chicago named Art Williams. That names sound familiar, and.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
It certainly does. I told you all about him.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Right, So that guy in his book, he becomes this,
you know, Counterfeiter's Bible for Jeff. He's like, okay, this
is my gospel of crime. He follows whatever Art Williams
had to say.

Speaker 5 (07:32):
Well, he was meticulous, right, yes, exactly, So, I mean
his he details in the book his process about how
he would make his counterfeit bills and how he'd sandwich
two sheets together, embed the strip and the watermark, and
he'd used this stuff called chroma flare chameleon car paint
to make like the color shifting ink.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Like you said, meticulous.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
So now we got this nineteen year old who's been
making really ugly, funny money. He's like, this is the way. Yeah.
So his new goal now isn't to just rip off
Florida weed dealers. Now he's like, what if I ripped
off a billion dollar corporations? Perfect right, Well, he's like, okay,
you know, if I can beat the security features, I
can take these counterfeit bills and actually pass them out
a store, then you get real change back. Boom boom boom.

(08:13):
So now he's a nineteen year old with quote a
hankering to make a decent recipe. Oh all right, so
his technique was rudimentary At first, he makes a product
that's good enough that he finds a buyer for his
funny money. So one of his friend's dads turns out
to be a career criminal. Okay, so he's like, oh, hey,
ask your dad he wants to buy on my funny money.

(08:34):
So he shows his friend's dad or you know, his
friend shows his dad some of Jeff Turner's fake twenty
dollar bills and he's like, you and your friend can
make these. I'll take a five thousand dollars worth. Whoa yeah,
So now he's going to be making five thousand dollars
in fake twenty dollars bills for a career criminal at
twenty cents on the dollar.

Speaker 4 (08:52):
He's like, when you have to sell candy bars for
the soccer team, and yes.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
Then one of the parents is like, oh, forget about it. Here,
here's twenty bucks. He'll take the whole box.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yes, So his friend's dad's like, gonna pay him essentially
one thousand dollars for five thousand counterfeit. So this goes well,
This arrangement works out for him. It lasts about six months,
but unfortunately, sadly, his friend od's and passes away. So
now Jeff has no contact with the friend's dad. He's
just whole. His one person market dries up, so he

(09:22):
gets into a different hustle, one with way more buyers.
He starts.

Speaker 4 (09:25):
It's not like a wake up call of like my
friend died and no, maybe I.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Need to In fact, quite the opposite. He starts selling drugs.
Oh god, oxy pills, opioidspent and all that kind of
street drugs, right like street heroin. Now one occupational hazard
of selling drugs that you start doing the drugs you sell,
as you know, as Big barn as in the Crack commandments,
never get high in your own supply exactly. Jeff Turner
starts selling drugs, starts doing drugs, and through all of

(09:52):
this quote I developed quite a drug habit.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Oh god.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Oops. But he's still in his hustle because basically he's
trying to make his drugs cheaper by selling drugs to
other drug users. So he would pay people to like
go to a pain management clinic, they get some oxy
or whatever openoid they have on offer, fet and all whatever,
and then he'd take those pills from the person and
then sell them to their drug abusers, right right, So
let's pick up the needle a little off this record.

(10:17):
Skip ahead to the next track. When we dropped the
needle onto our next song, it's six seven years later,
it's twenty thirteen. Jeff Turner is now a twenty five
twenty six year old drug dealer and hardcore drug abuser.
His whole life changes when he meets this young woman.
The way he tells it, she didn't really do drugs.
She had a couple of kids from a previous marriage.
I kind of settled down started dating her.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
Oh good for her.

Speaker 4 (10:38):
You got kids, lady, you don't have to do drugs
and pick this winner up.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Oh yeah, hell yeah. So this this is life changing
for Jeff right because it gives him a new habit.
He was out looking, you know, you try to get
out of his old life and stop being a pain
pill popper and you know, dealer. So he's like, I'm
going to be a good you know, step dad, I'm
going to be a good partner. So, as he explained
on his YouTube channel, I wanted to get away from
the drug scene in Florida because it was just getting

(11:03):
very chaotic back then, a lot of people were dying,
going to prison, just you know, the whole thing that
comes along with drug addicts.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
Yeah, that whole thing.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, so he's seen the light. That's good for him.
So this young couple, these crazy kids, they set out
to find a new life for themselves and their happy
little family outside of Florida. Okay, they go north to Knoxville, Tennessee.
All right, Hey, Jeff Turner finds a legit job. He
gets this job, but it's a place called Sycamore Sign Service.
It's like a sign company in Knoxville. As he puts it,

(11:32):
things were going good. He's clean, he kicked his opioid habit.
He's a family man now with a good, steady job.
And then life dropped a little challenge in his path
and he failed at Elizabeth. Oh no, just like a
tenth grade math test. Yeah, Jeff Turner suctinctly recalls out.
Shortly thereafter, I ended up meeting this like gigantic pill
dealer in Knoxville. So I ended up getting back on drugs.

(11:55):
So it's a hell of a drugs it is. Anyway,
He's still working, tending to his family though, even though
he's now quickly redeveloping a hardcore drug habit. As Jeff
tells it, you know, things were going good. We were
renting the house. Everything was pretty stable for a while.
Me and the girl ended up getting married, having a
couple kids of our own. You know, so years go
buy everything's going good. He's also, like I said, he's
doing well at work. He even gets a promotion to

(12:17):
be the lead serviceman, which means his boss sends him
out with his own work truck. So a picture like
a big old white truck with a cherry picker bucket
like the utility companies would have. Yeah, he's doing that
to like put signs up and take them down with like.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
A junkie at the helm.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, because he does. His boss knows he has a
drug problem because on the truck he puts a GPS
tracker and then he see he's following the GPS tracker,
and he sees where Jeff's going, and then the wait.
Jeff tells it. He brought me into the office one
day and basically said, I saw in the truck's GPS
tracker that you're going to these questionable neighborhoods and obviously

(12:51):
buying drugs or whatever. He basically said, I'm not going
to fire you, but just stop doing that. Don't take
my truck to those neighborhoods anymore. Jeff's like, of course, man, yeah,
no problem. He promises he's not gonna take the big
old work truck with the cherry picker to go score
fen and all a heroin or whatever. But life deals
him another wicked curveball Elizabeth. Because he and his wife
have just welcomed a new baby into their family, he's

(13:14):
not getting much sleep anyway, gets called into work one
day on his day off. He goes, you know, good
worker that he is, and as Jeff tells it, I
ended up falling asleep at the wheel and rolling the
bucket truck, you know, just totaled it. Oh my gosh,
it's a bad one. He sends him to the hospital.
He gets staples in his head. It's not a good wreck.
But his boss is like, you know, I have to
fire you, right, yeah, so Jeff, oh yeah, And who's

(13:38):
to say if he was, you know, impaired or just
sleepy from being a new father. He's got both challenges. Anyway,
that guy said, bad wreck. So now he's in a
hell of a position. He's a heroin addict, a dad
of a newborn. He's got four youngins, at home to
take care of. In total, he's got car payments, rent
to pay now, he's injured and unemployed, and his lease
is up in a few months. So he does the

(13:59):
mat He's like, if I get a new job, I
want to have money to pay for all this, And
because i'll probably miss rent, then my landlord won't want
on to renew the lease. I won't have enough to
pay for first and last in a security deposit for
a new place. And so pretty soon he's looking down
the barrel this very depressing gun. So he's like, you
know what I need to do.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
I have another baby.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
I need to rob a bank. He's good, guess though,
he's like, no, no, wait, that's not enough. I need
to rob a bunch of banks.

