So he was about six, three hundred and sixty four kind of lanky, but play the ball so muscular like huge nose, big lips This is Maya and when she was nineteen, she was in fact. With the guy named Adam. These names aren't real were using fake games for reasons that will become apparent later, just kind of hit. All my I personal buttons in a way that honestly, very few people have, since that it was almost as if he was my physical ideal on actually remember seeing him. For the first time my freshman year, Aran really feel like my breath, had been taken away when you're in Fatu, did with someone. You can convince yourself of a lot of things like who they are and what they're capable of and MIA was infatuated by Heather

feeling of really not being able to believe that I was allowed to physically touch this verse, but just because you can touch something doesn't mean it's real, I'm Phoebe Judge- and this is criminal so our first date was actually pretty hilarious. I'm not sure exactly I was arranged, but I was very, very, very excited about it for multiple reasons, one that I was physically kind of putty when I looked at him even but also because he lived in Brooklyn, and so we both went to Nyu, but he and I lived in the dorms in the city and he had an apartment in Brooklyn. I think I've been to Brooklyn once so. That night we actually went to a magazine party because he had worked at a magazine briefly before school. So I was at this very since shaded party, and he people were very much in love with him. There and women were all over him there. The way they were everywhere, but it was definitely an older crowd. I mean we must have been nineteen

and everyone was probably in their late 20s and I got complete really hammered like so shit face, and I think he actually had to carry me back to his apartment, which was of course, mortifying So we went back to his apartment and he put on some Deangelo. I think he smokes weed eater. We both smoke. Some weed- and I was like this- is actual heavy. Like this is my, what happen is, but then nothing could really happen, because I basically blacked out the next day look up and they were like blunt paper is kind of all for the for and this and that he was like yeah you passed out. So basically just smoked weed like listen to music. And I was really embarrassed and then so we started our back to the city. I wasn't really sure how to get home and we got our kind of the standard, bacon. Egg and cheese is- and I think I got a coffee got a Snapple and he We went to the train station and he swiped me in on his metrocard and then jumped to from style.

Immediately? A plainclothes police officer started chasing him, so I was stuck holding his breakfast while he takes off like a both of lightning and is literally being chased around by a cop. I- see him hiding behind a trash. Can I see the cop running up a flight of stairs and I just got on the train- went back my torm with his breakfast in my own, and he finally called me either that night or the next morning and just tried to play it off, and she let him it didn't seem. Like that big of a deal, it was kind of a funny story. So well, it's not the typical foundation for a successful relation chip. They ended up going out again and again they dated for a couple of years, but slowly it might have started to notice other little things like he told her. He grew up in the Bronx when using actually from New Jersey. He was always borrowing things from people asking for favors and managed to almost never spend money. His whole thing

is figuring out how to live with nothing. So At two points we live together. We lived for free. He had this incredible way of talking his way into kind of people's homes and then saying he would do something for them and he just I've, never seen anything like it. He would get away with not paying rent. They graduated from college Meyer was taking acting classes. Adam wasn't working and those little things, the lies and the mysterious ways in which Adam always got his way began to escalate. One of the biggest things he did was steal, a projector from a hotel that he was just kind of walking through randomly and they found a conference room with a really fancy, projector and just walked out with it. Was very excited 'cause. It was something like ten thousand dollars and he didn't know if you wanted it or if you wanted to sell it, but it not really upset, and he basically bullied me into saying you know this corporation or these people have so much money there

stupid for leaving it out, and I need it and I want it, and I took it- was there so he's doing all of these things? You kind of know about him. What he's doing did you ever help him uh. Why didn't help him until we started counterfeiting money? So how did what You mean until you started counterfeiting money way. One day I came home to the apartment. We were living in again living in for free and he very probably showed me a twenty dollars bill and I said where did this come from and he explained that he had this color printer he had spent the entire day scanning and then you know, kind of lining up copies of two. Dollar bills so that he could create something was two sided Ann Actually it looked pretty decent and he

