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SPEAKER_06: Jackie Chan's mouth is taped shut. His hands are tied. He's shoved onto the floor of the casino about to explode.
SPEAKER_01: Fortunately, at the last minute, Jackie Chan's partner, played by Chris Tucker, removes the tape from Chan's mouth and
SPEAKER_06: and spits the bomb onto a nearby roulette table where it goes off.
SPEAKER_01: How the hell you didn't tell me you had a bomb in your mouth? I did. No you didn't. I said, mmm. What the hell is mmm?
SPEAKER_10: So in that scene where the roulette table explodes, money flies everywhere.
SPEAKER_10: And to create the scene and a bunch of others in the movie, filmmakers needed a lot of money. Fake money. We had produced a billion dollars of $100 bills, which is quite a bit of money. It's 14 pallet loads of $100 bills, solid four foot by four foot cubes.
SPEAKER_10: That's Greg Bilson Jr. He's the CEO of ISS props, the company that provided all the fake money for the movie. And he says while they were filming Rush Hour 2, something strange happened. A couple of men showed up to Bilson's office.
SPEAKER_07: Well, when they showed up, they were saying that they were from Secret Service and provided documents indicating such and I thought it was being punked. I didn't believe that it was a real situation. Do you remember how many people there were?
SPEAKER_07: Just two officers, but it got very serious and very real very fast. The Secret Service was in Greg Bilson's office because during the filming of that scene in the casino, some of the fake cash had gone missing.
SPEAKER_06: Some souvenir seekers and extras grabbed some of that money, put it in their pocket, and it subsequently started turning up as counterfeit over the next few days.
SPEAKER_10: People were trying to use the fake money as real money up and down the Las Vegas strip, which meant that Greg was being accused by the Secret Service of counterfeiting. This is a serious charge. People who counterfeit money can face large fines and even jail time, which has made the use of prop money in movies really complicated over the years.
SPEAKER_06: We have pretty strict laws around the reproduction of U.S. currency, which can be traced back to the mid 1800s.
SPEAKER_10: Around the time of the Civil War, there was a ton of counterfeit currency circulating in the United States. Some people say anywhere from a third to a half of all money was fake. The federal government wanted to give people faith in its currency, so it got serious about cracking down on counterfeit money. All reproductions of U.S. currency became illegal, including photographs of money.
SPEAKER_06: Along with the law that criminalized reproductions of money, an enforcement agency was formed, the Secret Service. Yeah, those guys with the earpieces and black suits to protect the president, those guys.
SPEAKER_10: Today the agency falls under the Department of Homeland Security. But at its start in 1865, the Secret Service was part of the Treasury Department, and its only job was to fight counterfeiting. Secret Service agents operating from field offices throughout the country have been constantly fighting the criminals who make phony money, as well as those who pass it to the public.
SPEAKER_06: That's from a film put out by the Treasury Department in 1945 called Doubtful Dollars.
SPEAKER_03: In accepting money, it is well to remember that while not all strangers are counterfeiters, all counterfeiters are strangers. Learn to know your money and train yourself to examine the bills and coins you receive.
SPEAKER_10: Okay, so the ban on any photographic representation of money was in place for about a century, and this was a problem for advertisers and photographers. By the letter of the law, they were specifically barred from taking pictures of money. The law was written before the invention of motion pictures, but when movies came along, it was generally assumed that filmmakers would follow the same rules as photographers.
SPEAKER_06: No money on camera. And so, in the early days of cinema, when money was needed in a film, producers had to get creative.
SPEAKER_04: Thirty, thirty-five, forty. Forty thousand. Shall we start with forty?
SPEAKER_03: That's a scene from the 1943 Hitchcock film Shadow of a Doubt, and if you watch the movie and look closely, you can see that the bills in the scene aren't American dollars. They're Mexican pesos.
SPEAKER_04: Ah, details. I'm glad to see that you're a man who understands details, Mr. Green. They're most important to me. Most important.
SPEAKER_00: I remember seeing it in movies all the way from the 20s and the 30s and the 40s up into the 70s. This is Peter Huntoon. He's an author and expert on American currency, and he says you can see pesos in a lot of old movies.
SPEAKER_10: The reason for this is that after the Mexican Revolution ended, around 1920, some regional Mexican money that was created during the revolution lost value and was sold for cheap. The notes from the Mexican state of Chihuahua, where Pancho Villa held power, were some of the most widely used in film. They were absolutely gorgeous because they were multicolored. They had gold backs, black print, but the idea was that these things looked like money. They were real nice looking, and so the studios bought them up.
SPEAKER_00: But the studios weren't trying to pass pesos off as American dollars. It was just all they had.
SPEAKER_06: Nobody's ever fooled by it. If you see this money go by in a movie, you know whether it's American or not because, of course, you'd see that a block away.