Speaker 3 (14:25):
Yeah, he's like, your.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
Man, will he sud He thinks himself, that's where the
money I need money. So, but this is actually not
his first response. His first response was I could start
selling drugs, right, He's like, but he doesn't really know
enough people in the Knoxville area. So he's like, I
don't know. Let me go back to my other plan.
Rob a bank. No, wait, a bunch of banks. Because
we had to plan it all out of this, But
you have to understand he did his research. He looked

(14:47):
at the risk rewards of robbing a bank. Oh, he
found that if he didn't use a weapon, he only
used a note and he didn't ask the teller to
like step away or do anything, then there's no kidnapping.
And yes, so he did. Yeah, he just hands over
just selling hand over all the money in the drawer.
That would mean with no enhanced charges and if he
avoids diepacks, he could go for a while. But even

(15:08):
if he does get caught, he wouldn't even be looking
at that much time in prison. So he's like, you know,
I could get out, My kids will still be in
school or whatever, right, but.

Speaker 4 (15:16):
He's concerned about them not making rent. What's gonna happen
when he goes inside.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Well, that's that's worst case scenario, Elizabeth. He's looking at
the other side of the ledger, which is like best
case scenario. So, as he tells your boy Matthew Cox
on the Cox's YouTube channel, he really thought it through though,
and that was the problem because he knew that if
there's any given teller's drawer that he went to rob,
he's only gonna come oay with a few thousand dollars. Yeah,
he's like, so I'm gonna need to rob five, maybe

(15:41):
ten banks just to get on my feet. As he
explains to Matthew Cox, I found these specific banks that
were like two right turns away from an interstate. I
planned on like digging a hole in the side of
the interstate just to bury everything as soon as I
was done, like I had it all really planned out.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
Whoa, He's gonna dig a hole in the.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
Same really planned out Elizabeth.

Speaker 4 (16:03):
Yeah, there's no stopping him, mastermind Iu.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, we're covered. It's next to a big tree, third
tree on the right.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Past one sitting right next to the highway.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
It's back to little street sign. So anyway, he's he's
still a heroin fatanyl user, which means he knows drug dealers.
So Monday's talking to this heroin dealer, this guy used
to work with at the sign company and the guys
who had also been fired. The two get to talking
about Jeff's options.

Speaker 3 (16:25):
To the core owner of the sign company.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
By the way, Oh you say that, But he's like,
how do we what's the best way for me to
raise money? Man, I'm going to pinch and between the
two of them, they come up with this new idea,
and that's when his whole life takes a very dramatic turn.
But before we get into all that, let's take a break.
Eliab Okay, listen to some ear candy and by that
I mean a slew of commercials. Yep. And after these messages,

(16:49):
we'll get into making funny money. Okay, this biz, We're back.

(17:15):
Where were we? Oh right, Jeff Turner needs money? Yeah,
lots of it. Well let's have our man at the moment.
Jeff Turner reset the stage. As he told your boy
Matthew Cox on his YouTube channel, I reconnected with a
buddy of mine who I worked with at the sign company,
and it just so happens he'd become a rather large
drug dealer.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
Oh so.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
He'll be what Look, what strange person, Elizabeth Jeff made
a heroin connection.

Speaker 3 (17:40):
Would have expected it from him.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
But you know, heroin connections are a lot like rainbow connections,
just a lot seedier, and they can kill you.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
The rainbow bridge.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
Anyway, this is where Jeff's story takes, like I said,
a wicked turn of fate. So he said, a friend
of mine called me and said, hey, if you need
me you know a caroin, call this dude, he's got you,
you know, like, whatever you want.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Hey, do you need heroin? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
Maybe he's like, so, hey, how's the newborn? How you
got doing. Hey, by the way, if you need some heroin.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
Just check it. I just wanted to check in on you.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
How's your heart or some diapers? My sisters got diapers.
My buddy's got heroin. Do you need h Yeah, so
you want to get Guess what he did next? Once
he got this, call thought heroin, So I called him.
He may be wondering why have all things holy? What
a married father, for his experiencing joblessness contact a heroin
dealer when he desperately needs to make money instead of

(18:31):
say spend money, huh, Well to that, I would just
say heroin.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
Yeah, he prefers to that thing.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Whatever else you got.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
It is rough? Oh yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
D we can all these days people off from crack
jokes about literally about crack, right, But it's it's heroin
that really is the king of the drugs that scrambles
your sense of what is and what is not a
good idea. I mean, heroin is the og of that is.

Speaker 4 (18:55):
Oh yeah, totally and when you're talking about how he
was he first she was on hills and he was
getting people at pain clinics.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
That's the sacklers, you know.

Speaker 4 (19:04):
That's all that, you know, horrible opiate painkillers that like
they prescribed it like candy for.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
A number of years there they were just doling it up.

Speaker 4 (19:15):
Yeah, and then now you get the pendulum swing, so
that if people really are in pain, it's.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
Near impossible difficult to get decent, you know, painkillers to
address those issues.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Now you see people have had like, you know, real
bad pain going to Heroin.

Speaker 4 (19:30):
I tore a ligament in my ankle and they wouldn't
give me any more than a leave.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Is that like a motron?

Speaker 3 (19:36):
Yeah, it's yeah, it's a kin to that. Yeah it's yeah.
It was rough.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
That is bad. Yeah, like I used to It doesn't
matter what I used to do with pain pills, not
to friends. That's not the story, Elizabeth. So like I'm
off the flame, Old Jeff. He heads over to the
Heroin dealer's house to see what's what. And this guy
he lives on the good side of Knoxville, like the
west side of Knoxville, up wind.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
Right, like Johnny Knoxville totally.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
So when Jeff gets there, by the way, congratulations to
PJ Clap. I just saw that Johnny Knoxhill got married, Nott.

Speaker 3 (20:04):
Married and do you see who officiated?

Speaker 2 (20:06):
John Waters right, and there's a dog involved, which I'm
sure you gotta love.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
Oh I do. I love that.

Speaker 4 (20:11):
It looked joyous, Yeah, absolute joyous Johnny and seemed happy.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
He seems like a good dude.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
I like him. I'm pumping he doesn't milk shake duck ever,
because I bet chips on him. I'm like, all right, I
think he seems like a good guy.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
I've been a fan since back in the day, yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
From the jump yep. So. But anyway, when Jeff gets
to the trap house on the west side of Knoxville,
he knocks. Someone comes to the door lets him in,
but he doesn't know this person. It's just this like
big dude. So the dude like starts to pat down Jeff,
looking for like a weapon or maybe for like a
police wire, I don't know. Jeff is bothered by this,
perhaps insulted.