went through period of kind of trying to find the right, color and finding the right paper, because you know now bills feel and are very slick, they're very hard to kind of wear down, but back then you could still have even ugly or very rough feeling bill wait a second it seems it seems I think you need more than just like a color printer to counterfeit money or like just some special paper, I mean even that what like there that was in the people that just spend their whole lives trying to make sure that you can't just buy a color printer and start printing hundreds. It was. Child's play kind of I mean it couldn't have been a more basic and kind of pathetic operation. I mean it was two kids in their 20s. You know. Around in Brooklyn and it worked,

how long did it take him to convince you to actually use the money? Do you remember the first time it really left the house It did not take long, though first time we went out, we did discuss it and we, I think we tried it once or twice at a deli and it didn't work. I mean, what do you mean? didn't work, so they would just say this is fake. Do mortified like I would just I would. I would pretend like? Are you kidding me? I got ripped off like you know. I had a whole song and dance. Every time I got caught like You kidding what am I supposed to do? How did this happen? I can't believe this. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry and it was kind of threw these. These like pathetic little, plays We put on that. We realized that people were much. Nicer to me. If I, it was the one who did it and got caught. They just kind of treated me like a stupid, little girl, but would really get much angrier at him, so

but we figured out then, was that we really couldn't wouldn't be successful if we were doing it at a place where people have the opportune need to pay a lot of attention to the money that we were handing them so any place that go well, it Bodega or a supermarket was gonna fly, so we quickly realized that we needed to do it at bars, places where bartend we're busy places where it was dark and people were distracted and what we were doing. We weren't interested in drinking or partying. We were just interested in getting the change, so you know six dollar beer fourteen dollars back and you pocket that and maybe during part of the drink and leave so one of the first places we went I got caught and I you know performed my little perfo prince and I remember very distinctly the bartender saying I'm going to chew. Is to believe your lie, but- isn't real and you need to get out of the bar and I kinda ski dot,

then freaked out, I made my boyfriend drop the next bill, that's what we called it dropping those at another bar and it was actually female bartender and she flipped out and chased him out of the bar and said she was going to call the cops and he was laughing, but he was terrified and that's where we really realized that I was the person it was going to be most successful, my I didn't realize at the time, but she and Adam were part of a trend. Lots of young people were getting print, here's and making their own money in two thousand and forty percent of all counterfeited money. About seventy. Two million dollars came off of inkjet printers. It's a big deal. Counterfeiting is a federal crime investigated by the secret service. If you get caught you're facing up to fifteen years in prison, and massive fines. I don't think we ever hit up more than six places in an evening, but in never totally during one of those during those It's someone would stop me somewhere. I remember we were on

streak. And then I had to go to this one bar- and these are bars that I liked and had gone to previously, and this bar had a bouncer out. That particular night and there was a cover charge and I try to pass off a bill to him and he that it wasn't real and I was a little bit drunk at that point. So I did my whole song and dance and I kind of have a sense that he knew that I was full of check, but he again just kind of. Let me wander away and did. Did you ever go home after the you know the night, where the bartender said, I'm going to choose to believe you, you go home at night and say to him. This is not like. I don't why. Why are we doing? This is not worth it I Do not remember ever doing that. I think I didn't have the balls, because I think that he thought it was really fun and- I thought it was a little bit fun myself, the final time that I was heart was so bad that that's what made us stop, but it took getting.

Close to being in serious trouble for the rest of my life for me to kind of snap to it, my assez. Operation had only ever been the two of them. They know, told anyone what they were doing and never use the fake money when they were out with others. Then one night, my had a childhood friend come to visit. He was wealthy and wanted to go someplace a lot nicer than the dive bars. They had been go in two? So we go to this? You know super swanky club, very 90s club scene kind of place and I have a stack of bills in my purse copy of Macbeth that I was you because I was memorizing a monologue from a lady Macbeth's and he, I think, also had bills. In him, but, as usual, I was kind of the one in charge. How much would you care when you say you were carrying like a stack of bills, how much? How much counterfeit money would you care on you at one time? I think at that point I I probably had around a hundred or one hundred and forty dollars and he probably kept the same amount. So he dropped one bill, success

