1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money

1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money

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[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

[00:00:02] Russ Swain: How can I think outside the box? And I thought, okay, remember that postage stamp that was clever and it was thinking outside the box. And I will say, being clever doesn't prevent you from doing things that are stupid. It enables you to do more grandiose forms of stupidity.

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Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started today on the show, Russ Swain, he's a Mormon counterfeiter and an art forger, and yes, that sure sounds like a contradiction, and this is a story of his attempt to essentially walk that line. Russ's career began when he created a fake postage stamp in order to get a job, and it all snowballed from there, resulting in huge amounts of counterfeit US currency, but he got away with it, sort of.

I love this conversation. We had a lot of fun with it. I think he's just a really subtly entertaining guest that you'll love as well. I think you'll know what I mean by subtly entertaining once we start this conversation here. So here we go with Russ Swain.

So I read the book and there's so many I. Funny things in there that you could theoretically never get away with now. And there's so many great stories in here, and I just wanna say it must have been hard to write a book about a lot of the places where you made your biggest mistakes in life. And I don't know if I could do that.

I don't know if I wanna be that honest with myself. Does that make sense?

Makes

[00:02:09] Russ Swain: total sense. And I was reluctant at first as well. It's a widely known fact that bad decisions make for pretty interesting stories.

[00:02:18] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

[00:02:18] Russ Swain: there was a lot of conversation about this stuff with my best friend Mike, who suggested that we do this.

And I was reluctant, and it seems that our sins cast long shadows over our lives sometimes. And my friend Mike says, but you can't beat yourself up about that without those mistakes that we make. Our lives would be a little more than a paper puppet show. He says, the name we give our mistakes is experience.

And if you can accept that, forgive yourself and move on and learn from it, then. Maybe there's something cathartic about this. So that was the approach we took, and it was cathartic to just open up, give yourself a little bit of self-acceptance and say, you know what? We make mistakes and we move on from them.

So

[00:03:02] Jordan Harbinger: on the plus side, your mistakes are entertaining, and that's what we're gonna talk about today. Oh, that's very nice of you, Greg. Tell me how you went from essentially an art school grad to a forger, to a conman with a postage stamp. You essentially turned on almost a dime or a postage stamp, if you will.

And that was the beginning of this whole thing.

[00:03:23] Russ Swain: Yeah, that was my first attempt at counterfeiting after art school. There was one potential job in Ogden, Utah. It was an advertising agency. They were looking for an art director, and they said, we don't wanna see anything but a resume. And I thought, well, how am I gonna stand out among the other applicants?

And so. The resume that I sent in, I said, if you're reading my resume. It's a testament that I know how to think outside the box because I hand painted the postage stamp in which it came in, and they quickly grabbed the envelope and they were rubbing their finger over it, examining it. My gosh, the postage stamp was hand painted.

That's pretty damn creative. And so that made my resume stand out, and that was pretty fun. I got the job.

[00:04:10] Jordan Harbinger: We

[00:04:10] Russ Swain: want

[00:04:11] Jordan Harbinger: this criminal on our roster immediately. Yeah. We want

[00:04:13] Russ Swain: this guy right now, he just saved 14 cents.

[00:04:17] Jordan Harbinger: So for people who are unclear about this, 'cause at first I was like, wait, how do you draw a postage stamp?

The answer is, you're not supposed to do that. You go to the post office, you buy these books of stamps that stick on things. And I know people over 40 are like, Jordan, are you really explaining this? Look, there's a lot of people who are under 30 listening to this show, and they probably have never seen a PostIt stamp that sticks onto things.

'cause they're all printed now, right? Oh, that's right. Yeah. I can't even tell you. The last time I got a piece of mail where there was a stamp stuck on there that somebody had hand placed on there that wasn't barcode or some kind of thing, rolled on there with a machine.

[00:04:49] Russ Swain: This was 40 years ago. So you lick the stamp, you stuck it to the envelope.

Hand wrote everything. It was a different world back

[00:04:56] Jordan Harbinger: then. And you decided to, let's say it's a little American flag with a, I dunno, cannon on it or whatever the old stamps use of the first class mail. You basically just drew that so well that the post office went, yeah, that's a stamp and sent that thing along the machines or whatever they were using.

Or maybe it was human eye back then. That's a stamp and delivered the letter. So that was the proof in the pudding that you were a good enough artist to get this thing done. But stamps, it's hard to explain. It's a sticker, right? So it's got the edge, at least as 3D. You could run your finger over it or look at it and see that it was drawn on there, or did you draw that too?

[00:05:31] Russ Swain: I drew that too. I used a very fine sable brush. It happened at that time that the postal service had stopped printing dead presidents on the postage stamps. And this particular stamp, I thought it was beautiful. It was these exotic butterflies. And I looked at him and I thought, wow, whoever designed that did a hell of a job.

And I almost wanted to recreate it myself. And I thought, well, why don't I, and on the serrated edge, I thought, if I use this fine sable brush and just, I. Put a hint of a shadow on one edge and a hint of a highlight on the other, and then just duplicate with precision copying it line for line stroke for stroke, using these tiny little sable brushes.

It took several hours, but I pulled it off and I thought, hopefully this will make an impression on whoever sees it. And apparently it did. So I got the job. I was really happy.

[00:06:25] Jordan Harbinger: So it's not really good ROI for time if you're just trying to save on postage, but it was great. ROI for time. If you were trying to get a job, which was what you do, trying to get a job.

Correct. You think nowadays if that happened, somebody would call the Secret Service or whatever, and that would be the end of your job hunt, I think. 'cause he'd go to jail back then. They probably just went, oh, this clever little scam. He drew the stamp on there. That's a felony, but whatever. We're willing to overlook that.

[00:06:49] Russ Swain: Right? Yeah. I'm glad, overlooked. I don't know if you see a thousand mail pieces in a day, I think you just pass it on. For sure.

[00:06:58] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, for sure. I think it's more the confession letter inside the envelope that would've gotten you in trouble, I think. True that. Okay. So you needed to stand out, you draw the stamp on there, and after that, did forging or counterfeiting things get easier or was it just kind of like, ah, that was a one-off?

Now I work at this company. I have no intention of doing that again.

[00:07:18] Russ Swain: Yeah, I wasn't really planning on doing that again until I thought, okay, I wanna open up my own studio. And that little graphic design studio actually was an out of the shoot galloping success from the time that it opened. I got a couple of large clients and they liked the fact that they could deal with me as a designer, one-on-one, and they didn't have to go through a chain of people.

And it was a business school that was one of my first big clients, and they had an office in Ogden. They also had another school in Provo. And the work that I was doing for brochures and that caught the attention of their New York office, who was the head of, I guess it was a national chain of these little colleges.

I won't mention the name 'cause I don't want to get anybody in trouble. Or especially myself.

[00:08:06] Jordan Harbinger: Especially yourself. I was gonna say. Especially yourself. Yeah,

[00:08:08] Russ Swain: no kidding. But he said, Hey, we really like your approach to design and you're making our school look really great. And I thought, terrific. And he says, we'd like to have you design the brochure that we use nationwide.

And I thought this is gonna be great, because we had a little print shop as well, and I thought, this is going to assure my success as a designer, as a printer. And we've got this one huge client that will feed us for a long time. Problem was it took all the money, all the credit that I had to open the studio, get the print shop going and type setting equipment and things like that.

I had to find. An outside source to finance this. So I went to a loan shark and I borrowed at a usurious rate of interest, $10,000, which back in those days, what year was this? This was in 1984.

[00:09:06] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. I'm gonna do an inflation calculation on that. 1984. $10,000. Yeah, that's 30 grand. In today's money. That's an annual salary for somebody who's making, let's say, minimum wage.

So that's a lot of money.

[00:09:19] Russ Swain: But I thought, okay, I only need this for 30 days, and so that's fine. I'll pay it and I'll be fine because this'll be great. It's a national company, they're gonna pay the bills and so forth. And I put my heart and soul, I mean, this thing had extraordinary folds. It had foil stamping, it had blind embossed.

The logo looked sharp, and this was before where you could fax things. Faxing was rudimentary. I mean, it was rough. So I would send him. Line art and saying, this is the kind of photograph. This is where we show students this, and they said, great, great. It looks beautiful. Love the composition. We love the layout.

This is gonna be great. What I didn't anticipate, because I was trying to think nationally, I thought everybody's money spends the same. And so there was this really attractive black girl that was one of the students in the photo and muscular toned Asian fellow who was also very attractive. These guys were model quality people that we used to set up for the photo shoot on this.

The old guy in New York, he was a Jewish fellow, and which surprised me because he said, I can't accept this. This was after it went to print. I says, why can't you? I says, you okayed everything. And he said, because you put, pardon the expression. But back in those days, a chinaman and a N-word in my brochure, geez, that's terrible.