Speaker 3 (20:43):
He's like, hey, we just met.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
He's literally he says, like the way he tells the
story is what are you doing? Bro? Like, why are
you patting me down right, he talks like like a
Tarantino character. All of a sudden, he tells that part
of the story anyway. Since he's not wired up and
not carrying hardware, the stranger lets him into the house,
takes him into the back to me the heroin dealer
that Jeff knows his former co worker from the sign company. Yeah,
he tells it. I was like, you know, I was

(21:06):
told you got some heroin and he's like yeah. He
opens up this safe, pulls out just like a freezer
bag full of dope, and I was shocked. I was like,
holy groul, I didn't know you had it like that.
Now that's that's how he discovered his old coworker has
turned into a big time heroin dealer. Who does indeed

(21:27):
have it like that?

Speaker 3 (21:28):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
The Jeff knows he's at the right place, so he
gets down to business. He scores some h and then
he tells the big time dealer I was having serious
money troubles.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
He's like, oh, by the way, yes, yes, I can't
afford this.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
So they sides up the obvious issue of Jeff buying
the heroin, and instead the dealer offers him some vice
about how to like make some serious lute to save
his family Heroin deos. First idea is like, why don't
you sell Heroin? It works well for this, like have
you seen my big house? Jeff's like he's like, I
don't know, and they got The dealer's like, I'll bunch,

(22:00):
you've man, you can like you can sell it, you
can pay me back and then just come and re up.
We could do it again. Just like, nah, I need
more money than that, like faster than that. I don't
really know enough people to become a Heroin dealer.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
And that takes work.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
No, No, He's literally it's like he's no longer in
the life. Remember he's gonna have had a straight job.
There's no Heroin people anymore, not like he did in Florida. Right,
So he's like, okay, you know what my plan is
is to rob banks and the Heroin dealers. Like, okay,
that's a choice. Heroin dealer listened. So he's like, you know,
by the way, man, that is not a good idea.
What else you got? So Jeff brings up his plan

(22:33):
I guess c At this point he says like, oh,
I also planned on counterfeiting money. I used to do
that in Florida when I was a kid, Like I
go back to that. The heroin Dealer's like, no, that's
a good idea, right.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
He's like, I could use a little bit of I
could diversify.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
But for real, But Elizabeth, this was not a good
idea because to the criminally minded it sounds like a
good idea like, oh, you need money, you can make money.

Speaker 3 (22:54):
Boom done, literally make money.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
But the two of them, they start shopping it up
in the big time. Heroin dealer says basically exactly what
you said. If you start printing one hundred dollar bills,
I'll buy them off you man.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
So this is a huge relief to Jeff. He's like,
oh man, I've got a buyer again. So you know,
I think, well he put it this way. I figured
that was the safest bet, especially with like a newborn child.

Speaker 3 (23:17):
You know, okay, you dress everybody.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
That statement speaks for itself.

Speaker 4 (23:22):
Yeah, that's the safest bet with a newborn child, one
hundred percent. I mean that's if you look at any
of the parenting books.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
It's like a page three, page three counterfeiting money.

Speaker 4 (23:35):
You need to make ends meet. So Jeff, if you
will first talk it over with your heroin dealer.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Could find somebody to consult with, prevorably someone in the
life God. So if you're left wondering like I was
when I first read this, why Jeff, why it is
Jeff Turner, He's got an answer for you. He says,
I've always kind of had, I hate to say it,
but kind of a criminal mentality, you know, like do
whatever it takes to get by make you know, I'm
always down for a hustle and no kidding jem So

(24:05):
at this point, right he tells the heroin dealer like
I can make funny money, and the heroin dealers Jeffrey
calls he was exciting for it. He's like, what do
you need? How can I help? Which I mean like
if you leave the crime part aside, his attitude is admirable.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
Very supportive.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
As a former cow sid. You come to me, He's like, Hey,
what do you need? How can I help? And when
you put the crime part back in, not such a
great attitude anyway, back to the crime part. So Jeff
jumps at the offer. He tells the heroin dealer what
he would need to get started. So I told him,
you know, give me like a few hundred dollars or
some dope. So I'm not sick, and I'll bring you
an envelope with like these counterfeit twenty dollars bills. I'll

(24:41):
bring you like five grand a fake twenties, and you
can re up with them, do whatever you want with them.
So he did that. He gave me a few hundred
bucks to like buy a nice printer, to buy some
supplies I needed. I think he gave me like a
few grams of heroin too, you know, just so I'm
not dope sick while I sat at home and edited
these images and made some bills. Oh my god, got
the newborn at home.

Speaker 3 (25:02):
So oh god. So he holds up, just just.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
Okay, you're gonna survive it.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
I'm gonna I'm gonna pull through.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Jeff starts making counterfeit twenties for this big time heroin dealer.
He gets himself the printer, He prints up materials to
make the five thousand dollars in fake twenties. Then he
brings an envelope stuffed with the counterfeit five grand. He
sells it to the heroin dealer. Dude looks it over.
He's like some good, good looking funny money. Oh he
said it cooler than that. Obviously, I don't know what
he said.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
He said, well, shazam, oh take them. Well this is
a pretty penny.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
Why ain't those the cat's pajamas. So he takes the
envelope and he has some young women in his employee
take the fake twenties out, test them, make some small
purchases to come back with legit money they got has
change works beautifully. Women come back with a bunch of
money big time heroin.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
Dealers like lags of hot cheetahs.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
Exactly all the hot cheetahs you can eat.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
Broke them at Now.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
The first envelope he makes was free because he had
to pay off the debts he'd already encourage. He I
guess he got like a thousand dollars worth of like
supply money and then dope money. So now he's got
to make one. So now the guy offers him twenty
cents on the dollar. So for each envelope, Jeff, he's
gonna be making about thousand dollars. At this point, Jeff
wants to step it up. He's like, you know, by
the way, I've been working on one hundred dollars bill

(26:17):
and i'd like to, like, you know, go for that
if you're interested.

Speaker 4 (26:20):
And the dealer's like, yeah, he's like, he's like a
fake bill Somalia.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
Well, perhaps the sir, you would be interested.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
In I have an excellent ninety six series if you're
interested in one hundred. It's one of Ben Franklin's finest portraits.
But when't you know it, Elizabeth, just as you believe
he's got things going again, Fate steps in again. You're kidding, yeah, because,
as Jeff says, by the time I got these hundreds,
like good, you know what I mean, Like I was
confident with them, his house gets raided. He goes to jail.

