The Superdollar: The Near-Perfect Fake $100 Bill Nobody Can Trace

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

So, if you take a magnifying glass, and you look at the back of a genuine US. $100 bill.

SPEAKER_2 (0:05)

Right, right by Independence Hall.

SPEAKER_1 (0:06)

Yeah, exactly, right by the lamp post there, you'll actually find a mistake.

SPEAKER_2 (0:10)

It's a tiny one, though.

SPEAKER_1 (0:11)

Very tiny, the vertical line at the base of that lamp post is weak, it's faded. It's a microscopic flaw made by the printers at the US. Treasury.

SPEAKER_2 (0:19)

Right.

SPEAKER_1 (0:20)

But, and this is where it gets crazy, in the late 1980s, investigators found a batch of fake $100 bills where that specific line was printed flawlessly.

SPEAKER_2 (0:30)

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_1 (0:30)

Yeah, the counterfeiters hadn't just copied American money, they had actually like corrected the government's mistake and perfected it.

SPEAKER_2 (0:38)

It's honestly the ultimate paradox. I mean, you usually look for the flaw to prove something is a fake.

SPEAKER_1 (0:44)

Exactly.

SPEAKER_2 (0:45)

But when the fake is mathematically superior to the genuine article, it just turns the entire concept of currency completely upside down.

SPEAKER_1 (0:52)

It really does.

And that bizarre contradiction is our mission for this deep dive. Today, we are unpacking the mystery of the super dollar.

SPEAKER_2 (1:00)

Or the super note, as some people call it.

SPEAKER_1 (1:02)

Right, the super note. These were incredibly high quality, just practically flawless counterfeit $100 bills that circulated globally, bypassing major banks and governments from the late 80s well into the 2000s.

SPEAKER_2 (1:15)

And we have a massive stack of sources to guide us through this today. But I do want to clarify up front what kind of story we are looking at here.

SPEAKER_1 (1:23)

Yeah, good point.

SPEAKER_2 (1:24)

Because if you are expecting like a standard true crime tale about some amateurs in a basement with a high end laser printer, you really have to throw that out the window.

SPEAKER_1 (1:32)

Oh, for sure. This is way bigger than that.

SPEAKER_2 (1:34)

Oh, yeah. We are talking about international espionage, shadow economies, secret government mints, and this global whodunit that implicates some of the most powerful entities on earth.

SPEAKER_1 (1:46)

It's wild.

SPEAKER_2 (1:48)

Ultimately, it's a story about economic warfare, and the hidden vulnerabilities of the entire global financial system.

SPEAKER_1 (1:55)

So to even begin guessing who could pull this off, I feel like we first have to talk about the physical bill itself.

SPEAKER_2 (2:01)

We do.

SPEAKER_1 (2:02)

Because I think a lot of people, myself included, hear the word counterfeit, and we picture a teenager trying to pass a washed out inkjet printed bill at a gas station.

SPEAKER_2 (2:11)

Right. The cashier immediately flags with that little iodine marker.

SPEAKER_1 (2:14)

Exactly. Those markers are actually a great place to start because they reveal the very first massive hurdle of counterfeiting.

SPEAKER_2 (2:21)

Yeah, because those markers react to the starch found in standard wood pulp-based printer paper.

SPEAKER_1 (2:26)

So if the ink turns dark, it's a fake.

SPEAKER_2 (2:29)

Exactly. Real US currency isn't actually paper at all.

It's fabric.

SPEAKER_1 (2:33)

Right.

SPEAKER_2 (2:34)

It is a highly specific proprietary blend of 75 percent cotton.

SPEAKER_1 (2:39)

And 25 percent linen, right?

SPEAKER_2 (2:41)

Yep. 25 percent linen. And it has these tiny red and blue security fibers physically woven into the material itself.

SPEAKER_1 (2:48)

Which is incredibly hard to get your hands on.

SPEAKER_2 (2:51)

Right.

But the creators of the Superdollar didn't just find a workaround for this. They somehow sourced or maybe even manufactured that exact same highly restricted fabric blend.

SPEAKER_1 (3:02)

So their bills would just pass a marker test every single time?

SPEAKER_2 (3:05)

Every single time.

SPEAKER_1 (3:06)

Okay. So they have the paper, but getting the ink onto the paper is, well, a whole different beast.

SPEAKER_2 (3:12)

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_1 (3:13)

Because the US government doesn't just stamp ink onto a page. They use a technique called intaglio printing, right?

SPEAKER_2 (3:19)

They do, yeah. Intaglio printing requires massive, just industrial scale machinery.

I mean, instead of ink sitting flat on top of the paper, you have these custom engraved metal plates.

SPEAKER_1 (3:30)

Right.

SPEAKER_2 (3:30)

And they're coated in ink, wiped clean so the ink only remains in the grooves, and then pressed into that cotton linen paper under immense crushing pressure.

SPEAKER_1 (3:40)

So the paper is actually being forced up into the engraved lines of the metal plate.

SPEAKER_2 (3:45)

Precisely. That is why when you run your fingernail over the jacket of Benjamin Franklin on a real $100 bill, you can literally feel the ridges of the ink standing up off the surface.

SPEAKER_1 (3:54)

Which is wild.