I said, pardon me? And I started backpedaling like crazy. He says, no. He says, we try to keep our clientele a cut above those kind of people. And he says, and you just threw down the welcome man. Mm. I said, with all due respect, I mean you being of the Jewish persuasion. And that ignited something in him that he says, oh, so now you're calling me.

He says, A Jew boy. And I says, I did not use that term. I said, I'm trying to be as delicate as I can here. And he said, you know what? This conversation is over and I'm not paying you for these brochures and I will not accept them. I was flummoxed, I was flabbergasted, and I didn't know what to do. And I thought, I don't think there's any begging anything that I can do to resurrect this, and how am I gonna pay back this loan shark, who was very menacing and frightening to me at a very usurious rate, and I thought.

I may have just sunk my ship.

[00:11:48] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:11:48] Russ Swain: So I thought, how can I think outside the box? And I thought, okay, remember that postage stamp that was clever and it was thinking outside the box. And I will say, being clever doesn't prevent you from doing things that are stupid. What does it enables you to do more grandiose forms of stupidity.

Sure. Which is what I did right In thinking if I can recreate a postage stamp, what is money other than paper and ink? And I know the bricks and mortar of printing, I know paper, I know design. And all of a sudden this seemed like the most brilliant idea that I could have thought of to solve a problem.

[00:12:32] Jordan Harbinger: I will say it is a little surprising to hear how this man reacted, because you're right, Jewish people, a lot of people are cringing right now.

I am also of Jewish descent, so I feel like I'm qualified to talk about this without offending half the planet. First of all, even in the civil rights era, Jewish people and people of color, African American, stood side by side during that movement largely. So it is a little bit more surprising when you hear like old white dude, you think, okay, maybe there's some racism, generational stuff, but when you hear old Jewish dude, it's, yeah, you have like a higher percentage of them being little bit more tolerant, you would think, and also New York.

Sure. A guy in New York City, typically. Also even more liberal, more so. I agree. It's surprising that he reacted that way. He sounds like just a piece of crap. This is not a good guy.

[00:13:21] Russ Swain: Kind of a jerk. Yeah, he was kind

[00:13:23] Jordan Harbinger: of a

[00:13:23] Russ Swain: jerk. Yeah.

[00:13:24] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So just a note for people who are wondering about that, because your assumption that he was maybe more tolerant.

Was reasonable, in my opinion. I would've made the same assumption. An older Jewish guy, yeah, he's gonna love this. Especially that he okayed everything, but I didn't see the Chinaman on the front. Because you sent him written description or whatever of the brochure. Sheesh. So this lone shark guy, how do you meet somebody like this in the first place?

'cause you don't seem like the type of guy, first of all, you're Mormon. Correct? Correct. It doesn't seem like Mormons and lone sharks are hanging out in the same strip clubs.

[00:13:55] Russ Swain: That's very true. And I am integrally a Mormon. It's combed into my being. It's impossible for me to shed my Mormon skin. And so what I did in deciding then to print money to solve this problem.

It was a performative contradiction. I know it was going against my faith, my personal beliefs, and my own inner core, but I also knew that, okay, I've got a family that I'm responsible for and I need to draw on all of my resources to solve this problem. And so I thought that's the way to do it. It was like my moral compass was finally lying somewhere in a magnet factory.

I didn't know which way to turn at that point.

[00:14:39] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Desperation. The loan chart. How did you even meet this guy? You don't walk around going, Hey, does anybody know anybody who will lend me a ridiculous amount of money at a ridiculous interest rate? How do you find somebody like this? Surely somebody pointed you his way, or did you grow up with this guy?

Where did this guy come from?

[00:14:54] Russ Swain: Yeah. One of my best friends in high school had started a small t-shirt printing company, and I was talking to him and he said, you know what I did to get my t-shirt business started. He says, there's this guy named Tommy, and he's a rough guy. He's very menacing, and he'll charge you through the nose as an interest rate and he'll scare you to death, but he's got the money and he'll loan it to you if you can pass his test.

And he says, and I can vouch for you. And I says, great, that's what I want to do. So anyway, it was a referral kind of thing. And we got together, we met and he says, okay, I'll, I'll loan you the money. And he did. Where did

[00:15:32] Jordan Harbinger: you meet him? I know you met him in a place that not a lot of Mormons maybe hang out or do they?

[00:15:37] Russ Swain: No, they don't. Yeah, that's part of the contradiction. He wanted to meet in Salt Lake City at a stripper bar near the airport. And I said, really, I'd never been inside a stripper bar, and I didn't know what to expect. And it wasn't quite as raucous as they are nowadays probably, but they had a little bit of standards.

But anyway, we met in a stripper bar where he chose to conduct business. That was his office. And at the time I didn't understand that at all. He didn't really observe the strippers or pay any attention. He would sip on a beer. I was drinking coke because of my background. And he chose that place because that's where he could read people.

He wanted to read you because you were distracted and he was searching for signs of body language for confidence, for whatever it was. I wish I could ask him, but anyway, that's where he chose to conduct business every time we met. That's an

[00:16:37] Jordan Harbinger: interesting idea because if he's going to meetings that. Where he has to decide if somebody's essentially credit worthy, he's not able to run a JP Morgan Chase background credit check on the people that are walking in.

He only has a little bit of data and people can mask that data if they're trying really hard, but if there's a bunch of naked women around, maybe it's harder to do that because you're operating with less bandwidth to mask whatever he happens to be looking for. That's an interesting strategy. That was very well stated.

It's a fascinating strategy though, right? Because otherwise, where would you do that kind of thing? You'd have to do a lot more work to figure out if somebody was a credit risk. Than just observing them. So I guess also, you didn't have to worry about running into guys from church at a script. Well, actually, who knows?

You never really know. Who knows? Yeah. But nothing would be spoken, right? Yeah, nobody would say anything. Yeah, I didn't see you there. Nope. No. I was out. I was outta town on business. So he loans you this money? Does he just give you a stack of cash? How does it work?

[00:17:38] Russ Swain: He gave me a check and I took it to the bank, but he expected cash when I paid back his loan.

So

[00:17:45] Jordan Harbinger: that's a little bit of money laundering. Then Probably. If he's paying you with a check and it's a business expense and you're paying him back in cash, then that cash just vanishes. Okay. He had another angle that was working there for sure. He did. Indeed. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So the guy in New York, the racist guy, he doesn't pay you for the brochures.

Now you've got a loan from a loan shark. What was the interest rate? Like 10%, something like that. Crazy. It was 10% per month. Oh my gosh. So that's

[00:18:09] Russ Swain: 120% or something like that.

[00:18:11] Jordan Harbinger: Oh my gosh. That's, and now you have no hope of getting paid back at this point. Yikes.

[00:18:17] Russ Swain: And I was living pretty close to the bone since I just started my business a handful of months prior.

So I panicked. Suddenly this idea came to me that I know all about paper, I know about ink, I know about design. I can print the money. Money is nothing more than paper and ink and why can't I just do that myself? It uh, it was a, a hail Mary kind of thing.

[00:18:45] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, but you can't just buy the paper That money is on.

Isn't that sort of special?

[00:18:50] Russ Swain: No, it's created by Crane's Company and they will only sell that paper to the US Treasury. Even the composition of the paper is different for the sake of durability. It's got silk fibers and things like that. And I thought, okay, I can't get my hands on any of that. But cranes will sell to printers for letterheads and things like that.

They have a paper, it's called a hundred percent Rag. It has no wood pulp. It's just cotton fibers. And so it feels the same. It has the same tactile feel as currency, and it's a little bit more expensive. And it happened that I was doing a letterhead for an attorney, and he had requested this to be on a hundred percent rag paper.

And I thought, perfect. I've got a couple of reams of that and I'm going to use it to at least see if this works. And so I. My lovely wife and kids were going out of town for a camping trip with her parents. I was invited of course, but I said, no, I've got too many deadlines. So I just put out the clothes sign, told everybody that we were all on vacation on a camping trip.

And then I went to work to see if I couldn't just produce, at least give it a shot. So the paper was white and I thought, but I can print the background color of money and I have a good eye for color so I can match it perfectly. And I went to work mixing the inks, and I printed a full bleed, solid background color of money, and it worked.

And so all of a sudden I got a little hope. I thought, well, I've got the paper now. Except that as I looked at these bills. They've got these red and blue silk fibers running through, right? Yeah.

[00:20:35] Jordan Harbinger: The

[00:20:35] Russ Swain: real bills

[00:20:35] Jordan Harbinger: have those tiny little

[00:20:37] Russ Swain: hairs, basically. Minuscule. Yeah, right hairs. And I thought, well, if I printed the background, couldn't I print those little hairs?