(26:51):
So now his one buyer is out again. Yeah, this
is bad because he's got that envelope of counterfeit money
that he's made for him and he's like and also
he's delivered one envelope. Yeah, so now the cops. When
cops see an envelope of five thousand dollars in fake money,
they tend to ask questions, but where did you get this?
Who made this? What is his name for? Prince? So

(27:13):
when you're arrested, those kind of questions also become like
a currency, like you can use those top your plea bargain.
So now Jeff has to wonder did his former co
worker turn big time heroin dealer turned criminal business partner
snitch on him to reduce his own sentence. The way
Jeff remembers, it was like the police got him with
meth and heroin and counterfeit money. I heard he was
in jail. I look him up online. I see his mugshot.

(27:35):
I see a possession of counterfeit currency on his charges.
So it spooked me, you know what I mean. I
was like, oh, I hope he's not cooperating on me
or whatever.

Speaker 4 (27:45):
He should have gone and visited him in jail and
asked him in person.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
And this is where a heroin user or you know,
even dealer often won't hear the irony in their choices
because remember, his primary counterfeit money buyers locked up flipping
on him. What does Jeff need to do, Well, he
needs to flee. He now has to leave his house.
He can't be there, so the very reason he's making
the counterfeit money stable housing is now gone, right Yeah,

(28:10):
And he skips right past that. He's like, that is
not a lesson to be learned, right, now.

Speaker 4 (28:14):
Is he going to leave solo or is he going
to pick up the whole family?

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Oh? You know, he's taking the whole family with him.
He doesn't want them flipping on him. Not to kid,
he's literally trying to care for his family. So he's like, what,
daddy needs his ah, and you need housing, let's go.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
Yeah. And moving's so cheap.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah. So they flee the trap house he's in, and
he takes his wife and has four small children with him,
and they go stay in a hotel, like one of
those extended stay places, one that's furnished. So he's got
now all these counterfeit hundreds that he's made and no
one to sell them to. So what should he do? Well,
he quickly decides he needs to break his own rule
and go bust his counterfeit cash himself. Yeah, pass them
off to drug store cashiers, dollar store clerks.

Speaker 3 (28:52):
You get the idea, kids go in, have the kids
do it.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Oh, there you go, that's stubbly smart. He decides his
hundreds are good enough to risk his own freedom and
he passes them for real cash and change. So, now,
how did he make these counterfeit bills? Great question? I mean,
if they're good enough to pass, Like, what's his secret?
I've been waiting for you to ask.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
Well, I like to keep you in suspense.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
I appreciate that. So some counterfeiters, they will take one
dollar bills, bleach the hell out of them, and then
print one hundred dollars on that small bill. Right, But
this is a heinous process because you imagine mixing some
of the worst chemicals known demand to strip the money
of its Jeff tells it this way. I have to
put in purple power, automotive degreaser and hydrogen peroxide and

(29:34):
then microwave it and then take a sander and file
it down.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
This sounds like they're cooking meth pretty much.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
I mean, it's just like the really pretty much the
same cookboard or a cookbooks. It's just like your cupboard,
I guess, is what I was meant to say. Yeah,
you're pulling from the same cupboard. Anyway, when you're doing
all that, some of the bills don't make it through
the process. You lose ten to twenty percent of the bills.
It's inefficient, it's toxic. So Jeff's like, I can do
better than this. So what's his new plan? Great question,
Elizabeth His new plan is take an inkjet printer and

(30:03):
just print up some money.

Speaker 4 (30:06):
Okay, on an inkjet inkjet pressure, you know what happens
when that gets wet?

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Oh there is that, but the ink run. How the
hell would an inkjet printer work just to print money? Like, well,
another banger question. So start with, you can't scan a
hundred dollar braill and just print one side and then
print the other side after you scan that other side,
and then to glue the two together, like the way
Art Williams did. Yeh, because I'm not sure if you
know this. I didn't know this. If you scan one

(30:32):
hundred dollar bill, the scanner is programmed not to allow
you to upload the image, and instead it just kind
of shows you a warning of a US penal code onterfitting. Yeah,
so that was Jeff Turns experience at least. So this
guy's smart. So he's like, well, how do I get
around that?

Speaker 3 (30:46):
So you buy a scanner off of like t move
from China. I don't care.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
I don't know that, I think even I don't know.
So he makes digital files by taking photographs of the
one hundred dollars bills. Oh, he turns those images into
layers about using photoshop, so he used like what he
had learned at the old sign shop. Right, So, as
Jeff says, I would layer it, I'd layer the image.
I use like three or four different layers. Like one
would just be the background color, that cream color. Now

(31:10):
you see, as I mentioned earlier, the ninety six series,
that's an actual series of bills. It's the older one
hundred dollars. So that's not the new one that's nicknamed
the blue note that we have now that you see
that is all new security features. The ninety six series
had this old creamy green bill design, right.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
So stillse don't have this the hologram strip to.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
They do it, but they have a strip, but not
the new strip, which is much crazier to imitate. So
Jeff explains, I'd have one file with just this cream
background color, and then another file with just the green
serial numbers, and then the Treasury seal, and then another
file with all the black ink like you know, the
Federal Reserve seal, the portrait all that.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
You know, it's really sad Ai is going to take
his job.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
It's so sad.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
It's so sad.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
The counterfeiters are one of the few people who are
stoked about AI taking their job because it's still illegal.
We're just doing it together, were working, we're both stealing.
So he creates the image, right he Now he has
to print it up. And you can't just use normal
paper and then glue those pieces together. It won't look
or feel right, right, So what do you use? Well,
Jeff says, he visited all the usual suspects places you're

(32:15):
familiar with. Look for instance, every single art supply, Star,
hobby Lobby, Michaels and they I mentioned. He goes online
like you would, and he researches types of paper and
he gets really familiar with all the various types of
paper in the bond and then he finds, okay, I
need nine pound bond paper so that when he prints
on the paper and glues the two sites together combined
to the weight that he believes a dollar bill to be,

(32:36):
which is twenty pound paper. So you have like the
two nines glued together, some glue in between and whatnot,
you get to twenty pound paper. So this is his plan, right,
and your boy art Williams He used to use newspapers for.