SPEAKER_06: In the second half of the 20th century, the government began relaxing restrictions on the rules around photographing currency, and it eventually became legal to film real money.
SPEAKER_10: And real money is great for scenes where you need close-up shots, like this scene from the 1995 movie Dead Presidents. Well, it's not going to forgive me for this one. I'll tell you what, Ramon. With this kind of money, you can buy your way in heaven.
SPEAKER_07: In this scene, four of the characters have robbed an armored truck and are splitting up the cash. The camera pans slowly over stacks of bills.
SPEAKER_06: But it can also be risky to have real money floating around on set, especially if you need a bunch of it. So a lot of producers prefer to use fake money. These days, the government does allow for some reproductions of U.S. currency. It's just not very clear how real fake money can look. It depends. It's very subjective. If it's the same size as a current U.S. currency note, and it's front and back, and it's made in the likeness of our U.S. currency, then we view it as counterfeit.
SPEAKER_05: That's Trent Everett.
SPEAKER_10: I am an assistant to the special agent in charge for our criminal investigative division of the Secret Service, and I currently oversee our counterfeit operations section.
SPEAKER_05: Over the years, prop money in movies has begun to look more like actual money, sometimes too much like actual money.
SPEAKER_10: Some companies did and still do turn out bills that run afoul of the law, because to look good on screen, fake money has to be pretty close to the real thing. These movie companies like to have things look as real as possible, and then that's where they start running into issues.
SPEAKER_06: Some people make bills that are the same size as real money, but with one or two small design changes, like maybe it says, In dog we trust, instead of in God we trust, or has Benjamin Franklin making a weird face. Or there are bills that look exactly like the real thing, except they're stamped with a small disclaimer. All of these would probably be unacceptable to the Secret Service.
SPEAKER_10: Remember Greg Bilson from Rush Hour 2? He thought they had made their fake bills look different enough from the real thing.
SPEAKER_07: There's probably 25 or 26 separate things that are not what a real $100 bill has on it, but it was still too close to the reality for them to accept.
SPEAKER_10: Bilson had to turn over all of his prop money to the Secret Service to be destroyed.
SPEAKER_07: And then they confiscated and destroyed all the electronic files that were used in creating this money.
SPEAKER_10: Bilson lost a lot of money. Not just the fake money, but the real money it took to produce the fake money.
SPEAKER_07: Oh, it was well in excess of $100,000. Just the paper stock alone to buy enough paper to produce a billion dollars was $77,000.
SPEAKER_06: In the end, all Bilson really lost was money. He didn't have to go to jail. These days, he mostly tries to avoid using fake money at all. It's just too hard to please both the Secret Service and the movie producers. It's not worth it. I'm not going to break the law for a TV show, a feature film, or a producer that I don't even know.
SPEAKER_10: But movies are definitely not the only way fake money is making it into the marketplace. Here's Trent Evert again from the Secret Service. It's not that it's just leaking out of production companies, but it's being sold on the internet or anybody can purchase it.
SPEAKER_06: You can actually buy prop money right now on Amazon. It's even on Prime. Free, two-day shipping. So, of course, we ordered some. Yep, this is it. That's producer Katie Mingle opening up the package.
SPEAKER_06: Okay, so it's a little stack about half an inch thick. It does look a good bit like money from a distance.
SPEAKER_11: It doesn't feel that much like money, though. It feels like just regular paper to me. Benjamin Franklin is making a really strange face. It's like they took his mouth and shrunk it. And it says for motion picture use only. But yeah, let me see if I can fool any of my coworkers with this.
SPEAKER_06: Katie has about ten hundred dollar bills in her hands, which she's going to say a fan sent us in the mail. Oh my God, you guys. A fan just sent us this note with all this money in it.
SPEAKER_11: Who did? A fan. It just says, Dear 99 P.I. Oh my God, that's so much money. Love your work. Please treat yourself to something special. And I see both. How much money is it? Is this real? This isn't real. For motion picture use only. Shut up.
SPEAKER_06: OK, so Delaney could see it was fake as soon as it was in her hand, but from a couple of feet away, the money does look really convincing. And Trent Everett told me they're actually investigating some fake money that looks a lot like the stuff you guys bought from Amazon.
SPEAKER_10: Currently, we are investigating the motion picture note that has been popping up all over e-commerce sites.
SPEAKER_05: But it's two sided. It is similar size. It is in the likeness of a one hundred dollar U.S. note. And the only difference on it is that it says motion picture use only. So don't be surprised if some Secret Service agents show up at the 99 P.I. offices.
SPEAKER_10: No charges necessarily we brought on the person for purchasing it. They just aren't legally able to possess it.
SPEAKER_05: OK, just for the record, the person who purchased it is Katie Mingle. M-I-N-G-L-E.
