The dramatic and shocking intricacies of one man’s elaborate crimes. Conman Case Files s1e4: Carl Hildebrandt
The men had created fictitious firms and businesses in a sophisticated scheme to fraudulently obtain almost £200,000 in government grants. ibid.
Stolen cheques had been converted to Krugerrands. ibid.
He faked his own death then stole a dead child’s identity. ibid.
The man who swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth when he took to the stand as a forensic scientist. The fake forensic expert worked for over twenty years on over 700 cases, all without a qualification to his name. Conmen Case Files s3e3: Morrison, 2011
Gene Morrison earned up to ten times the amount he paid the experts. ibid.
He simply started working as a forensic investigator. ibid.
The scale of the con was monumental. ibid.
Gene Morrison was in serious trouble with the police in Manchester. ibid.
The four victims who came forward were aged between 8 years old and 15 years old. ibid.
If you hang them in a museum in a collection of great paintings and if they hang long enough there they become real. Elmyr de Hory
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. Groucho Marx
All these angels start coming out of the boxes and everywhere, guys carrying crucifixes and stuff all over the place, and the whole bunch of them – thousands of them – singing Come All Ye Faithful like mad. Big deal. It’s supposed to be religious as hell, I know, and very pretty and all, but I can’t see anything religious or pretty, for God’s sake, about a bunch of actors carrying crucifixes all over the stage. When they all finished and started going out the boxes again, you could tell they could hardly wait to get a cigarette of something. I saw it with old Sally Hayes the year before, and she kept saying how beautiful it was, the costumes and all. I said old jesus probably would’ve puked if he could see it. J D Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Forgery, being the weirdest form of creativity there is, like antiques, costs lives. Why is it that antiques demand sacrificial victims? Dunno, but if they don’t get enough, forgery does. You want proof? Here it is: Once a faker’s found out, he dies. Truly. It always happens. Jonathan Gash, Jade Woman
Israel July 2001: In Jerusalem a clandestine meeting is about to take place ... What appears to be an ancient stone tablet. It has an inscription written in ancient Hebrew ... If genuine, it could be the only proof of the fabled Temple of King Solomon. Secrets of the Bible s1e7: The Temple of Solomon Mystery, 2015
The Jehoash Tablet is a fake ... They even find half-finished antiques ... The collector is arrested. ibid.
The Mormon religion is so obviously fake, founded by a transparent charlatan in the nineteenth century, Joseph Smith. Nothing could be more obvious than that that man was a fake and a charlatan and a liar. Professor Richard Dawkins, lecture I’m An Atheist But ...
Frank sincerity is a quality much extolled among men and pleasing to every one, while simulation, on the contrary, is detested and condemned. Yet for a man’s self, simulation is of the two by far the more useful; sincerity tending rather to the interest of others. But since it cannot be denied that it is not a fine thing to deceive, I would commend him whose conduct is as a rule open and straightforward, and who uses simulation only in matters of the gravest importance and such as very seldom occur; for in this way he will gain a name for honesty and sincerity, and with it the advantages attaching to these qualities. At the same time, when, in any extreme emergency, he resorts to simulation, he will draw all the greater advantage from it, because from his reputation for plain dealing his artifice will blind men more. Francesco Guicciardini, Counsels and Reflections
No one fakes it like the Chinese. And no one is more determined to enforce intellectual property law, or copyright, than America. Misha Glenny, McMafia
The European Union Commission estimates that fake goods around the world are worth between $250 and $500 billion a year. Of these about 60 per cent originate in the People’s Republic of China. ibid.
The region in southern Fujian is called Da Shan (Big Mountain) and it is home to some of the biggest and more lucrative counterfeit factories in the world. These facilities, built deep into the mountain, produce millions of cigarettes a day. ibid.
The outsourcing of production to North Korea is not restricted to fake cigarettes. North Korea produces goods even more cheaply than China, and some of the wares that we find in Western stores marked Made in China are in fact Made in North Korea. ibid.