Speaker 3 (32:49):
His g the like tail end of the roles.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
Exactly, so Jeff was like, I think I can do
better than that, so he did. Our term is he
needs a very thin paper, but one that's still opaque,
like you can't see through it, right, So he can
that way, he can add the security strip and the
water mark, but not be able to see through the
face of his fake bill. So also he needs the
paper to feel crisp and to kind of like pop
the way real money does if you like snap it

(33:15):
like a belt. And the reason you get that crispness
is like, for at least for instance, of a new bill,
the pop of a bill is because it's cotton linen, right, Yeah,
so it's more like cloth than actual typical paper. Well,
Jeff finds the perfect paper to use. It's called scrit
a paper. Yeah, I'd never heard of this. It's this
rare type of paper that you find in expensive bibles.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
Interesting, Yeah, Jeff remembers it.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
It was literally perfect. If you shine a UV light
onto high end scrit a paper, it glows a dull purple,
just like money. Whereas most paper, pretty much all paper
is bleached in the manufacturing process, so it glows like
a bright fluorescent blue. But this high end scrit a
paper glowed purple and UV light. It was opaque, it
was thin, it was durable. It's cotton linen blended paper,

(34:01):
literally perfect. So now Jeff just needs to get his
hands on a bunch of this Bible paper and he's
good to go. Trouble is, as Jeff tells it, I
found a by it. It was like these big manufacturing
companies that only sell it in these giant reams. It
would come on a palette in like a preate truck.
So I'd have to you know, sign for that. I

(34:21):
need a forklift just to move this palette of paper.
So that options out. So no bulk Bible paper purchases
for Jeff. What next? Well, and he could always you know,
steal pages out of a Bible. You see in the
backs of bibles there are often blank pages for like
note taking, sulful reflections or whatever. Yeah, so Jeff starts

(34:41):
visiting bookstores walmarts, and he goes to the Bible section
and he just cuts out pages from the backs of
expensive bibles, then shoves them down his pants and walks out.
He also, by the way, pretends that he needs bibles
for his wife's charity to you know, distribute them to
families in need. So Jeff hits expen into the bibles
that way. But then he has a true stroke of genius.

(35:04):
Since he's staying in hotels all the time, he sees
how there's often a Bible in the nightstand, right, so
he starts taking pages from those. Baby call the front
desk and say, there's no Bible in my room. Gets
another bible, get that one too.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
I just went right through this Bible. Can I get
a friend?

Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yeah, he got me. How many Bibles you got back there? Well,
one day at a hotel, he calls down to ask
for a bible, and the lady in the front desk says,
I'll send up the maintenance man with a bible. A
little while later, the maintenance guy shows up with a Bible,
and Jeff takes a quick read of him, and he's like,
he's a fellow drug user.

Speaker 3 (35:34):
I was gonna say to the maintenance man, like, here's
your bible. Would you like some hero?

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Well, Jeff offers him there and so oh no, Yeah,
he chats him up right as he tells it, this
guy came knocked on our door handed me a bible.
I could tell the maintenance man looked a little rough,
like I could tell he was probably on drugs. I
was like, so, you guys don't keep them in the
rooms anymore and he said no, you know, nowadays it's
you know, not really politically correct, like there's different religions

(35:58):
out of respect for like Buzzli or whatever. We just
have them upon request, but we don't keep them in
the room. So I was like, so what you guys
just have like a closet full of the old Bibles
or something and he was like, yeah, we got like
four or five boxes them in the maintenance closet. That's
why the maid called me to get them for you.
So now Jeff's mind is dancing like a sugarplum fairy

(36:19):
on meth, imagining all those Bibles and what he could
do with him if he get his hands on him. Yeah,
so he asked the rough looking maintenance guy, you want
to sell me some boxes of bibles. Jeff's like, I'll
give you one hundred dollars right now for all the bibles.
Jeff bye is like five boxes of old Bibles. The
maintenance guy brings up the bibles and Jeff gets to work.
So I went through each Bible and I took the

(36:40):
two blank pages. I was able to get like enough
to make like twenty thousand dollars off of this one
cheap motel.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Right now, but this is.

Speaker 4 (36:49):
The maintenance guy is probably thinking, like he's gonna do
something freaky teky with the Bible.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Hold. Bad thought, oh, because this is not the end
of this particular story.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
After he cuts out the blank Bible pages, Jeff throws
away the five boxes of Bibles. He tosses them right
back in them wotel dumpster, and the maintenance man of course,
sees the five boxes of Bibles in the dress and
now he's confused. He's like, why the held someone buy
bibles only to throw them all away?

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Right right?

Speaker 2 (37:13):
So when he sees Jeff and his family checking out
of the motel, he goes up to Jeff and he says, hey, man,
like just you know, like I noticed those boxes of
Bibles and the dumpster, Like, why did you pay me
for them if you're just gonna throw them away? And
I didn't know what to say, so he was like,
what are you are you like a Satan worshiper or something, So,
not knowing what to say, Jeff's like, yeah, yeah, that's
what I am. I was like, gotta get rid of

(37:34):
the word of Jesus, and I'm paying money out of
my own pocket just to throw those books away. Oh
my god, what a moment in your life. If you're
standing in the parking with some cheap motel you're trying
to convince the stranger that you worship Satan just so
you get out of the conversation and get back to
your family. Okay, So, now that he's found the perfect
and perfectly blasphem his paper for making money, does Jeff

(37:56):
start printing a fortune?

Speaker 3 (37:58):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (37:59):
Yeah, because he's still needs to beat the security features though,
so it's going to be an uphill battle. Take a
little break, listen to some ads, and after this break
we'll hear how Jeff Turner becomes the king of counterfeitters,
and also how he meets his ignoble lend Elizabeth. Hello,

(38:35):
we're back, Hi. I got a quick question. What's scrid
of paper Bible paper good? I just wanted to make
sure you're listening. I remember how they were all those
benefits for Jeff offered by scridit Paper. Well, there was
one drawback. If you used one of those counterfeit money
detection pens, you mentioned earlier. They draw the yellow line
on the bill if it's a real bill, or it

(38:56):
turns black if it's a fake bill. Well, scrit a
paper earns black. This is because it contains starch. Yeah,
and real money does not.

Speaker 4 (39:06):
That's what remember Art Williams, his scalpal. She went through
and was marking everything, and it wasn't until she got
to the newspaper didn't.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, it was the first one that doesn't. There's no stars, right,
So Jeff had to come up with a way of
his own way to get around that, and you best
believe he finally did. His family are more importantly his
heroin habit depended on him figuring out away. So, as
Jeff says, I realized, if you coat the paper with
a clear spray paint, essentially it creates a barrier. So

(39:35):
you're basically preventing that chemical reaction by coating the paper.
Oh interesting, right, So he starts finessing his approach. He
finds it if he like lackers the fake bills, and
he sprays then a fog coat. After the first coat,
he can make this passable texture that both seals the
bill but also feels like yeah. Right, So now he's

(39:56):
got other security challenges, like you can't just run scrit
of paper through an inkjet printer. The paper will jam,
and he's printing them. He doesn't have the security measures
attached jet, but he doesn't want to ruin the paper. Yeah,
so he has to tape the scrit of paper to
a sheet of normal paper and then run that through
the printer.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Oh, okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
To this point, he's sourcing Bible paper from motel maintenance men,
stealing it from new and used bookstores, Walmart's thrift shops. Right,
we can find a Bible. He's taping that paper to
normal paper, printing his photoshopped images using multiple layers so
the printer doesn't recognize it's printing money.