And so I went into the dark room, we had a little black piece of carpet, and I pulled some fibers out of it, put 'em on my graphic camera, and I shrank it down to 25%, which is as small as it would go back in those days. It was before computers. And I photographed them, I shot a plate and I thought, okay, if I print these red and then flip it upside down and print it the opposite way in blue, you know, let's see what happens.

It worked beautifully. And I thought, okay, so now the fear was evaporating because I was getting caught up in the creativity. I will say this, the essence of creativity and crime. Are both based on uncertainty and the farther you get away from uncertainty, the more you move into a realm of fear. And I'll get into that later because you're moving into the realm of risk, I guess is what I'm saying.

[00:21:46] Jordan Harbinger: When you made this work, you must have been pretty excited. 'cause I know the feeling of getting something to work. You got this theory, no one else has ever done it. You didn't just look it up, you figured it out yourself, and then it works. You kind of get a little bit giddy. Were, did you have a feeling like that?

Oh my God, I'm gonna do it.

[00:22:02] Russ Swain: That is so perceptive of you. Because that forced out all of the fear. All of a sudden I had something by the tail here, a masterpiece by the tail as far as I was concerned. Now the creative side of me just completely took over. It's like scratching a creative itch. Okay, let's see what we can do here.

So now how can I reproduce this? I had this graphic camera, so I thought I'm gonna use graphic technique as much as I can. Except that looking at the fine engraver of printed money, I thought, wow, they make this really hard because there's so much detail in this. And I realized every time I try to photograph this, I can hold a shadow.in the highlight area, only if I overexpose it, but I have to underexpose it.

So I started making little masks to put over the face of Andrew Jackson so that I could overexpose this part, underexpose that part. And little by little it's, damn, it works. This looks perfect. I've got the little fibers, I've got the black ink. The quality of the printing is excellent. And I thought, damn.

But it doesn't feel the same. What's missing? I got the paper, I got the currency, new bills feel like very fine sandpaper, and it just happened that one of my clients was a jeweler. She owned a jewelry store and she offered free diamond dream cleaning. And it was just something that she mentioned to me one day when I was in there.

I said, what is this stuff? And she says, oh, that's when I clean rings. It's got this vacuum attachment and a polisher and it pulls all of the residue off. And I sort through it and I get little scraps of gold and diamonds and stuff. I use the gold to fix fissures in the rings and so forth. But the diamond dust, it's just ground up diamonds.

And I thought, for some reason, I just thought of that stuff and I thought it wouldn't dissolve if I mixed it in the ink because it's little minuscule dusts of diamond and it's so fine. It probably wouldn't come up my press. So I asked her, I says, Hey, what do you do with that stuff? She says, I throw it away.

Do you want some? I says, yeah, I do. Do you mind? And she says, yeah, take all you want. So anyway, I took this little bag of this diamond dust, took it back, put it in the ink. Stirred it around. I thought, let's see what happens. 'cause it's so fine. It's like baby powder, but it wouldn't dissolve, and so it didn't affect the ink, the darkness, the color

[00:24:26] Jordan Harbinger: value of the ink.

Yeah. It wouldn't absorb anything. It would just be covered with the ink and that's it forever. Yeah. In any kind of creative endeavor,

[00:24:35] Russ Swain: you always look for that one area that creates the magic and that diamond dust was that little part that created magic. It came off that press when it dried. I felt it and I thought, bingo, that feels like new currency.

I can't believe it.

[00:24:51] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I can definitely see what you mean by the creativity taking over. That gives way to excitement, which pushes the fear out because now you're not shaking thinking, oh my gosh, what if the police find me? You're just thinking. Wow, this looks like a real $20 bill and it feels like a real $20 bill.

I did it. I got a masterpiece by the tail

[00:25:13] Russ Swain: creatively. Exactly. I was really excited. The problem was, well, now how am I gonna launder it? Yeah. Because I realized I have to sear off my conscience somehow. But in searing off my conscience, I thought, but how do I mask my anxiety? That's really hard. If you've grown up the fair-haired Mormon boy your whole life, and now all of a sudden you're not just a naughty child, you are a first rate sinner.

You're doing something across the line.

[00:25:44] Jordan Harbinger: This was not your first attempt at forgery. What's this about? Report cards that you had created for friends as something like a business back in the day? I wanna hear about this 'cause I think it's funny. Of course, you would never think about doing this as an adult except for the fact that you ended up using your art skills for the dark side a little bit when you were a teenager as well.

[00:26:03] Russ Swain: Yeah, that's exactly right. My mom was 46 years old when I was born, so I was essentially being raised by someone of other kids'. Grandparents era penmanship was very important back in those days, and so my mother, who was also a school teacher, had been really strict about teaching us really good penmanship.

It happened that my penmanship matched the penmanship style of the previous generation. So being raised in Ogden, Utah, which is a ski town, we wanted to go skiing every chance we could. And so that meant we had to slough school so I could write these really well crafted excuse notes that looked like it was legitimately from someone's parents, because kids of this generation don't write with that kind of penmanship.

And so I thought, this is easy. Please excuse my son. Ralph's absence from school. He has a dentist appointment, a doctor appointment, a whatever. And it worked. And pretty soon, kids that I didn't even know were coming to me asking me for excuses. I need to slough, I need to go skiing, I need to do whatever.

And it worked really well. The problem was we were skipping so much school that we were gonna be grounded for life if we couldn't get our grades up.

[00:27:28] Jordan Harbinger: Also nobody's teeth are that clean. Come on. Right. You've been at dentist four times this month.

[00:27:35] Russ Swain: That's exactly right. So now the grades are slipping and how are we gonna fix that?

And I thought, if I can forge these excuses, how hard would it be to forge a report card? A little bit of paper and ink again. So I started manufacturing for my wayward friends report cards. And I'd say, Hey, for a buck, I'll get you the excuse to get you in and outta class, but then I'm gonna have to have five bucks.

And that was a good chunk of change. It'll get you, I'm doing the inflation

[00:28:04] Jordan Harbinger: calculation on this. Ran out. What year

[00:28:05] Russ Swain: was this? Oh, this was in 19 67, 68, you said five bucks for a report card. That's $47. Holy smokes, that'll get you a ski pass in those days. But it was worth it, and the well-healed students in the class would come and say, okay, I need a report card.

And I say, okay, but it's gonna cost you a buck because we gotta have your parents' signature on your real report card with a note that says, I promise my son will do better. And it was a little bit of a business. It certainly gave me dating money on the weekend, and so I was happy and know really well.

Until one of the students ratted me out, and from that point on, my feet were a virtual path to the principal's office and I was in really some pretty serious trouble.

[00:28:51] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I cannot imagine that must have been a really big deal. 'cause not only are you forging the notes to get people outta school, then you're forging the fake report cards.

Then you're forging the parent signatures on the real report cards to say they saw 'em. I mean, this is just a sort of definition of a slippery slope. And you're making one problem, begets another problem, begets another problem, and suddenly you're just in way over your head. It was only a matter of time till you got caught.

For sure.

[00:29:14] Russ Swain: That's true. But when you're that young, you don't have the ability to assess risk the way that you do when life gives you more experience. So to me it was just

[00:29:24] Jordan Harbinger: a lot of creative fun, I guess. Now grab your inkjet and print out some crispy a hundred dollars bills. It's time to support the fine products and services that support this show.

We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by the Moonshot Podcast. If you love hearing the real stories behind world changing tech, you've gotta check out the Moonshot Podcast. This isn't just a deep dive into cool gadgets, it's a behind the scenes look at Alphabet's Moonshot Factory, AKA X, where some of the craziest, most ambitious ideas of the last 15 years were born.

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[00:31:40] Jordan Harbinger: If you're wondering how I manage to book all these great authors, thinkers, creators, forgers, uh, counterfeiters every single week, it is because of my network and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over@sixminutenetworking.com.

This is not a schmoozey gross awkward course. It is all about making you a better connector, a better colleague, a better friend, and a better peer in a few minutes a day. Very decidedly non cringe, very down to earth and super easy, and many of the guests on the show already subscribe and contribute to the course.

Come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course@sixminutenetworking.com. Now back to Russ Swain. So growing up Mormon. All I really know about the Mormon church, well, I know a few things here and there. A lot of blonde people, a lot of getting married when you're like, I don't know, 20 and having a huge number of kids, huge number of kids, and the mission where I'll run into Mormon kids in the middle of places where honestly, tourists should not generally be going and they're standing on the street corner with a sign that says Free English lessons in Albanian or whatever.

And I'm like, what are you doing here?

[00:32:44] Russ Swain: Did you do one of those? Yeah, I did. I went to Brazil. Cool. They give you a crash course in the language and expect that you're going to pick it up more fluently as you go through. And it was great. But when you get there in a foreign country and you're just dropped off, I remember in the book I pointed out, it sounds like everybody's talking at once and I felt like.

