Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
The trouble began when he found a copy machine that made perfect copies. His name was Cliff Evans and the year was 1996 and he’d just finished Columbia University. He was in the midst of money troubles, and he was a hustler who wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. He was at a crossroads in his life, but he didn’t hesitate. He opened the machine and put a dollar bill on it. The copy that came out looked exactly like money. In that moment, he became a professional counterfeiter. Evans was a friend of mine in high school, and his wild life story is the center of my new book about a true crime called “The Ivy League Counterfeiter.” It’s available on Scribd as an ebook. I talked to theGrio’s Maiysha Kai about it for her podcast, “Writing Black.” The episode will be out on Sunday.
That night he discovered the copy machine, Evan stayed for hours copying money. He created about $10,000 worth. The next day, he took short cab rides, just a few blocks each, then handed whoever was driving a fake $20. No one noticed. That day, he made several hundred real dollars. He knew he had something. He went back and worked hard at making sure the color of his bills looked right and the paper was the perfect texture — he often put his bills in a clothes dryer to make them feel aged. He went to all sorts of places — bars, smoke shops, malls — spending money on lots of small things he didn’t need. He was in business.
Evans, who grew up in Chicago, was then living in Harlem. He chose a trio of compatriots to be his lieutenants and also had 10–15 people serving as distributors — guys who would come by once a week and get a stack of fake bills. They had to come back with real money. In a way, counterfeiting is a smart crime because there’s not a lot of violence associated with it like there is in the drug trade and there’s not a lot of exploitation like there is in prostitution.
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Counterfeiters say success feels like getting over on someone — you feel like you’re smarter than them. But, counterfeiting is hard work — you can never pass bills in the same place twice so you have to keep finding new places to go and new things to buy and all that endless spending becomes boring. Counterfeiters can’t buy something significant like a home because that’ll trigger questions from the IRS. Also, every time you give a fake bill to a store, that store is almost certainly going to call the police. If you’re in the drug trade when you buy weight from a supplier or sell a bag to a citizen, both sides are happy. No one’s going to call the police. But if you give someone fake money, they’ll probably realize it soon after and then the government’s looking for you.
Evans did not know how close the cops were to catching him. The photocopier he was using was imprinting a microscopic code onto every copy he made. That code gave law enforcement the coordinates of the copier that made it. Every bill Evans passed had a message on it — this bill was made at this address. The seeds of Evans’ demise were there at the beginning — he was “covertly” handing out paper that told law enforcement where to find him. But ultimately, what brought him down was a shocking betrayal that he never saw coming. The moment I realized who had betrayed him my jaw dropped to the floor.
My book, “The Ivy League Counterfeiter” goes deep into Evans’ scam, the ways he did it, the reasons why, the people who led to him getting caught and also why he got out of prison and went into a whole new criminal conspiracy. It’s an amazing, riveting story about crime, private school, and a charismatic unforgettable hustler who just didn’t know when to say no.
Touré is a host and Creative Director at theGrio. He is the host of the podcast “Toure Show” and the podcast docuseries “Who Was Prince?” He is also the author of seven books including the Prince biography Nothing Compares 2 U. Look out for his upcoming podcast Being Black In the 80s.
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