January 28th 2008: The head of one of Britain’s most illusive crime families arrives to be sentenced. Together, Olive, Shaun and George Greenhalgh have become the most successful forgers in history. Their fakes ranged across all types of art. The Artful Codgers, Channel 4 2008
Most of their fakes were made in their garden shed. ibid.
The Artful Codgers – the most unlikely master-criminals the world has ever seen. ibid.
Police suspect they sold over a 140 forgeries. ibid.
The Greenhalghs moved on from faked paintings to bogus antiquities … all made by their son Shaun … Shaun taught himself how to fool the experts by visiting his local libraries. ibid.
From the earliest days man has believed that dreams, supernatural, are in some way real. All of the world psychics demonstrate powers that their followers accept as modern-day miracles. Nova: James Randi: Secrets of the Psychics, PBS 1993
Three out of four Americans say they have had a psychic experience. ibid.
Uri Geller: a young Israeli who claimed to have supernatural powers … In the early 1970s Geller became a superstar … Then of course there was Mr Geller’s appearance on The Tonight Show … Eventually, his star faded. ibid.
During the 1980s I entered a world that I found filled with fantasy and ripe with abuses: the world of faith healing … Peter Popoff Ministries … pulling in nearly $4 million a year … Popoff was being prompted by his wife through a wireless ear-piece; she got her information through prayer-cards … ibid.
Counterfeiting is a giant global trade and everything can be faked. The enterprise is breathtaking. There’s no single market, no single point of entry, every crackdown drives fakers to ever greater levels of cunning. Underworld Inc s1e5: Knock Offs, National Geographic 2015
In the counterfeit world it’s the label that makes the sale. ibid.
Knock-off Pharma is bigger than heroin. It’s on the internet, in the pharmacies and on the streets. And the demand is growing. Underworld Inc s1e6: Fake Pharma
Patients around the globe need medicine. Opening the gates into another dark trade kingdom – fake pharma. Underworld Inc s3e2: Kings & Queens, National Geographic 2016
Conceptual thinking and those who are ready to break the rules, who are ready to learn from me how to pick a safety-lock, how to forge a document: you see a film like Fitzcarraldo would never have been possible without a massive forgery. At that time Peru was a military dictatorship. All of a sudden a military build-up along the river where I had to move my ship. I was stopped, shot at. And I demanded an explanation and I didn’t get an explanation. I was only told, Where is your shooting permit? And I said, of course I made it up, It’s in Lima, it’ll take me three or four days to bring it to the jungle. So four days later I come with a very elaborate beautiful document written in antiquated Chancellory sort of fictional Spanish and Notary paper and it says, El Presidente de la Republica – The President of the Republic … a complete fake … and looks at the document and salutes and says, pass on. Werner Herzog, interview Hardtalk, BBC 2017
Truth Vibrations was published in 1991 … Love Changes Everything was written after his Kundalini awakening in Peru … The same beliefs that are behind Alice Bailey and the New World Order. Chris White, David Icke Debunked, 2010
Truth Vibrations: ‘Soon after this The Eye appeared. ibid.
Truth Vibrations: ‘The universe is governed and guided by a massive hierarchy.’ ibid.
David still holds these theosophic view today. ibid.
Love Changes Everything: ‘The Solar Logos is the spirit of the sun that guides the solar system …’ ibid.
And the Truth Shall Set You Free: ‘Cosmic rays of unprecedented power are being detected. These are the energies that are changing life on this planet …’ ibid.
Icke’s New Moon theory is really just an expansion of Alice Bailey’s writing on the moon. ibid.
‘The planet itself is a living, thinking, emotional entity, and we are interacting with that energy field.’ ibid. Icke
When a forgery is passed off as the real thing there are fortunes to be made and lost. For nearly a decade two Englishmen did just that. Between them they produced hundreds of modern masterpieces and plundered major art archives to fake their provenance. Their activities literally changed our history. It was one of the greatest frauds the art world has ever seen. Art of the Heist s1e4: The Forger and the Conman