They sounded like a bunch of parrots whose crackers have been laced with crystal meth. It was like, I can't understand anybody.

[00:33:12] Jordan Harbinger: Even Brazilians feel that way. I don't know. I'll have to check my inbox after this. It's gonna be full of interesting notes from people of all various faiths and nationalities.

So how long are the missions? Are they two years? Two years? Yeah. Wow. And

[00:33:25] Russ Swain: Mormons feel their faith very strongly. And growing up it's like you go to church on Sunday, it feels like you don't get out until Tuesday. It's a big part of your life. And I had just diluted myself into thinking, yeah, I'm just a regular, fair-haired Mormon boy, but I.

There's something about the strictness of the religion that sometimes relates to people and they like conformity and they like to go by the rules, but I was always a little bit rebellious, so I pushed against it a little bit, but I was very committed for the two years that I was in

[00:33:55] Jordan Harbinger: Brazil. It must have been a real shock going from Ogden, Utah.

I've never been there, but I can kind of imagine what a mid-size city in Utah is like to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Yeah.

[00:34:08] Russ Swain: Which at the time I think had 7 million people.

[00:34:11] Jordan Harbinger: It's probably three times that size now, but that's just, that's a place that when you see it from satellite pictures or from YouTube, you just go, this is pure Cat, Ogden, Utah.

It makes Ogden, Utah look like a rural farming village. It's just the size difference alone and the traffic and the air quality and the music. I can't imagine more night and day Ogden, Utah in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

[00:34:34] Russ Swain: That is so perceptive of you. Yeah, that's exactly what it was. It was a huge cultural shock. I thought it is so rigid the way that it's organized.

It's like being in the military and you wonder if this impressive two years of if it's ever gonna end. But I had a, a moment, I was really wrestling. Am I gonna do any good here? I pointed this out in the book. You're assigned a companion that you're with all the time. You feel like a Siamese twin practically.

You never get space alone unless you go to the bathroom. But we'd had a hard day of talking to people. We were walking home, it was late at night and light rain was falling. And I says, Hey, let's stuck into this little neighborhood bar. Just get some hot chocolate or something just to keep us going. And when I was there, this young fellow, he was maybe early twenties, he had no shoes.

He was wearing just a pair of shorts, no shirt. But he had a bucket of crabs and he wanted to sell these crabs to the owner of this little. Neighborhood bar and he stuck his stick into the bucket and one of the crabs grabbed a hold of it and he's swinging it around saying, look how fresh my crabs are.

And of course he's speaking in Portuguese and it dawned on me as he's saying, so I thought, I understand what he's saying. Little by little, the language barrier had been evaporating and everybody in the bar, they were clapping at this little one man impromptu circus show. And we were laughing and the owner came out, shook hands showing that a transaction had be made.

Everybody was clapping. I thought, I can't have an experience like this in the United States. I'm looking at the cobblestone streets that are wet and shiny and the halo of the street lamps. And I thought, this is magical and I've gotta embrace everything that's different from my culture and throw myself into experiencing this culture.

And it was extremely stimulating and it made all the difference in the world to me. And so I enjoyed every moment after that.

[00:36:39] Jordan Harbinger: I can imagine as an artist also, just having a lot of new input is valuable.

[00:36:43] Russ Swain: Yeah, that's very true. That is so true. And so now I was absorbing all of these experiences like a sponge because I wanted to, I don't know if it deepened my commitment to my faith, it deepened my commitment to life itself.

Certainly made me more appreciative of other cultures, other races, because we're all the same fabric with different experiences, and it seems to me that we increase our intelligence if we can learn to look at life, not just from our own narrow field of view, but from. Another culture's viewpoint, then we get a broader perspective.

[00:37:22] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I, man, I could not agree more. I'm trying so hard not to go off on a travel tangent of my own 'cause I have so many other things to talk to you about here. I love everything you're saying here. It makes complete sense and I couldn't recommend traveling any more than I already do. I think it does change your life when you stay somewhere for a long period of time.

You're not there for a week, you're not at a hotel. You are walking around the market looking at somebody selling crabs and learning the language and you really get all those cultural nuances. Two years in a place like that is a long enough time for you to really absorb a lot of nuance, a lot of language, and a lot of culture.

[00:37:56] Russ Swain: You are someone who understands the difference between world travel and tourism. I can tell just by that attitude right there.

[00:38:03] Jordan Harbinger: Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I've stayed in a lot of places for a year, 10 months, whatever, even several months. There's just a huge shift that happens after, it's hard for me to pinpoint, but four or five, six weeks, two months, three months, it probably depends on the person and the place and everything like that, but there's a shift that happens where you just go, alright, I live here now, not okay.

When I get home I gotta remember to throw the blanket in the laundry and all that stuff goes away. You start thinking in the other language after however many months, then it, your foot's on the gas in this different kind of understanding. Okay, so you've got all these bills. You've made them, you're pretty happy with the product.

You've been in your print shop while your family's been away camping or whatever, making the ink, the paper, right? But aren't the bills just spotless and unused? That's a little suspicious.

[00:38:48] Russ Swain: And I wanted them to look like they'd been circulated. So I thought I used to refer to, you know, I need some walking around money when you go out somewhere.

So I thought, you know what, I'll just wad 'em up, shove them in my shoes and walk around on them. And it's amazing how that gave them that well worn look of circulation. That's funny. Okay, so this is great. But like I said, I had to sear off my conscience, but I had never had any real experience other than in high school with forging report cards of being a bad guy.

And I thought, how do I mask the anxiety? How am I going to launder this? I had no idea, but I've got all this money that's spendable. I think it is, and I had to try it out, but I was anxious. I was sweating. I went into a little drugstore. They had these little corner stores back in those days, and I thought, I'm gonna give myself away just because I'm so anxious.

And I looked around and I reached over and I picked up a box of tampons. I took 'em to the counter. The lady could see that I was a little bit unnerved. She says, are you okay? I says. It's so embarrassing buying something like this, especially in front of a lovely lady like yourself. I don't want you to think that I'm strange or wonder as a guy what I'm gonna do with these.

She says, no, it's for your mom or your girlfriend or something. I says, and she says, look, we'll put these in a little brown bag so it'll be our secret and snickered a little bit. Like, here's this aw shucks kind of guy. She handed me back my change. So the rest of the day I just went around buying tampons.

So you have 40 boxes of tampons in your office. I've got 40 boxes of tampons, and I took them home, and when my wife came home and she discovered them, she thought, what the hell is this? I said, remember that night you made me get up and go over to seven 11 in the middle of the night when you needed a box of those?

I just didn't want that to happen again. She says, I'm sorry you were traumatized by it. Lifetime supply. As I mentioned, the essence of creativity and crime are based on the uncertainty. And the more you get away from uncertainty, the more you get into the realm of risk. And that's frightening at some level, but at some other level it becomes very bracing, even stimulating.

And that's what I found out. The more that I got used to this. So after I bought a bunch of tampons and it worked very well, it kind of emboldens you a little bit. Now you got confidence that this is gonna work. And so now you spread out and tried different avenues. And I remember distinctly, there was always this feeling that any second something could happen, it could be called out or whatever.

That little bit of fear, it's very stimulating, it's very bracing and it pumps a lot of adrenaline and it's exhausting, but. By the time you go home, you'd fall into a deep sleep because you're so exhausted by it all, by the emotion of it. But then when you wake up in the morning, you realize your feet can't wait to get back and feel that again.

Feel that stimulation, feel that risk, feel the adrenaline pumping through your veins. And I didn't realize it at the time, but I was slowly getting addicted to my own body, chemistry of adrenaline, that rush, I needed that fix, and I couldn't wait to get back to it. Biblically, there's a passage that said two things that God hates.

One is a lying tongue, another is feet that are quick to run to mischief, and I didn't realize about it. I'm getting some foot trouble and, and, uh. I'm living exactly what God doesn't want you to live.

[00:42:39] Jordan Harbinger: How ironic and coincidental that you are literally putting the money on your feet.

[00:42:43] Russ Swain: Yeah.

[00:42:44] Jordan Harbinger: To make it look weathered and that Bible verse, they had no wonder that was fresh in your head.

Feet that are quick to run to mischief and or stepping on literal, forged. $20 bills. By the way, did they smell like feet? Were you spending foot smelling money? I'm sure they did. Money has a kind of a crappy smell anyway. Yeah, it does. I can just imagine her being like, what is that smell and why is this slightly wet?

Where have you been keeping this money? This kind of a funny visual man. This guy's so nervous. Even he's sweating through his pants. Pocket. The money's damp. Oh my gosh. What about the serial numbers on the bills? Because doesn't that take a different kind of machine to do? 10,001, 10,002, 10,003. That's very perceptive.

