Lives of Crime | 3. Making Money

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Burden – Lives of Crime | 3. Making Money

Host: Steve Fishman (Orbit Media)
Main Voice: Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)
Date: April 7, 2026

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Overview

In this riveting episode of Lives of Crime, host Steve Fishman presents Jeff Turner's first-person account of how he became one of the most resourceful counterfeiters in recent history. Turner, whose operation was equal parts desperation and ingenuity, details the journey from loving husband and father struggling in Knoxville, Tennessee, to an inventive criminal crafting fake currency from Bible paper. The episode delves deep into Turner's methods, motivations, and the eventual unraveling of his counterfeiting operation, blending technical insight with strikingly personal moments.

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Episode Theme

Main Theme:
The transformation of an ordinary man under financial and personal duress into a master counterfeiter, revealing the creativity, stressors, and psychology that drive such a dramatic life change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins: A Family Man's Descent (02:59–06:25)

• Jeff meets Jessica, marries, has kids, and tries to live the American dream despite ongoing drug issues.
• An exhausting work schedule at a sign company eventually leads to a near-fatal accident, resulting in job loss and mounting financial strain.
• Desperation breeds criminal intent: At his lowest, Jeff considers robbing a bank, researching hyper-realistic silicone masks online.
  • Quote: “I was literally planning a bank robbery… I was really, like, about to rob a bank.” – Jeff Turner (05:43)
• Jessica expresses fear of law enforcement repercussions.
  • Quote: “The FBI's going to kick in my fucking door if I get caught.” – Jessica (06:23)

2. Turning to Counterfeiting (06:25–07:37)

• Counterfeiting emerges as the "safer" criminal option.
• Jeff is upfront with Jessica about his plans, which she initially dismisses as a joke until seeing a convincing fake $20 bill.
  • Quote: “It wasn't until a couple weeks later that I printed out my first… 20 bill. And she saw it and was like shocked at how, how real it looked.” – Jeff Turner (07:15)

3. Skillset and Early Experiments (09:40–10:45)

• Jeff’s obsessive attention to detail, honed through musical practice and making fake IDs in his youth, becomes the backbone of his counterfeiting craft.
  • Quote: “I literally sat in my bedroom for eight hours a day, every day for years, until I could sweep arpeggios…” – Jeff Turner (09:51)
• Early forays into forgery, selling fake IDs and realizing that “you can forge things and be successful at it.”

4. Perfecting the Money: The Bible Paper Method (11:55–15:36)

• The hunt for the right paper leads to the discovery that thin, opaque Bible paper closely mimics real currency stock.
  • Quote: “When I found this Bible paper, it was like a light bulb that just went over my head. I knew this was like… this is perfect.” – Jeff Turner (12:33)
• Resourcefulness on display: stealing blank pages from Bibles at bookstores, accepting Bible donations from churches, even bribing hotel staff for bulk Bibles.
  • Quote: “I gave him a hundred dollars so he didn’t care.” – Jeff Turner, on bribing a maintenance worker for hotel Bibles (15:00)
• Jessica’s role grows as the operation becomes more “Bonnie and Clyde.”

5. Production Process & Technical Ingenuity (15:36–17:58)

• Systematic process: photographing real bills; layered, multi-pass color printing; assembling fronts and backs with glue; spraying with lacquer to defeat counterfeit pens.
  • Quote: “You get the muscle memory of just the right amount of misting on, you know, because if you spray too much Gorilla Glue, it'll be too thick.” – Jeff Turner (17:36)
• The continuous improvement process, using tools and hacks to outsmart both retail detection and technology safeguards in printers and scanners.

