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Oh wow, crazy to see this on the front page! Author here. Shameless plug: if you like my writing, I mostly write about AI these days: https://www.ignorance.ai/
> mostly
It seems like all of your writing is devoted to AI these days, if we only count guo.io and ignorance.ai . Do you use other spaces?
Oh wow, crazy to see this on the front page! Author here. Shameless plug: if you like my writing, I mostly write about AI these days: https://www.ignorance.ai/
Great! > mostly It seems like all of your writing is devoted to AI these days, if we only count guo.io and ignorance.ai . Do you use other spaces?
When they caught the counterfeiter, he was let off on a technicality (his coins were not an exact copy - they were missing a dot, and they were not magnetic while the real coin was), but the coins were so common they were accepted as legal tender.
(At the time people said that the counterfeiter was fined so much he had to keep the presses running all night.)
The Israeli one shekel coin was counterfeited so much that it was more common than the real coin. When they caught the counterfeiter, he was let off on a technicality (his coins were not an exact copy - they were missing a dot, and they were not magnetic while the real coin was), but the coins were so common they were accepted as legal tender. (At the time people said that the counterfeiter was fined so much he had t…
That's wild! Feels similar to some of the crypto scams going around wrt stable coins.
I'm not sure if "I'll buy the bank to make my fraud legit" is more ballsy than "I'll (ab)use the courts to carry out my fraud in full view of the public, content that no one will stop me because no one has stopped me yet and sensible people will avoid making themselves my targets".
Awesome story! And all this before 28… Though not a contender for “greatest counterfeiter”, there is also William Chaloner (1650–1699), who had a similar idea (“the safest place from which to pass his money was the Mint itself”), and did battle with Sir Isaac Newton. There's a great book about this called Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World’s Greatest Scientist by Thomas Levenson;…
The photos in the article appear to be of legit notes, as I searched for the word "Angola" without success (they were able to explain away the fraud to the printer by pointing this out).
> [T]he contract had specified that the word "Angola" would be overprinted on the new notes when they reached Lisbon and before transport to Angola (they were allegedly for colonial circulation only)
The article has an image[2] taken at the British Museum showing a real and counterfeit note, both with the same serial number.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alves_dos_Reis
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Counterfeit_500_escudo_no...
No it wouldn't. Probably an off by factor of 1000 error.
_and_a_genuine_banknote_(lower)_of_Banco_de_Portugal._Both_carry_the_same_serial_number_of_1K_02201,_1922._On_display_at_the_British_Museum_in_London.jpg){kind=link}