Yeah.

[00:43:27] Russ Swain: And I did not have a numbering machine. Yeah, why

[00:43:29] Jordan Harbinger: would you?

[00:43:29] Russ Swain: Yeah, I had no use for one. So what I had to do was I had to create serial numbers. I would blow a sample up on my graphic camera to 400%, and I would precisely draw them crisply, these serial numbers. But I was printing them six up to a page because I wanted to control the quality.

All I needed to solve this problem was 10 grand, and I was already printing a couple of hundred thousand dollars worth. So what I did was I just made sure that I had six different serial numbers, and that meant I could never print or I could never pass more than six bills in any one place. And so that seemed fair enough.

[00:44:10] Jordan Harbinger: I assume you didn't just pay the loan shark back with a stack of fake $20 bills with the same serial number on them either. Right? So you had to buy the tampons, get the change back, did the tampon thing do the trick? Did you just eventually collect the 10 grand that you needed in the time that you needed it?

[00:44:24] Russ Swain: That wasn't moving fast enough, and I could see that my time deadline, I had 30 days to do this. My lovely wife and the kids got home from their little outing up in the mountains and she says, how's business fine? Everything's fine. I lied. And I said, in fact, things are so good. I says, you know what I wanna do?

I wanna get away my own self. Maybe take the weekend. Go, let's run up to Sun Valley, Idaho. Because I thought, okay, in Sun Valley, Idaho, come on, it's Idaho. A bunch of farming communities and people like that. If something quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it's probably a duck. So I thought Idaho would be a safe bet because I don't wanna spend a lot of this in Utah.

[00:45:06] Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah. Ogden, Utah, you might run outta tampon shops. Right? Right.

[00:45:10] Russ Swain: How many tampons can you buy in Ogden all sudden before people

[00:45:13] Jordan Harbinger: start giving you side eye? Yeah. Oh, exactly.

[00:45:16] Russ Swain: So I went up there because I. I thought, let's get out of this state. If anybody ever starts looking around, they'll look in Idaho. So we went up to Sun Valley and my then wife, she gets up early, goes to bed early by 10 o'clock, she wants to hit the sack.

And I said, you know what? I wanna run over to the Idaho State Fair because it just seemed like a good place to at least try it out and. The Hawkers. The Gawkers, those guys that, Hey buddy, come on over here. You look like you're a sportsman. Let's see if you can throw a basketball. You know what? That'd be fun.

Maybe I can win something. But all he got is a 20. Hey, that's fine man. I can break change. And because he's taking in all these ones and fives and tens, so he's looking for a way to get rid of some of them. And so he welcomes taking a $20 bill and I'd shoot the baskets and say, ah, I guess I'm no good at shooting baskets.

I'd love to stick around to try it again, but my girlfriend's waiting. Every guy can relate to that. You don't wanna anger your girlfriend, but you walk to the next one. Hey man, you wanna come over and throw some pitches at a jugs? It's amazing how quickly you can launder a lot of money for a dollar throw at a state fair.

I had to keep going back to the car to unload all of this currency, stash it under the seat of the car and so forth. And I was quickly amassing a good deal of money. So I thought, I want to do that again. So I put on a baseball cap and a jacket, and I went back through and nobody seemed to recognize me.

They didn't

[00:46:46] Jordan Harbinger: recognize you or they just didn't care. A baseball cap and a jacket. Not an amazing disguise, right? No, it's not an amazing disguise,

[00:46:54] Russ Swain: but hey, their job isn't to pay attention to anything. That's true. Collecting some money and getting some sucker to chuck a ball. So anyway, that worked better than anything.

And so I bought a gym bag and I just stuffed it full of the cash and I realized, okay, when we go home, I've got my date with Tommy, the shark coming up, and I pretty well got the money that I'm gonna need. So what I did was I walk into a credit union and I, I said, I'm. The junior high school band teacher, and we've had a big car wash fundraiser.

We gotta buy new band uniforms and this is all the money from the car wash. Can I just get some hundreds for all of this? I don't wanna deposit it just yet, but I just need some hundreds so we can buy our band uniforms and everybody wanted to help out the junior high school band teacher, so I was lying through both sides of my mouth just trying to cover my tracks and it was working very well.

[00:47:48] Jordan Harbinger: Isn't there a thing with UV or was this not a thing back then? Real bills, they glow or real bills don't glow under the UV light or is that only a hundred dollars bills or is that only from 1995 on? Do you know what I'm talking about?

[00:48:00] Russ Swain: Yeah. And that was the case back in those days as well. Okay. And I was lucky that I had done enough homework to know a little bit about that.

So what I did was I mixed suntan lotion with a UV inhibitor into the oil based ink. They're both oil based and the suntan lotion did not. Affect the opacity of the ink. Thank heaven. But I also, just to make sure I was covered, I did a full bleed cover of dead flat varnish on top of the bills after they were printed, and I.

That cut out all of the UV reflection. And so it was amazing because I was scared to death of getting caught. I didn't want to go to prison. I didn't want the humiliation, my wife and kids. So I was laser focused on trying to stay outta trouble at this point. 'cause I crossed that bridge.

[00:48:56] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. People right now are probably thinking, how do people not notice this?

But I did an episode with a brain scientist named David Eagleman. He told me that people just don't study currency. They assume it's real. Nobody who gets handed money assumes that the bill is fake. That's why they have checks, like drawn it with a marker, put it under the UV light, and if those checks come up.

You're already assuming the bill is real 'cause you've seen a hundred of those that week that are real. It would be so weird to find a fake one that you're expecting it to come up as real. So even if it glowed like a little bit, you'd just go, ah, whatever. As long as you're not looking at 10 bills, the same serial number with each vendor, and it's not completely obvious that it's fake in some other way.

People just are not going to really notice this. I'm curious though, what did it feel like being rich overnight? Did it make you any happier? Did it alleviate your stress level or were you too stressed out about getting caught potentially?

[00:49:46] Russ Swain: Yeah, the stress level was really intense. It made me realize I'm becoming someone completely different than I used to be.

And I had to keep asking myself, do I like this new version of myself? Because I remember referring to it as the ghost that was always there taunting me, asking me, do you like this new version of yourself because you're becoming someone. Completely different. I used to be at least true hearted, tried to do the right thing and so forth.

And now I realized I am completely different than the guy that my wife thought she was marrying, the guy that I thought I was. And I had to keep putting that ghost in the closet. And, but he was always there coming out of the shadows, taunting me, asking me, do you like this version of yourself? And the honest answer was not very much.

It was a trade, but I felt like I was trading part of my soul and I didn't like it.

[00:50:46] Jordan Harbinger: I do wonder though, you're printing all these bills. Are there bad ones? Are there duds that come out? Or like, oh, that's smeared because something happened, or, I touched that with my thumb and it wasn't dry yet? What do you do with those?

I assume you gotta inspect all these bills and make sure that they look good because that's how you get caught is you have a thumbprint on one of your bills or something.

[00:51:04] Russ Swain: They have to be perfect. And so I went through and with an eagle eye, everything that looked even remotely suspicious. 'cause you're printing these off by the hundreds and so it's okay.

But then you're exactly right. What do you do with the bills that don't pass muster? And it happened that my in-laws, my wife's parents had a wood burning stove and I thought, great, I'll just take 'em over there. 'cause I didn't want to go out in the woods, have somebody go through the ashes and say, this was a bunch of money or something, bank

[00:51:39] Jordan Harbinger: robbery.

[00:51:39] Russ Swain: So I went over to my parents' in-law's home, shoved these all in their wood burning stove, lit a match, made sure that the fire was going and closed the little door. But I didn't understand because I'd never had a Woodburn stove. There's little flus and things that you have to open up to let the oxygen come in.

So soon the fire basically went out and they just smoldered.

[00:52:03] Jordan Harbinger: At least you didn't burn the house down. That would've been worse.

[00:52:06] Russ Swain: Yeah. But anyway, that was one of the things later on in the book that led to the demise. My little scheme is when my in-laws came home and they thought, what's that smell? It's the middle of the summer, who would be messing around with our wood burning stove?

And they opened it up and thought, my God, there's money in here. Oh no. Anyway, it was all charred beyond being usable, but they couldn't

[00:52:31] Jordan Harbinger: imagine

[00:52:32] Russ Swain: what was going

[00:52:32] Jordan Harbinger: on. Yeah. There's no really good way to explain yourself out of that one. You'd have to come up with a real whopper. No, it's fake money that I wanted to get rid of for absolutely no suspicious reason whatsoever.

And don't call the police. Yeah. There's just no good way. So you eventually pay the loan shark back, right? Right. With the laundry. So how did that feel? That must have been at least a relief. 'cause now you're not gonna get knee capped by some gangster.