little register and drink whatever drink. He was a given an I successful. To build another register and we kind of yep the evening going and then at the of the night we were kind of toward the back of the car, I was one of those places that had multiple bars in multiple areas, and I was kind of steak it out is the one we haven't gone to yet and We were not doing a very good job of being subtle and I was very aware of the Barton. This hot female bartender was aware that we were looking at her and she was kind of staring right back and then I kind of entered into this kind of are dream state where I knew that if I dropped a bill with her, I was going to get caught and I physically couldn't prevent myself from. Walking over to the bar and doing it so I walked over. I ordered a drink and I slapped down the bill and she immediately knew it was fake and I kind of tried to launch into my little song and dance and she said she grab

my hand and she said I'm calling security and I don't know if you got on the phone or mister button, but I was immediately swarmed by security guards and taken into the back of the club they'd didn't go through my bag? I refused to give my id and I just kind of kept saying I don't know where this came from. So sorry, this is so stupid and then try the tactic for getting really angry and saying that my friends were waiting for me and then they got on their walkie talkies and they said check all the registers and then I thought I was sunk because we're definitely bills and other registers, and at that point I thought. Ok, I'm done She waited while the bartenders carefully checked each piece of cash and somehow which, seems just like incredible lock. No one found anything. The bartenders must have already passed the fake twenties on his change to other customers

They let me go and I did not act cool. I immediately kind of tore through the entrance and push through push past the bouncers and push through the line instead of the exit and I went out alone away from my friends I just felt like I just had to get out of there and but didn't realize was that by doing that, I was causing a scene and essentially incriminating myself. So my friend called me out and then the same security guards who had been detaining me intercept on the street, they went through a back exit of the club and they said why are you in such a rush to get out of out of there? And then this is the whole scene that unfolded in front of my friends. They say Okay, we're searching you, you know this and that- and I said you can't you can't that's not legal and they said as and it's either us or the cops. And finally, I just gave them my person they they through my wallet and didn't find any bills, 'cause the bills weren't there and then they flipped through make the Macbeth an and they didn't find it. They just didn't they just flipped past.

But I think probably because there were only a few bills and it wasn't- it didn't cause enough of a gap for like when they were sick in their finger over it to find it, but it was, I didn't understand how that happened. It was almost impossible and where is your boy your boyfriend watching this whole scene. He was watching and also are all of my wealthy friends. What happens next? You go home with your boyfriend, so I went home with my boyfriend. We were both really upset. We both agree that we weren't going to do it again and then I met up with my good friend from home the next day and he said so. Are you counterfeiting money and I just looked at him and I said no, and we kind of had a mutual moment where we decided to agree to- I believe my lie because he definitely did believe me. I definitely wasn't about to tell him the truth. Do you think of yourself as a criminal? I don't why I think I must

I'm not sure why so this is I've never really consider this before, but I didn't, even though I did have Criminal intentions, you know I wanted this money. I was trying to hurt anyone and don't feel that I particularly hurt anyone, although certainly I guess it's possible that if a bartender was caught, you know if, if they were with a counterfeit bill in their cash register, that they could get fired and that's totally possible but to me it was so stupid and has kind of become a bit more. One in retro is become both more fun and much more embarrassing? In retrospect, you know it's a great story to tell at a party, because I wasn't caught How long did you and Adam last after this incident? Not long? I left New York. She went to California to try to get Adam out of her life forever, which was hard because my she was scared of what he could make her do. She was still do

is fascinated with him as she was from the start. It's been more than fifteen years, but as far as she remembers, the only profited about four hundred dollars and frankly she doesn't know what they did with it. She does Now they didn't spend it on anything nice because Adam was so cheap. show was produced by Eric Mental Lawrence for and me Julian

Alexander does our episode art? If you like? What we're doing you can subscribe on Itunes or visit our website? This is criminal dot com or on twitter at criminal show I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is criminal. Hi Phoebe. For the past four years, we've been part of radio Topia a collective of podcast independently owned and run we're joined in this network by some of our favorite podcast at their shows like kitchen sisters present and ninety nine percent invisible, but read your topia isn't just about the shows that make up the network. It's about the community of listeners who make it all possible in this here for annual fundraiser. We want to do something you were asking you to help design a new radio topia coin, the coin. For

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