Speaker 4 (40:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
It's a simple, yet rather complicated, yet still brilliant method.
And if you think about it, it's also now becoming
a full time job.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
Yeah, exactly like the way he tells it.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
After ten PM, when all the store is closed, I
would go back to the hotel room and sit there
and tape paper. Each bill had a front and a back,
so to print two thousand dollars, that's twenty bills, that's
forty pieces of Bible paper. I would need to tape,
so you know, from ten pm to about midnight, I'd
tape that paper, then go to sleep and wake up
at eight to begin printing at nine, and then print
until two, then go shopping till ten. I mean it

(40:59):
was like non stop. I mean I was making about
fifteen hundred dollars a day, but it was like non stop.
That was my life all day, every day.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
Oh hard, that's hard.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
This is why, though I will never say criminals are lazy,
They're often not lazy. They just make terrible choices.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
Yeah, yeah, and a little inefficient.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
It sounds definitely that. So at this point he's like, Okay,
I think it's you know, I think my money's good.
I'm going to try to pass my new hundred dollar bills.
But before that, he also finds there's other security features
he had to figure out how to beat. Like, you know,
if you hold one hundred dollars bill and you tilt
your hands, you see how that there's a shifting color
and the hundred sign in the corner. Ye, Well, that
water mark effect is called color shifting pigment. So to

(41:39):
get that same effect, Jeff turned to cosmetic makeup. Turns out,
oh yeah, Yeah, Revlon makes an eyeshadow. He uses this
interference green pigment. Yeah, that means if he prints the
hundreds in black and then hand paints the eyeshadow onto
the bill, his hundreds would shift color just the same
as optically variable and interesting. Voila. So the first time

(42:00):
he tries to break one of his new hundreds, with
all of his ways to beat the security features figured out,
Jeff goes to wear a taco bell. Oh okay, just
before closing. The manager is the one working the register.
That's not the best. Jeff hands over the fake hundred.
The manager takes it, doesn't believe it's real, looks for
the watermark strip, checks it, sees the watermark strip, and
goes humhm, satisfied, gives a mis change.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
Wow. A lot of times it like drive throughs and stuff.
They won't take a hundred.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
Yeah truly, but he I think me walks in so
I think he knew that he had to be face
to face with a person.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
Next day he's not. Now satisfied, he goes out with
more of his funny money. He busts all those bills.
The cashiers they check the bills like with the counterfeit
detection pin boom. The lacquer coat works just like he planned.
The ink stays yellow. So they cash the fake bills,
they give miss change. He does this all day. As
Jeff tells it, I made a few hundred dollars, which
is great. I paid for the hotel room for the night.

(42:53):
You know it prolongs as his situation. I'm in, you
know what I mean. At least I can get by
for another couple.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
Days, short day to day.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
So what did you do next? Great question, Elizabeth, As
Jeff would tell you, I go back to the hotel
and I start printing out like probably one thousand dollars worth.
The next day I go I break them all thousand
dollars worth. Boom boom, boom, boom boom. His bills spend
just like real money, and the change he gets is
real money. So now he's made like eight hundred dollars.
He's eight hundred dollars to the good, right, So Jeff's like,

(43:22):
I can make a career out of this, So he
does decide to make a few little tweaks to his formula,
like at one point, this cashier at a CBS, which,
by the way, they use the UV light like a
black leves to look for this red glow that's in there.
It's one of those security features. So it's like a
red line or a glows red if you shine a
UV light on it. And so Jeff's fake money doesn't

(43:42):
have that. She's like, not going to take the bill,
but everything else looks right, and she's like, oh, this
must be right. I wonder why it doesn't have that. Ye,
he's able to sweet talker in the cashier. Then cash
is the bill. But now he's like, I got to
figure out a way to beat that feature, otherwise I
can't use CBS. So it's his family staying in motel
rooms in four kids get bored. He's buying them all
sorts of stuff online to do, and he buys one

(44:04):
of his daughters a diary that has a pen that
writes in UV inc So Jeff caes are using this.
He's like, I wonder if they're still a red version
of that pen?

Speaker 3 (44:12):
Uh huh?

Speaker 2 (44:14):
They do, Elizabeth, He orders some to the room. He
adds that to his formula. Now he can beat that's
acurity feature. So at this point things are going well,
or as Jeff tells it, I was like, well, okay,
you know what I mean, Like, now I got like
fifteen hundred dollars in my pocket, the hotel room is
paid for, you know what I mean. Things were looking good.

(44:34):
Oh yeah, however we should also in the world add out.
During all this time, I also, you know, still had
a drug abbot as he had no kidding Jeff. So
at this point Jeff was also back to giving drug
dealers fake money for real drugs. He's ripping them off, right,
So he's like giving them fake and so if the
dealer ever figures it out, Jeff would just block their
number and hope he never saw them again. Knox feels

(44:55):
big enough, or sometimes a dealer would be impressed. He
was like, man, you got that over on me. And
like his former co worker was the big time heroin dealer,
so he was like, oh, let me buy some that
counterfeit money off you. Yeah, and so Jeff starts selling
counterfeit money to drug dealers from Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland. Now
let's skip forward again and look at that boom. We

(45:16):
find Jeff and his family now living in a house
with a Cleveland heroin dealer.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
Oh great, that's so good, kids.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
This guy is he does big time deals with his
people back in Cleveland, but he's living in Knoxville, right,
And so the guy goes up buys heroin from Cleveland
or fentanyl, and then he like cuts that doubles his
money selling it in Knoxville because he basically cuts it
in half. Sure, So one day the Cleveland dealer, Jeff
calls this guy E.

Speaker 3 (45:43):
So Cleveland plane dealer O new.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
Deep newspaper jokes, I like that. So Jeff calls this
guy E, so we're gonna call him. He wants him
to roll with him to Cleveland. Right, He's like, I
need I'm going for the reup and you know, by
the way, you can get some bibles. Jeff's You're right,
I could get I can get some bibles, I can
bust some bills, make some money for the fam. So
Jeff is it down at first, but then like Jeff

(46:08):
sees that, he pulls up in this like but he
claims is a car that he traded drugs for and
some money. And Jeff's like, no, man, that's an obviously
stolen car. And he's like, no, it's not stolen. Man,
I got the I got the pink slip. And he's like, no, man,
I know the guy that's he's a booster, that's a
stolen car, and he's like, come on, man, it's cool,
it's cool, it's cool.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
It was the like ignition dangling out.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
No, I mean it was like I think it was
like a legit, like the person stole it, but the
pink slip was in the car they stole, but they
just signed it over And that's how I read it. Anyway,
Fate steps in because Jeff gets arrested on a warrant
for a failure to appear in court. So he gets
locked up on Friday, and his partner in crime and
is you know landlord. He goes to Cleveland on his own,

(46:49):
and when you know it, he gets busted in the
stolen car with a brick of heroin and a bunch
of Jeff's counterfeit money. So when Jeff gets out of jail,
he comes home and he hears that his partner E
got arrested, and only that he told this girl who's like,
you know, like a runner for him, who's staying in
the house, don't tell Jeff I got arrested, which is
immediately super suspicious. Yeah, you know where this is going.

(47:12):
He's like, hey, guys are robusting me. I know a
bigger fish. He makes counterfeit money. I'm talking like big bills, hundreds.
So what do you think happens next, Elizabeth?