SPEAKER_06: Given how difficult it is to make money that looks real, but not too real, it's hard to imagine who still wants to be in the business of creating and supplying fake money for the movies.
SPEAKER_10: But there are a few people still doing it, including R.J. Rappaport.
SPEAKER_01: I'm Rich R.J. Rappaport and I'm the president of RJR Props. We are a props house for film, television, music industry, commercials and the entertainment industry. When I visit R.J. at work, he shows me around a huge warehouse. There are all kinds of different props.
SPEAKER_10: A hospital bed, a prison cell, a futuristic machine with lots of knobs and buttons. We've got giant control panels like this. Blue lights spinning across circuit boards and flashing LEDs and all sorts of interesting things.
SPEAKER_01: R.J.'s been in this business for years, but he still seems so excited by it. It's almost like he's a kid playing pretend with all the perfect toys.
SPEAKER_10: For instance, if somebody had to disarm this. It's the missile control system, not the missile control system.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, the missile control system. Cut the red wire. OK, cutting the red wire. No, the blue wire. When we step into the room with the prop money, it's like seeing a bunch of movie cliches side by side.
SPEAKER_10: There are stacks and stacks of bills wrapped with paper bands like they just came from the bank. So I noticed you also have a briefcase of money. Is that one whole prop that you give out, the briefcase with the stacks of cash in it? It is. This is an entire prop ready to go. And we have other briefcases like this. This is a black leather briefcase.
SPEAKER_01: And this is a brown leather briefcase. Sometimes we fill them with fake drugs as well.
SPEAKER_10: R.J. says it took three years of back and forth between him and the Secret Service to agree on a design for prop money. That kind of guidance isn't something the Secret Service normally provides, by the way. R.J. managed to finagle an exception.
SPEAKER_06: We worked with the Secret Service and we went over all of the laws, all of the updates, all of the changes.
SPEAKER_01: It's a very tedious process where you're just doing original artwork from scratch.
SPEAKER_10: R.J. says when he makes bills that are blank on one side, he can make them pretty realistic. But otherwise, you have to be really careful. Jump through a ton of hoops. And even then, sometimes the Secret Service will end up asking you to destroy everything you've made. It's so much hassle that, ironically, there's no money in it. And it's not a big money maker. No joke intended. It's not the way that we make a living. It's really not.
SPEAKER_01: This is really just a service that we do for our clients. And we know that if they're going to come back to us for something bigger and better, then we'll make a living on that.
SPEAKER_10: R.J. has supplied money for a bunch of popular movies and TV shows, like the Netflix series Ozark.
SPEAKER_06: OK. Money laundering 101. Say you come across a suitcase with five million bucks in it.
SPEAKER_06: In this scene, there's a montage that includes cash on the glass table, cash running through a counting machine, and cash in a suitcase. The IRS won't let you buy anything of value with it.
SPEAKER_06: TV and movies are full of characters who come across suitcases full of money. It's a fun plot device. But behind all this cash is someone like R.J., who has been through a meticulous design process and years of back and forth with the Secret Service. Because for the film producers, there's no such thing as easy money.
SPEAKER_06: You know what's not on U.S. currency? A dollar symbol. Kurt explores the origin of the S with a line through it after this. If you need to design visuals for your brand, you know how important it is to stay on brand. Brands need to use their logos, colors and fonts in order to stay consistent. It's what makes them stand out. The online design platform Canva makes it easy for everyone to stay on brand. With Canva, you can keep your brand's fonts, logos, colors and graphics right where you design presentations, websites, videos and more. Drag and drop your logo into a website design or click to get your social post colors on brand. Create brand templates to give anyone on your team a design head start. You can save time resizing social posts with Canva magic resize. If your company decides to rebrand, replace your logo and other brand imagery across all your designs in just a few clicks. If you're a designer, Canva will save you time on the repetitive tasks. And if you don't have a design resource at your fingertips, just design it yourself. With Canva, you don't need to be a designer to design visuals that stand out and stay on brand. Start designing today at Canva.com, the home for every brand. The International Rescue Committee works in more than 40 countries to serve people whose lives have been upended by conflict and disaster. Over 110 million people are displaced around the world, and the IRC urgently needs your help to meet this unprecedented need. The IRC aims to respond within 72 hours after an emergency strikes, and they stay as long as they are needed. Some of the IRC's most important work is addressing the inequalities facing women and girls, ensuring safety from harm, improving health outcomes, increasing access to education, improving economic well-being, and ensuring women and girls have the power to influence decisions that affect their lives. Generous people around the world give to the IRC to help families affected by humanitarian crises with emergency supplies. Your generous donation will give the IRC steady, reliable support, allowing them to continue their ongoing humanitarian efforts even as they respond to emergencies. Donate today by visiting rescue.org slash rebuild. Donate now and help refugee families in need. Article believes in delightful design for every home, and thanks to their online-only model, they have some really delightful prices, too. Their curated assortment of mid-century modern coastal, industrial, and Scandinavian designs make furniture shopping simple. Article's team of designers are all about finding the perfect balance between style, quality, and price. They're dedicated to thoughtful craftsmanship that stands the test of time and looks good doing it. Article's knowledgeable customer care team is there when you need them to make sure your experience is smooth and stress-free. I think my favorite piece of furniture in my house is the geome sideboard. Maslow picked it out. Remember Maslow? And I keep my vinyl records and CDs in it. It just is awesome. I love the way it looks. Article is offering 99% invisible listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit article.com slash 99, and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com slash 99 for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. So I'm in the studio with digital director Kurt Kohlstedt, and as we mentioned earlier, when those really strict anti-counterfeiting laws were on the books, movies used pesos to stand in for U.S. currency. But the idea of seeing pesos circulating in the United States wasn't actually all that new or crazy back then. Yeah, in fact, from the late 1700s all the way up to 1857, pesos were legal tender in the United States.