6. “Breaking” the Money (20:45–23:47)

• Jeff’s first use of a counterfeit bill is at Taco Bell—nerve-wracking but successful.
  • Quote: “The first bill that I broke myself… I just threw the tacos in the bushes. I kind of thought, this is going to be easier than I thought.” – Jeff Turner (21:11)
• The operation scales: buying prepaid Visa cards (to maximize real cash returns), working large chain stores, giving his kids anything they wanted.
  • “If they say, oh, can I have this toy? It’s like, sure, I’ll make 50 bucks off of getting you that toy.” – Jessica (22:53)

7. Counterfeiting Countermeasures & Escalating Risk (23:47–25:30)

• Evolution of security: solving the problem of the UV security strip by using invisible ink UV pens marketed for children’s diaries.
  • Quote: “So when you shine the black light on, it appeared to glow red, just like a real bill.” – Jeff Turner (24:05)
• Partnering with heroin dealers: printing on demand for them, both as a means of income and as part of ongoing drug dependency.
• Jeff’s routine: up early, printing thousands in fake hundreds by noon, and trading or “breaking” them for cash.

8. The Takedown (25:30–27:43)

• A heroin dealer gets arrested, leading Jeff to suspect law enforcement interest. Soon, his hotel is raided by local and federal agents.
  • In a panic, Jeff tries to flush tens of thousands in fake bills; thwarted by a shut-off water supply.
  • Quote: “I did a line of heroin and lit a cigarette and just sat on the bed… while they were kicking the door.” – Jeff Turner (27:28)
• Arrest and the real consequences hit.

9. Aftermath: Redemption and Cooperation (27:43–29:36)

• Jeff takes a plea deal to protect Jessica from prosecution, agreeing to cooperate.
  • Quote: “I wouldn't have let my wife go to prison.” – Jeff Turner (27:56)
• Secret Service impressed with his methods, asking him to produce a training video for their agents.
  • Turning point: realization of self-taught expertise being valued by the government.
  • Quote: “They kept saying, who taught you? I mean, I really just taught myself, you know, I mean, trial and error.” – Jeff Turner (29:11)
• Minimal jail time: three years served; Jessica serves none.

10. Where They Are Now (29:36–30:55)

• Jeff: Drug-free, steady job in printing; considers himself a “professional printer,” but the criminal past cost him his marriage.
• Adds weight to the episode’s central question about the consequences and legacies of living “on the edge.”

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• On desperation and boundaries:

  “I was literally planning a bank robbery… I was really, like, about to rob a bank.”
  — Jeff Turner (05:43)

• First reaction to convincing counterfeits:

  “It wasn't until a couple weeks later that I printed out my first… 20 bill. And she saw it and was like shocked at how, how real it looked.”
  — Jeff Turner (07:15)

• On the thrill and potential of the operation:

  “When I found this Bible paper, it was like a light bulb that just went over my head.”
  — Jeff Turner (12:33)

• On outsmarting detection tools:

  “So when you shine the black light on, it appeared to glow red, just like a real bill.”
  — Jeff Turner (24:05)

• Facing the end:

  “I did a line of heroin and lit a cigarette and just sat on the bed… while they were kicking the door.”
  — Jeff Turner (27:28)

• Reflection on cooperation and expertise:

  “They kept saying, who taught you? I mean, I really just taught myself, you know, I mean, trial and error.”
  — Jeff Turner (29:11)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:59] – The family backstory and initial struggles
• [05:43] – Planning a bank robbery
• [06:25] – Turning from robbery to counterfeiting
• [09:51] – Early skills and forging background
• [12:33] – Discovery of Bible paper
• [15:00] – Bible paper acquisition via hotel staff
• [17:36] – Printmaking process and technical tricks
• [21:11] – First successful use of counterfeit money
• [22:53] – The kids’ experience and life funded by counterfeiting
• [24:05] – Beating UV security features
• [27:28] – The hotel raid and moment of arrest
• [29:11] – Secret Service training and self-taught expertise
• [29:36] – Aftermath and personal cost

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Tone & Style

The episode is deeply personal, often confessional, and astonishingly candid. Jeff and Jessica’s voices are unvarnished, often laced with dark humor, matter-of-fact descriptions, and an undercurrent of both pride in their ingenuity and regret over the toll on their lives.