[00:52:57] Russ Swain: Right. And I showed up at the little strip place that he always wanted to conduct his business.

I had under my arm a cigar box that I had procured solely because it just fit these rows of a hundred dollars bills. And his interest payment was in an envelope with his name on it. And I slid it across the table and he counted it out. And he says, okay, that's the interest. And what's with the cigar box?

You know, I don't smoke. I says, I didn't think you would want me walking around with this much cash. And I opened it up and he could see it was full of bills. And so I put the lid down and he just said to me, he says, you're all right, Swain. I could tell he. Gained a certain level of respect because he had heard through the grapevine that my big project had gone haywire.

And he was wondering, how are you ever gonna pay me back? And he thought, okay, is he just gonna make interest payments for the rest of his life or how's this gonna work? And anyway, I guess it gained a certain level of respect and confidence with him.

[00:54:05] Jordan Harbinger: And then you stopped printing the money and lived happily ever after?

No, that's not why we're here. How long did you print the money? Because you kept printing it after that, right?

[00:54:13] Russ Swain: I kept printing it and there's a side of me that's very empathetic and the fellow that I bought the press from was a great guy and he was a horrible businessman, but a really decent guy. And he had some financial problems.

He had sold me his press so he could get a job, but he wasn't making the money he was making when he had his own business and he was in arrears on his home, he was afraid it was gonna get repossessed. And I said, Hey, look, I said I might have something that'll help you. It helped me out of a jam. I explained to him, his wife said, no, there's no way in hell we could do that.

But I guess they went home and discussed it and slept on it because the next day he called me and says, thanks for inviting me and can you do it just so I can make enough money to pay off my house? And I says, yeah, let's do it. I said, let's just swear to each other, I don't know you. You don't know me.

You go your way. I'll go my way. And we'll hope for a happy outcome instead of just some backwoodsy place like Idaho. He went to Las Vegas where people no money, and it's very sacred to them.

[00:55:17] Jordan Harbinger: And they've seen all kinds of shady gangsters and mafia and criminals come through with fake bills and fake checks and fake everything.

[00:55:25] Russ Swain: Yeah, exactly. And he wasn't a gambler. He didn't go to the casinos. He went to the little strip malls, he and his wife, and she would be on his heels. He'd grab a pack of gum, she'd grab some chapstick, and they'd each pay with a 20. And this caught the attention of a security guard at the mall. He said, see that couple, they've gone to every store making little purchases.

I'll bet they're kiting checks to cover gambling

[00:55:54] Jordan Harbinger: debts. What is kiting checks like? Just writing bad checks. Is that what that means? Oh,

[00:55:57] Russ Swain: writing bad checks to get the money, and then you write a check for 50 bucks or whatever. So he was curious. And so he went into each one of the places and says, Hey, that couple that was in here, did they write a check for their purchase?

No, they gave me cash. And so he went on down through and he thought, I recognize the behavior. It's abnormal behavior. This guy, he was kind of a simple guy and he thought worked so well. I. Last time, let's just go do the same thing. And we went to the same place and there's the security guard saying, there they are, what is going on?

And it caught his attention. So now the curiosity was just eating 'em alive. He thought, what are they doing? Buying the same little items? And so he said, can I buy that bill from you? And as he went down, he's looking at 'em and bingo, he found duplicating serial numbers. And so he called the Secret Service and they came down and they says, could you recognize?

He says, Hey, trust me, they'll be back again next weekend. They come down here every weekend, they do this, the same thing, the same place. I'll spot 'em, I'll let you know. And so the Secret Service just showed up the next weekend and grabbed them.

[00:57:14] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. So at this point they rat you out immediately. 'cause they're scared, understandably.

And they knock on your door eventually, I assume.

[00:57:23] Russ Swain: Yeah, and he tried not to wrap me out, but the Secret Service are so thorough. So anyway, they at least traced it back to me. I'm the guy who owns the print shop, and I was out of town. I was still up in Idaho spending more money 'cause I loved going to Idaho.

And anyway, the Secret Service had interviewed my in-laws and they said, you know what, this explains a lot because we found a bunch of burned up bills in our Woodburn stove At that point, I can't lie my way out of this. There isn't an alibi big enough. And so I had to just come clean and I said, yeah, you've got the right guy.

And the other fellow and his wife, I won't mention their names, they were accomplices, but I'm the guy that you'll want. So I at least gave myself up. It's time to just give myself up and go peaceably.

[00:58:12] Jordan Harbinger: You too can do good deeds with your money by supporting the fine products and services that support this show.

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It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Russ Swain, I assume that they went, I. Yeah. Where's the international organized crime syndicate that's helping you do this? Because it's pretty impressive that you printed all these bills. They're of this quality, they passed the UV test, they got the diamond dust in them.

Just doesn't seem like a thing you do in your garage or your print shop.

[01:01:42] Russ Swain: Yeah. These weren't printed by your uncle in the basement. What was going on here and the secret serviceman that was in charge, his name was Roger Eck, a really wonderful gentleman, also a Mormon, and I apologized to him for being such a failure in representing the faith that we both adhered to, but he was intrigued by it all and he asked me a hundred questions, 50 of which he knew the answer to, and he pulled me aside.

He says, I gotta tell you. He says, under different circumstances, you and I would be very good friends. He says, one thing I respect, you never lied to me. He says, I asked you so many questions. And I said, well, you know what? At this point, what would be the point in lying to you? I just, I'm guilty. And he says, but I respected that you didn't lie.

And so anyway, he kind of understood, okay, here's a guy, he's a creative guy. His back was against the wall. He did something thinking way outside the box and. I understand it. And so we became actually very amicable together. Later he came to my aid in a big way when I faced a federal judge.

[01:02:52] Jordan Harbinger: Can't imagine it would be so tempting to whitewash your participation in something like this, but you're right, there's no alibi big enough.

And the secret service is very thorough. You mentioned they found thumbprints on the edges of the bills that you tried to burn because they went through the ash in the garbage and things like that with tweezers, which must have been a really long day or week for that agent.

[01:03:16] Russ Swain: Tedious for those guys. Gosh, can you imagine?

And they said, I got a corner of a bill and this bill was only printed on one side because you scrapped it. And he says, it has your thumbprint on it.

[01:03:29] Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God. So incriminating.

[01:03:32] Russ Swain: It was incriminating and it was almost cathartic to be able to just confess and say, yeah, it's over. But you've got the guy and.

What you're gonna do with me. God only knows.

[01:03:43] Jordan Harbinger: Do you know how much counterfeit US currency is in circulation? Do you have any idea? I can imagine. It's a lot.

[01:03:49] Russ Swain: I would bet you're right, and I have no idea what those figures would be, but it does beg the question, doesn't it? I was just focused on trying to get rid of my stash, but I have no idea how widespread that is.

[01:04:03] Jordan Harbinger: You know what? I'll look it up right now. Okay. In the United States, the US Department of Treasury estimates that 70 to 200 million in counterfeit bills are in circulation at any given time. That is roughly one counterfeit bill for every 10,000 genuine bills. I don't know if that's more than I thought, or less than I thought.

I feel like that's less than I thought. 70 million. That doesn't seem like that much somehow, but I guess it is at the end of the day. Yeah,

[01:04:26] Russ Swain: nationally, but that's still a lot of cash floating around that. We probably pass it on our ownselves.

[01:04:33] Jordan Harbinger: This is international too. 'cause remember, north Korea's making these Iran was or is making these, so that's probably the bulk of it, but still.

Wow, that's crazy. Did you do any good deeds with the fake cash? You're a good person, right? So it wouldn't just be, oh, I'm playing carnival games and buying tampons. I mean, it would just be so tempting to do nice things with it. I feel like if you've got an unlimited money glitch, one of the most fun things you could do would be to help other people with it.

[01:05:00] Russ Swain: That is so perceptive of you. And yeah, I remember one day I was walking around a little mall in Idaho and there was a Hispanic lady and she had her little three-year-old daughter with her while she was cleaning windows of these little shops. And I thought that poor lady, she's out here, you know, busting her back, can't afford a babysitter.

And so I remember at the time throwing one of the bills down at her feet and thinking that she'd see it, but she was so focused on making sure the streaks were out of the windows. And I said, pardon me ma'am. I says, and I pointed to her and I said, you dropped that. And she said, she looked at it, she says.

No noise meal. And I thought, come on, take the hint. Go with it. I said, no, I'm sure it's yours. You stood on it. You must have dropped it. So please pick it up. It's yours. And she was amazingly grateful that somehow manna from heaven had just fallen to bless her life a little bit, an extra 20 bucks. But yet you do, you look around for ways that you can help somebody, just a beggar on the street, anybody, Hey, 20 bucks will make a big difference in your day.