Speaker 3 (47:21):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
If you said his boy e snitched on him, you
would be correct. He not only snitches, he sets Jeff up.
He agrees to like, yeah, let me talk to Jeff
and I can set him up on a big heroin
buy or whatever.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
So Jeff anticipates all this. He grabs all this stuff
from like their trap house. This and I'm talking like
this point a counterfeit shop of printer. He's got multiple prints,
she's got stacks of Bible paper. He loads up his family,
he goes and he hides it out in another hotel
a couple towns away, and there he resets up his
shop because he still has orders for counterfeit money that

(47:56):
he needs to fulfill for a bunch of Detroit drug
dealers from the gang Detroit vice Lords.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
Oh god, you're so he's doing that.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
He's printing up a fresh stack of six thousand dollars
when he gets to this phone call, wouldn't you know it?
It's his boy e. If Jeff can do a favor
for him. I just got backing down. I need some heroin.
So I said, like, you know, I had to use
my reup money while I was in Cleveland. And he
wants to know if Jeff can help him re up
with some of his Detroit friends in town. And Jeff's like,

(48:24):
this is super sus Yeah, clearly he's trying to set
him up, maybe to reduce his own sentence. So he
tells him like, man, I'm not a drug dealer. You
know that. He tries to get off the phone with
him without saying anything incriminated. Sure, but as Jeff tells it,
I kind of snapped and I was like, Bro, you
just got to rest it up in Cleveland. You know
what I mean? You told Summer not to tell me
that you got arrested. Bro, you're acting sketchy. You're obviously cooperating.

(48:47):
I'm not getting you any dope. I don't sell dope.
You're trying to set me up for things and I
don't even do you know? That's up? Goodbye? I hang
up bang So, so now he's thinking he's to the
good again. Even if he is cooperating, no one knows
where to find him so he can kind of just
relax in this motel room and just be mad that
he got stitched up by his boy. Meanwhile, his wife

(49:09):
is like, I want to go shopping, and Jeff is
like cool, cool, have fun to get out. Like, while
you're gone, I'll print up some bills. So she leaves.
Jeff goes back to printing up the six grand for
the Detroit drug dealers. He's got a bunch of printed
up bills that haven't been clued together yet. He's like
sprang a code of lacquer on them, like right there
in the hotel room.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
Right he's got the kids inhaling it.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Yes, he's got like a fan running blowing the toxic
air out of the window. I'd like to think that
the kids are with the mother shopping, and that maybe
the teenagers are like this out in the parking lot.
I don't know. Guess what happens next to Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (49:41):
No, don't the whole hotel explode.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
Track that, don't guess. He's rather than you guess or
having me tell you about it. I'd like you to
close your eyes, and I'd like you to picture it.
At the moment, Elizabeth, you have the residue from a
fog laquer spray and you high. It doesn't burn, it
doesn't sting, because you are a portrait of Ben Franklin

(50:06):
printed on a piece of Bible paper. But still the
laquer is there and it's distracting you. There's a man
moving around with efficiency as he sprays lacquer on a
series of Ben Franklin portraits just like you. Very soon
you will be glued to another piece of Bible paper
and become a counterfeit hundred dollar bill. Right now, you're
a portrait of Ben Franklin. Then you hear it, a heavy,

(50:27):
heavy knock at the door. The man, with a can
of lacquer in his hands, takes off his fray mask,
walks over to the hotel room door. You watch as
he peers through the people. He pulls his head back, unsatisfied,
as if someone has placed a finger over the people,
blocking him from seeing anything. The banging at the door resumes.
You don't like that. The man checks the window. This

(50:48):
time he makes a face of recognition. He sees the
patch worn by a Knox County Sheriff's deputy. This causes
the man to freak out. He runs back to where
you and the other Ben Franklin portraits are He scoops
up some of your brethren. Then he runs into the
bathroom and he flushes them down the toilet. He runs back,
swoops up a second handful of Ben Franklin portraits on

(51:08):
Bible paper, and runs back to the bathroom again. He
chucks them in the toilet and hits flush, but this
time nothing. Someone must have cut off the water. You think.
The Ben Franklin portraits on Bible paper now stick to
the white porcelain sides of the toilet bowl, and you're
glad you're not one of them. What a sad fate
you watch the young man realize the fullness of his

(51:29):
own fate. The knocking at the door resumes. The sheriff's
deputies on the other side of the door now identify themselves.
They demand that the man opened the door let them in.
Looking at him, you're pretty sure he's not going to
do that, but there's nowhere for him to go. There's
a fan in the window, and surely four cops are
watching from below. The knocking turns into a heavy, steely

(51:50):
slam of a door buster and crashing against the metal
hotel room door. The cops apparently are trying to break
down the door knout. You look back at the man
as he slumps down into a chair at the table.
He reaches into his shirt pocket. He takes out a
little baggy of fetanol. He pours it on the table.
He cuts out two lines with a snort. He dusts

(52:11):
off one line with a second snort. He hoovers up
the second line. The man is apparently decided to get arrested,
Comfortably numb, the Knox County Sheriff's deputy's finally knock open
the metal hotel room doors. Multi jurisdictional task force rushes
into the room like a swarm of angry hornets, albeit
very well armed angry hornets. There are all sorts of

(52:33):
law enforcement, drug task or secret service. You lose count
there's so many, but you do see one of the
buffest officers sweep up the man from the chair and
slam him face down on a tiled door. Ooo. That
looks like it hurt. Oh my god, that's how it
all ends for Jeff Turner, Ah Jess. Turns out the
cops were able to ping his cell phone and determine

(52:55):
that he was in that specific.

Speaker 4 (52:57):
Hotel during about that Yeah, they got him on the
floor for long enough.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Yeah, they send the task Force out to find him.
When his wife went shopping, she was arrested. The room
key she had on her told them where to find Jeff,
and boom, boom boom. Just like that, it all came
crashing down.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
Traumatic for those kids. That's all I keep thinking of.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
Yeah, it's the part that's least funny.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
Yeah hah.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Yeah. Anyway, Jeff refuses to cooperate with the Drug Task
Force since he knows he's no drug dealer, no matter
what he told them. Yeah, and he waits for the
Secret Service to get their hands on him for the
counterfeiting because he would much prefer federal charges. Yeah, smart man.
I mean, like, you know, the difference between state facility
and a federal facility. So once a Secret Service does
get their hands on him, they decide to offer Jeff

(53:38):
a hell of a sweetheart deal. If he'll cooperate, they'll
cut down his sentence. He's looking at like three years
maybe five in federal prison, but you know, closer to three,
which is a huge improvement over the eight to twelve
he was looking at for state charges. Sure, now you
may be asking, but Saren, how can he cooperate.