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Conclusion

Making Money is a nuanced exploration of how economic hardship, addiction, and personal relationships intersect with extraordinary criminal ingenuity. Through Jeff Turner’s own words, listeners gain rare insight into both the technical craft of counterfeiting and the emotional fallout of a life lived on the run—and the knife-edge between love, desperation, and crime.

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Transcript

[Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer]

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[Steve Fishman (Podcast Host)]

all at once ad free. Subscribe to True Crime Clubhouse on Apple Podcasts. Welcome to Lives of Crime True Crime from True Criminals. I'm Steve Fishman from Orbit Media. Today's episode is a first person account from Jeff Turner. He was a counterfeiter, one of the best of his generation. He was persistent, resourceful, skilled, and inventive in ways you won't believe, in ways U.S. treasury agents couldn't believe. And he did it all for love. We call this episode Making Money.

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

I met this girl Jessica, and you know, we hit it off, started dating. And after about a year or two, we decided to just kind of move away, get, get out of Florida. So we moved up to Knoxville, we got married, we had a couple kids. I mean, it was really good for a while. Like I was still doing drugs, but it was like completely like manageable. I'd come home, she'd be cooking dinner as I walk in. You know, the kids would run up to me. You know, we had a nice car, a nice house. Really, it was like American dream shit.

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

My marriage was happy for a long time.

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

I was working like 60, 70 hour weeks at this sign company and you know, we had a newborn baby at home. So I wasn't getting hardly any sleep, feeding the baby every two hours. So I got a call from the owner asking if I could work on Saturday to, to do these service calls. I hardly slept the night before, like at all. And so I went into work at like 8am I was by myself. I was driving a bucket truck. I was so tired, I was like slapping my face, trying to stay awake, turning the radio on, rolling the windows down, you know what I mean? I remember I'd like just kind of close my eyes for a second and then I'd hear the little reflectors hit the tire. Like I'd wake up and go back on the road and smoke a cigarette to stay up. And then, you know, I'd close my eyes for a second, But then my tire went off into this little embankment. So I woke up again and jerked the wheel, but because that, that front right tire went down into the embankment just a little bit. When I jerked the wheel, it just turned and flipped. So like the bucket truck flipped like six times while it was flipping. My head shattered the window. So I just kind of came to in this upside down bucket truck. You know, my whole shirt was just red from blood. And they found ballasts like hundreds of yards from the truck. It was just, everything flew out. So the owner of that sign company knew I was on drugs, but he kind of just looked the other way because like, I was a good worker. But after I wrecked the truck he felt obligated to just fire me. Rent was due. Our lease was up in a couple months. I was a functioning addict. We didn't have a lot of money, didn't have enough to even pay rent. So me and my wife had the conversation like, you know, what are we going to do? How are we going to make this work? And I was at a point to where I was literally planning a bank robbery. I was looking online for real flesh, silicone masks, like realistic masks that look like an old man. And like, like I was really like about to rob a bank.

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

I thought about that for a while, but I was just like skeptical.

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

I was like, man, I've got kids. The FBI is going to kick in

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

my fucking door if I get caught,

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

you know, with SWAT teams and stuff. Then it was just straight to counterfeiting. It was like, well, no, once I

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

realized, like, thought about that, I was

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

like, yeah, what am I thinking? Counterfeiting is the way to go. I was all in with it. I was always honest with my wife.

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

I remember telling her, I'm going to start counterfeiting.

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

And I don't think she thought I was serious. You know, we were in a desperate situation. So she was kind of just like jokingly like, go for it. And I was serious. So I was like, all right. But in the back of her mind thinking like, oh, well, we have to figure something else out.

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

It wasn't until a couple weeks later that I printed out my first like a first 20 bill. And she saw it and was like shocked at how, how real it looked. Then I think she kind of realized like, oh, this looks good.

[Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer]

Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by open to the Public Investing, Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosure is [e-mail] disclosures you're a

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[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

I've always had this obsessive compulsive attention to detail. Like I decided I wanted to learn

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

guitar when I was 12 years old

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

and I literally sat in my bedroom for eight hours a day, every day for years, until I could sweep arpeggios and play any unaccompanied jazz song I wanted.