And there was a great deal of joy in that. That's very perceptive.

[01:06:08] Jordan Harbinger: Tell me about the Mexican cab driver. This is a fun use of funds as well.

[01:06:13] Russ Swain: Oh yeah. It ended up that taught me the shark and I, after I paid him off, we stayed in touch and I saw a different side of him that I'd seen, not just the gruff, menacing guy, but I saw the human side and he and I became a.

Relatively close. He called me one day, he says, Russ got some health problems. And I don't know how serious it is, but I want to go get away. I wanna go to Maslan. You speak pretty good. Spanish let's you And I go to Maslan together. And I said, sure, Tommy, I'd love to. I had to run it past my wife and make sure that she was, I said, Hey.

I said, because I can speak Spanish pretty well. Would you mind if I had this experience? And she says, Hey, you've worked hard. She says, no, go ahead.

[01:06:58] Jordan Harbinger: This is before your arrest, by the way, for people who are like, wait a minute,

[01:07:01] Russ Swain: this is before the arrest. And I thought I could take a few of these bills and maybe unload 'em in Mexico.

Sure Tommy, let's go. And Tommy and I have different tastes. I like to explore the cultural nuances. And I didn't want to go to bars. I still didn't drink, I didn't do any of that. So I feigned a headache. We went to a little bar and I says, Hey, do you mind if I leave you here and let you enjoy yourself? But I says, I'm just going back to the hotel.

'cause what I wanted to do, I wanted to get out, I wanted to mingle with people, see how well I could work the Spanish. And it's those little encapsulated relationships that you remember where you strike up a friendship with someone. So I jumped in the first cab that I came to, and it was a young guy, his name was Marco, and struck up a conversation, Marco, how you doing?

How long you been doing this? You married, you got a family? Yeah, yeah. I'm married. I says, you got any kids? He says, I'm expecting one. A little baron, a boy child. I says, good for you. I says, when's he do? He says, tonight, actually, I said, tonight. I says, what are you doing here? He says she's at the hospital, but her parents are there.

I says, Marco, I said, you know what? I said, you're gonna have an empty ring finger thinking the way you're thinking right now. This is the biggest moment of your life so far seeing your firstborn be born. I said, how much do you make? He says, I have to work. I can't afford to take a night off work. I says, you have to.

How much do you make in a night? And he said, $30. I says, okay, look, here's your 30 bucks, you're covered. I thought it's the least I can do to help a young guy out so he can be there to see his firstborn be born to be with his wife in that special moment. And he says, no, that's not gonna cover it. Because he says, I have to make $200 in a night.

And I thought, alright, so maybe some of these fake twenties, at least six of them would help because I just, my heart went out to this guy. I says, okay, now call your boss. Do whatever you gotta do if you have to fe sickness or something. But. Drive me to the hospital, drive me to where your wife is giving birth and pray to God you're not late.

And he says, really? I says, yeah. So he says, this is nice of you. So he says, what are you gonna do? I says, I'll just get another cab. I'm fine. He says, look, you're, you talked a lot of sense into me. Come up and meet my wife. And I thought, alright, now this is the kind of cultural experience you want. You would've done the same thing Jordan.

And I says, I would love to meet your wife. So we go up the stairs

[01:09:31] Jordan Harbinger: while she's in labor. Hi. Who's the stranger in the room? No, thank you. That's so funny.

[01:09:36] Russ Swain: But as we were walking down the hall, her eyes lit up because she was in the bed. She could see us coming 'cause the door was open and she says, Marco, somehow I knew you would come.

And her parents were there looking very. Grimly at him saying, it's a damn good thing you came. And so he turned around and very silently mouthed to me the word gracias. And I just nodded. And I said, so I went in, I shook hands with the in-laws, met the lovely wife, and I said, you know what? I'm just a friend of Marco's.

I wanted to make sure that he could juggle everything around and help him so that he'd be here on this special night. Anyway, it made a big difference. And so he says, look, let me walk my American friend to the door here. And so he walked down the hall and he said, Hey. He says, you made such a huge impression.

I had Hispanic friends back in Utah. They couldn't say the name Russ very well, so they called me rocks. It was easy to say. Anyway, I had shared that with him and he says, I like that. He says, I want you to know I'm going to nickname my little son. The Little Rock after an American friend who helped me tonight to usher him into the world, and it was a big deal.

It was fun. It was the exactly the kind of flavor that I was looking for, and I never forgot it, and he probably doesn't either.

[01:10:54] Jordan Harbinger: That must have been the best and most fun use of the money other than getting out of getting knee capped by a gangster. All right. Wow. So, okay. Secret Service catches up to you.

You get arrested, the agent is impressed that you didn't lie to him, but that's not getting you out of trouble entirely. Surely there's fallout from the family too, like your wife must have been. I don't even know if angry is quite gonna cut it here. She must have just been shocked and

[01:11:19] Russ Swain: horrified.

Devastated because now there's a big breach of trust. Who are you? Yeah, you told me business was going great. You told me everything was fine. Nothing is fine. Nothing in our life is fine right now, and I don't even know who you are. And once the trust is gone, I could just see the love drain out of her eyes.

I knew there was no fixing that, but she stayed with me to get me through all of the, the courts and everything. I mean, what else could we do? I hired a cheap attorney and he wasn't great. He was anything, but he didn't put his heart and soul into this, but strangely enough, Roger Rodak, the Secret Service man.

Was there at the courthouse that day that I had to go before the judge and the prosecuting attorney did a very convincing job. He said The quality of these bills are a testament to his criminal intent to defraud the government, to defraud the American people. He would've done this. He would've expanded on it.

He was lucky, he was caught, but he needs to be punished to the full extent of the law. And as he's giving his argument of how, how much criminal intent there was, Roger Rodak, the Secret Service man, raised his hand and he says, I object to this, your Honor, and he said, you're objecting to the prosecution.

He says, yes, I am. He says, but you're on our team. You're on the other side. He says, yes. He says, what he's saying is that this proves criminal intent. He says. I argue that it proves creative intent. There is a big difference. And that's why I said the essence of creativity and criminality is it's all based on getting away from certainty.

And so anyway, he said it shows creative intent. And he says, I've spent at least a hundred hours interrogating, interviewing, questioning this gentleman. And the judge says, well, you're the one who drug him into my courtroom. And he said, yeah. He says, I've spent 20 years chasing bad guys. You get a sense of who's a good guy and who's just somebody who's lost his way.

And he says, I say that this guy isn't a threat. And he says, what if you gave him a biblical seven years probation? And the judge says, you know what? You know him better than I do. You know him better than the prosecutor. He says, that's fine with me. And he said, seven years probation with. The understanding that you have to pay back the government for all of the bills that you spent.

And I said, okay, if that'll keep me outta jail, of course. And I said, but you're gonna have to put me on a payment program because now things are upside down again. And he says, the Secret Service people are very adept at gathering of the bills. They know where to look. You have to buy 'em back from them as they gather up these bills.

And I said, okay. So far I haven't had to buy any of them back yet. So after 40 years, I doubt that there's any in existence. So that's kind of nice.

[01:14:27] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, surely they detected them and they just destroyed them like they do with other counterfeit bills. They documented it and destroyed it and it didn't make it back to whatever probation officer's desk that you were dealing with.

You got really stinking lucky.

[01:14:44] Russ Swain: I did indeed. There must have been some kind of angel looking out for me, for which I'm grateful.

[01:14:49] Jordan Harbinger: But the worst punishment was that I assume the relationship with your wife deteriorated as a result.

[01:14:55] Russ Swain: Correct. And then she divorced me, which was the right thing to do.

[01:15:01] Jordan Harbinger: What about your kids?

How old were they? How do you explain to them what happened?

[01:15:04] Russ Swain: Yeah. At the time, they were like 12, 13, and it was really hard, so we tried to soften the blow as best we could, but we didn't immediately separate, but they understood. And the nice thing, my ex-wife handled it so beautifully. She remained amicable, she remained respectful.

We stayed in touch. And even after we were divorced, we still considered ourselves a family. We'd been divorced for some time and she met a wonderful human being who crazily enough later became my best friend. And it really turned out beautifully because. He's taken such good care of her and insisted that I be back as an integral part of the family circle.

He said the family circle just expanded the circle of family and friends, and they both are wonderful friends now, and I think it worked out exactly the way that the heavens intended it to be. He's a great best friend, a better companion to my former wife than I could have been. My kids and grandkids love him and they know of my affection for him, and so they feel free to love him because there's not a competition that way, which is really a beautiful.

Way to live your life. And so I'm grateful for that.

[01:16:22] Jordan Harbinger: And you suckered him into driving you to studio today, which is really nice. Right.

[01:16:27] Russ Swain: And I'm gonna sucker him into buying me some lunch because I took up my wallet.