Speaker 3 (53:56):
Yeah, I was, I was about to ask that, do.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
The Feds want him to flip on the Detroit drug dealers, teach.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
Us how you do it? Bang, You're kidding.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
One hundred percent right. The Secret Service wants him to
cooperate against other counterfeiters in you know, in absentia. Turns
out the Secret Service had been collecting his fake hundreds
and they were very, very impressed. They were like, these
are the best fakes we've seen in twenty five years.
The kids these days they buy prop money off of
Amazon and try to pass that. But your bills, your

(54:28):
bills are masterpieces. So the Feds tell Jeff they won't
press charges on his wife. They'll drop her from the
ditment so the kids can stay with her and not
go into foster care, into the system. Then they'll also
cut down his sentence if he pleads guilty, and also
if he will make a video for them, that's right,
the Feds will like, teach us your ways.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
Like one of those TikTok dancing videos they.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
Kind of but no price, similar lighting. So after a
few months on pre trial release, Jef ends up making
a training video for the Secret Service. They even fly
in the head of the counterfeiting department from DC just
to watch the film shoot. So Jeff does this thing.
He shows the Feds his whole process, and they've got
all the stuff right there, like we've kept all the
stuff from the hotel room. So he uses the Bible paper,

(55:10):
the ink jet printers, all the special dies, his UV
pens for a little girl's diary, all of it. He
makes two fake hundreds, including the new one hundred, the
Blue Bill, the blue note Oh you Kids, which he's
finally figured out how to fake. And when he's done,
the Federal like that was so cool, thank you. At
least that's the way Jeff Turner tells it. When he's sentenced,
Jeff Turner gets ten months in a low security federal prison.

(55:32):
Not bad right now. While he's inside, his wife divorces him,
takes the kids. But other than that, Jeff manages like
along the way, he kicks heroin and fetanol, so that's
good for him. Of course, he still hustles inside, like
he works in a kitchen. He figured out how trade
veggies and they can put stamps on his commissary. Yeah, ABC,
Elizabeth always be.

Speaker 3 (55:49):
Hustling exactly, but custling anyway.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
Jeff is now out, he's been doing press podcasts. He's
got guys said, got his own YouTube channel, go check
it out. He's and also basically he's hustling on the
legit side, right, So I, for one, I wish him lucky. Yes, same,
Jeff Turner is certainly I mean he's a smart guy. Clearly,
he just had tough conditions in his life and makes
terrible choices.

Speaker 3 (56:12):
Yeah, made terrible choices.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
He made in the past.

Speaker 3 (56:17):
Let's hope that he's making.

Speaker 4 (56:18):
And I heartily applaud anyone who kicks any addiction.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
That's cue.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
I thought you'd like that happy note at the end.
So we're both pulling for him. It sounds like we are.
And I got to ask you, Elizabeth, what's your ridiculous takeaway? Here?

Speaker 3 (56:35):
He with the parallels with Art Williams. Uh.

Speaker 4 (56:39):
You know Art Williams was an artist and it is
an artist now. And you think about the god the
problem solving skills and the fine motor skills and all
these techniques that they develop. You know, he's like a
really skilled graphic artist. No, sadly, AI is going to
take his job. When you think of out those when

(57:01):
you're saying like he had just kind of like a
rough start. If he'd had a different trajectory, you know,
he could have been doing basically the same principle of stuff,
just not in a criminal sense that creation. So it's
a you know, we've seen that a lot with these criminals,
art forgers and such who are really talented, but they're

(57:22):
using it kind of in the wrong way.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
What's your ridiculous take away?

Speaker 2 (57:26):
If you have a drug dealer, don't move in with them.

Speaker 4 (57:29):
That's a really, really good piece of advice. I would assume, Yeah,
don't do it.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
There you go. It's pretty simple, straightforward, right.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
Housing is tight.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
No matter what the deal is, it's not a good deal.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
It's not a good.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
So move for a talkback.

Speaker 3 (57:44):
I am down with one.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
Can you favors with one? O God I w.

Speaker 6 (58:01):
Tizer and Elizabeth Blake here. I had to reach out
to you after listening to your Firefest episode because Firefest
a message me on Instagram at.

Speaker 3 (58:09):
The beginning of this year.

Speaker 6 (58:10):
I thought it was a joke saying that because I
do a lot of work in the ocean conservation space,
that they would like for me to come and teach
scuba diving or free diving classes during their next extravaganza,
and I would get a free place to stay. So
I did look it up and definitely.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
Said, no, girl, you say yes to that.

Speaker 4 (58:32):
That is going to be an amazing story because here's
what you do. You secure your own housing, okay, and
then you go down there and you just you get
to witness this absolute buffoonery. I mean you'll probably never
get down there because it'll never come to fruition.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
Yes, but if they approach you again, say yes.

Speaker 4 (58:48):
And then you have this assistant Elizabeth, who will happily
go with you. I'll get us a place to stay,
we'll get us nice rooms, and then we'll go and.

Speaker 3 (58:56):
We'll just watch these ding dongs do their things.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
I can't believe they basically get the offer of like
this would be great exposure for you, and yeah, you
too with scuba diving.

Speaker 4 (59:05):
Scuba diving, which like can we can we talk about
like the the insurance that you'd.

Speaker 7 (59:10):
Need and all the liability and then like the licensing
and things, and so I mean you wouldn't actually want
to be getting out there because think of also the
dufuses who would pay him to get scuba lessons.

Speaker 4 (59:23):
Yeah, you know, you don't want any of that going on.
You don't want those as your students. But I love
that they reached out to you.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
Yeah, that's amazing, that's incredible.

Speaker 3 (59:30):
Why doesn't he want me to like DJ it or something.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
Swim with the Disco Dolphins. Yeah, I mean, Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (59:38):
Terrifying.

Speaker 2 (59:40):
Well I figure that talkback. We love him and uh,
that was a really particularly fun one. If you want
to hear your voice here, go check the iHeart app,
download it, leave it talk back and we would love
to hear your dulcet tones here on these airwaves. Or
you can obviously reach out to us online a Ridiculous
Crime on social media. That's Blue Sky, that's Instagram, and
we have pictures for every episode on Instagram. So when

(01:00:03):
you listen afterwards, maybe even while you're listening, go check
out the images because they're there. They're curated great by
the team. Nice work interns. Yes, and if we also
have our account Ridiculous Crime Pod on YouTube, so there
you can listen to the episodes if you prefer to
listen on YouTube. And lastly, we have the website Ridiculous
Crime dot com. Recently nominated Elizabeth for the Fetties in

(01:00:26):
the category the best listen if you're in the Witness
Protection Program and you miss doing crimes. Oh so that
was really exciting for that. I was like, it was
an honor or. You can email us if you like
Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. We love the emails too,
so please reach out. Thanks for listening, and we will
catch you next crime. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth

(01:00:52):
Dutton and Zarin Burnett, produced and edited by the Never
Fake The Real Deal Dave Gustin and starring Analis rutger As.
Research is by our Trap House librarians Rrisa Brown and
Jibbarie Davis. Our theme song is by the Detroit Vice
Lords and tailors Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. The host
wardrobe provided by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup

(01:01:14):
by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are the Deans
of the Secret Service Film Department, Ben Bohlen and Noel Brown.

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
Cui Say It One More Time cry.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
from my heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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