SPEAKER_08: And around the same time that Congress officially approved their use, the dollar sign started to appear. And so where did the dollar sign come from? Well, nobody's really sure who first designed the dollar sign, and there's a lot of intriguing theories about how it came about. Some people have speculated that the S with the double lines, those two vertical lines over it, is actually a U superimposed on an S, but with the bottom of the U removed. Oh, so it's supposed to be U.S., as in U.S. currency.
SPEAKER_06: Right, and that's an appealing theory, in theory. I mean, it makes the dollar sign seem distinctively American, like a national symbol, but it's widely believed to be false at this point.
SPEAKER_08: Okay, so that's one hypothesis. What's your favorite version of how the dollar sign came to be?
SPEAKER_08: Well, there's this rather epic theory that the dollar sign traces back to the pillars of Hercules on either side of the Strait of Gibraltar. This famous strait is effectively the threshold between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. And, according to legend, the flanking pillars were once inscribed with the Latin words non plus ultra, which translates as nothing further beyond.
SPEAKER_06: Oh, as in, once you leave the Mediterranean Sea, there is nothing beyond there, just the endless ocean. Right, this is the end of the world as we know it. And that motto ended up on old Spanish currency.
SPEAKER_08: But it was later changed when Christopher Columbus reached America. They actually dropped the non part and made it plus ultra, meaning further beyond, to reflect this new realization that, in fact, there was a lot more to the world out there. And on Spanish coinage, the motto was shown on banners that wrapped a flanking pair of ornate pillars. So you have this kind of S-shaped banner that winds down around a vertical column.
SPEAKER_06: So in other words, with a pillar and a banner wrapped around it, it looks like the single line dollar sign. Pretty much. And it's a fun story. But the prevailing theory is actually that the dollar sign was never really about the new world. It wasn't something distinctively American.
SPEAKER_08: In fact, it all comes back to the Spanish pesos and their plural abbreviation, which is P.S. So, as I said before, the peso is getting a lot of use in American businesses in the 1700s. And the idea is that as it was getting written down over and over again on documents, the P started to overlap with the S. And the curved part of the P just got dropped over time. So you end up with something that looks like the single bar dollar sign, that vertical line going up through an S that we know today. And so that is thought to be the true story.
SPEAKER_08: It is thought by many to be the true story, and that is what the Oxford English Dictionary claims is the true story. But, you know, we may never be sure.
SPEAKER_06: 99% Invisible was produced this week by Elizabeth Nakano. Edited by our senior producer Katie Mingle. Sharif Yousif did the tech production and mix. Sean Real composed the music. Kurt Kohlstedt is the digital director and the rest of the staff includes Delaney Hall, Avery Truffleman, Emmett Fitzgerald, Taron Mazza, and me, Roman Mars. We are a project of 91.7 KALW in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in beautiful downtown Oakland, California. This show is part of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of the best, most innovative shows in all of podcasting. We are supported by the Knight Foundation and sticker-loving listeners just like you. You can find 99% Invisible and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99pi.org. We're on Instagram, Tumblr, and Reddit too. If you want to read an article about car-free cities or see our video about biomimicry that we made with Vox, you have to go to our website. It's 99pi.org.
SPEAKER_07: Radiotopia from PRX
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SPEAKER_12: Welcome back to our studio where we have a special guest with us today, Toucan Sam from Fruit Loops. Toucan Sam, welcome. It's my pleasure to be here. Oh, and it's Fruuuuuuoot Loops, just so you know. Fruit? Fruit. Yeah, fruit. No, it's Fruuuuuuoot Loops, the same way you say Stuuuuuuuuuuuudio. That's not how we say it. Fruit Loops. Find the Loopy side.