[01:16:31] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. There's a joke in there somewhere about paying with a $20 bill, but I, I'm not quite quick enough to come up with, man.

It's such an interesting story and you got so lucky. I just can't get over it. Although, I'm curious, you said years later this cop walks in and maybe tests you. Tell us about this. I'm still trying to figure this one out.

[01:16:50] Russ Swain: Yeah, that was crazy. I still had the Secret Service people after they released me, I was still free to go back to my design studio and I was working and one day a gentleman walked in, he introduced himself and he said.

I have followed your case so closely and he said the problem you had, he said, I understand that these bills were impeccable and you had the wrong partner. You didn't have a partner. He says, I'm a cop from Vegas, and that's where I found out and learned about this stuff. And he said, but sometimes our personalities are, you work both sides of that fence.

And he says, I think I could be a very good partner if you'll do it again. Show me how you did it. You've got the printing presses, you've got everything. Let's do it again. And. I said, you know what? I went through the most stressful time of my entire life. I never want to relive it. I wanna forget it. And I'm gonna show you the door.

I didn't bite. I never knew if he was a plant or if he was real. I'll never know. But I'm glad that I wasn't tempted.

[01:17:56] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Probably walked out and got into that secret service agent's car and what, I think you made the right decision. He told me to get lost.

[01:18:02] Russ Swain: Yeah, maybe. So I

[01:18:04] Jordan Harbinger: hope that was the case. How long after the trial was this?

Was it years later? Months later?

[01:18:10] Russ Swain: This was a couple of months later. Okay. Wow. And I was back foot my nose to the grindstone and I was scrambling to try to salvage my business, my marriage, whatever I could do.

[01:18:20] Jordan Harbinger: And what about the church? Did they find out about this and what happens with the church when stuff like this happens?

[01:18:27] Russ Swain: Yeah, their rules are you have to obey the laws of the land. And I wasn't obeying the tenants of the church, and so they held their own court and I was excommunicated, disenfranchised from the church. And so I stayed away and stayed out of it because I was an embarrassment to them, but then eventually wanted to regain some church activity.

And I'm more private about my church affiliation now than I ever was, probably for that reason. But anyway, they eventually in time let me rejoin the ranks and so all is well. That's interesting.

[01:19:02] Jordan Harbinger: So you were on probation from church too? Yeah. Yeah,

[01:19:06] Russ Swain: exactly. Yeah. And they make sure that you've learned your lesson and that you're not going to go back because they can't have that besmirching, their reputation, and rightfully so.

I wouldn't want to. Like I say, I'm very private about my church involvement and so forth, much more than I ever was, but I'm grateful that I never did completely shed my Mormon skin.

[01:19:29] Jordan Harbinger: As we wrap here, I'm very curious. It sounds like your old principle gave you a chance to forge one last item.

[01:19:38] Russ Swain: Yes. I'm so glad you asked that question.

Years later, this was 25 years after I'd graduated from high school, a knock came to the door. I opened the door. It was my old high school principal. I was shocked. I said, principal snow, and he looked at me and he said, rusty Swain, that was what they called me, my friends back in the day. I said, am I still in trouble?

Chris, this one, he says, rusty, you have never in my book been out of trouble. He says, you see these few gray hairs that are remaining. You put the gray in them with all that mischief you got into back in high school. But I brought you some good news, rusty. I says, what is that? He says, I brought you an opportunity to atone for all that mischief.

I said, please come in. Have a seat. Tell me how I can do that. And together we concocted a little scheme that he needed a counterfeiter for. He had been before he was principal, he was the coach. At the new Ogden High School, very classy high school in Ogden, Utah, first million dollar high school ever built on this side of the Mississippi River.

And it was elegant in its art deco architecture. He was in college state champion quarterback for the football team. And he was offered this job to be the head coach at the New Ogden High School. And he instigated a rivalry between Ogden High School and another high school. It was called Weber High. And as a trophy, he had found this earth and Jug had a sign painter dolled up and create the artistry on it that said the little Brown Jug Champion.

And that was the trophy that was passed each year to the winner. And he said after I retired because there were fights breaking out in school, we, we canceled that competition. I. And I always wondered about what happened to my trophy, and so nobody seemed to know where it went. And so I was asking former students, former teachers, anybody know where that trophy went?

And anyway, finally a janitor came to him and said, I think it's in a box in the basement, a storage room of the Weaver County Library. So he went, he asked for permission to go through all these boxes. It was like looking for the holy grail. One day he found it and tears welled up in his eyes. He was emotional about it.

This was a part of my history. I want this to be permanently displayed in the Ogden High School trophy case. And no sooner had it been displayed there. Given a place of honor, but the coach at Weaver High said, I think that belongs in our trophy case, because we won more games than you guys did. He was really offended at that because it was his creation.

It was a tribute to his, you know, legacy. And so he said, rusty, he says, I gotta give him something. So here's the trophy and I want you to make one identical. And I said, and I'm forgiven. He says, you're forgiven. And it was, we had the most fun and we bonded over this fun little mischievous prank to pull on the coach at Weaver High School.

And he gave it to him with and said, Hey, give it a place of respect. Whereas the real trophy, he built a special case for it, and it's in the teacher's lounge where only the administration can enjoy it and see it, but it's in its proper place at Ogden High School. And I promised, I wouldn't tell that divulge that to anybody as long as he walked the earth and he passed away a few years later.

And so now I can talk about it.

[01:23:11] Jordan Harbinger: That's really funny. So somewhere, if Weaver High School is even still called Weaver High School and is still around, there's a jug there that everybody thinks, oh, it's from us winning all those championships against Den and it's just something you made in your garage.

[01:23:24] Russ Swain: Yep, that's exactly right.

People have since asked me, were you tempted to make two and keep the real one? And I said, no, I wasn't going to do that.

[01:23:33] Jordan Harbinger: That's not valuable enough to do. And also, this was you finally getting into the good graces of that principle who had one out for you for decades. That's so funny.

[01:23:42] Russ Swain: And becoming very good threats through it all.

Yeah, it was great.

[01:23:46] Jordan Harbinger: Russ Swain, thank you so much. You're a great storyteller. One of the things I love about this is when you talk to a mafia guy or a criminal, right, they have this little edge to them that they got that little kind of criminal, you just don't have that. You've got the Mormon guy thing going on.

Yeah. I made a $20 bill and I painted a Potage stamp and then the Secret Service arrested me and they found, it's just the way you tell the stories is so funny because it's so unassuming, and I think that might be one of the reasons you got away with it for so long is everybody went, he is not a counterfeiter

[01:24:18] Russ Swain: next.

That's very kind of you. I appreciate that, and I have to say, you're a very imaginative. Question asker. You're very good at the art of interrogation, I guess you would say.

[01:24:29] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Thanks. I guess in another life I would've been a secret service agent arresting you.

[01:24:34] Russ Swain: No doubt. No doubt. Thank you so much. It's been a joy.

[01:24:40] Jordan Harbinger: You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger show with a skilled art forger who made millions selling his fakes.

[01:24:46] Ken Perenyi: I was a storehouse of knowledge of how to create an illusion presented to a experienced expert, and bring him to the inevitable conclusion that the painting is genuine. We flooded the market with my paintings and eventually the FBI will led to my door.

They uncovered a mountain of evidence against me, but they

[01:25:16] Jordan Harbinger: never actually got you. Why did it go away? Why did you never get indicted and how are we having this conversation? I guess that's the greatest story of all to hear details of how Ken Perini evaded the scrutiny of everyone from the mafia to the FBI and lived to tell the tale.

Check out episode 2 82 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Some of the way he solved problems with his counterfeit currency. It really reminded me of episode 2 82 with Ken Perini. A lot of creative problem solving goes into counterfeiting and forging things like using old nails from flea market art in his forgeries.

So they'd look old to the naked eye and on x-ray machines taking the varnish off of an old painting and putting it on the forgery. That kind of stuff. Really, this, these guys all have this in common. They have to solve these really unique problems. Also, Russ got some early advice for his art career, namely steel with both hands.

That's what he was told about art. And you know, there's a book Steal like an artist. I think he might have taken that advice a smidge too, literally. But, uh, you know, you be the judge. Man, though the fallout from his deeds, the kids couldn't play at other people's homes. That would hurt a lot. Not as bad as prison, maybe not as bad as losing your wife, but it sure would sting.

I think that's really having to look your kids in the eye and tell 'em what you did and see their disappointment. That one would really cut to the heart. All things Russ Swain will be in the show notes@jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers deals, discount codes, ways to support the show all at Jordan harbinger.com/deals.

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It's a great companion to the show. Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Don't forget about six Minute Networking as well over@sixminutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn in this show. It's created an association with Podcast one.

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