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

And basically as a teenager I was one of the few kids that could buy beer because I was printing fake IDs. They weren't really sophisticated or anything. Like I literally started by just printing them, scanning my id, changing some numbers, and printing it on a piece of paper and then just sticking the piece of paper in the like the clear sleeve of my wallet. All my friends of course, wanted them, so then I'd start selling them to my friends for like 50 bucks a piece. But that kind of like made me realize like, well, shit, you can forge things and, you know, be successful at it. And then I read the book the Art of Making Money about Art Williams who printed millions. And in that book it roughly explains how he did it. And that, you know, after I read that book, then it was like I wanted to try, try to Print money then. I mean, I was just using basic printers, you know, like my parents printer that they had. And you know, they work, they'd be gone for, you know, eight hours a day or whatever. So, you know, you just go into the little den with the computer and printer and print them out. It really wasn't like this huge moneymaker, but as a 19 year old kid, every couple of weeks I'd make 200 bucks.

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

At first I didn't really want my wife involved.

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

She knew what was going on.

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

But I kind of tried to keep her away from everything. I wanted to insulate her. But eventually she became my partner in crime. You know, it kind of morphed into a Bonnie and Clyde type relationship.

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

I knew I needed to find thin opaque paper to sandwich two sheets together. And that was the main challenge. I read that you could coat the paper with matte nail polish, clear nail polish, like a top coat, and that would prevent the counterfeit pens from reacting to the paper. So I knew a way to beat the counterfeit pens. But I needed just paper that was thin enough to put two pieces together. And I found like tracing paper, tried like the wrapper to toilet paper. I found rice paper and vellum paper and I just stumbled across Bible paper. It was perfect. It was thin enough, it was opaque enough. I hit it with a black light and it glowed a dull purple, just like money. So when I found this Bible paper, I, it, it was like a light bulb that just went over my head. I knew this was like, I was like, this is perfect. I was just like ecstatic. Like I knew, I was like, this is it. Like this is. I looked online to try to buy Bible paper in bulk. The wholesalers that I found sell it in giant reams to like publishing companies that produce Bibles. And I was a little nervous to order a pallet of Bible paper. In Knoxville, Tennessee, my wife was contacting churches and getting donations of boxes of Bibles. I thought the best way to stay anonymous was just like, I just started going to bookstores and finding Bibles and just taking the blank pages out of them. There's usually one or two pages in the front that are just blank. And then there's usually like 2, 3, 4 blank pages in the back. You know, I'd go to bookstores and basically just go stand in the aisle and pretend like I'm reading the Bible and pick up one, find the blank

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

pages, kind of rip out the four

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

blank pages in the back and put them in pocket and grab another one and just kind of rip them all out. We went to every bookstore in Knoxville until there was no more Bible paper. We went to all the bookstores in Chattanooga. We went down to Atlanta and all the little cities in between Knoxville and Atlanta and up to Cleveland, Ohio.

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

By the time I was actively counterfeiting, we started staying at a hotels. We try to get like handicap accessible rooms because they had like a really big bathroom. And I would kind of set up shop in the bathroom. You know, I'd run a power cord from like the little power outlet by the sink and have a laptop and

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

two or three printers. There was always one Bible in the nightstand. So every new hotel room I take the two or three blank pages out

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

of the Bible because it was right there.

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

And eventually we were in a hotel and there wasn't a Bible in the nightstand. We called the front desk and said, there's not a Bible in the nightstand. And she said, oh, we'll send one up. Then this maintenance guy at the hotel knocked on our hotel room door and gave us a Bible. So I basically was like, hey, you have more of these Bibles. And he was like, yeah, there's boxes in the, in the maintenance closet. We had, we have them upon request. So I basically was like, listen, I'll give you $100 if you can give me all these boxes of Bibles. So he brought us like three boxes full of Bibles and we went through, took all the blank pages out of all of them and then gave them, gave them back. He was confused, like why the fuck did they want these three boxes of Bibles for two hours and then they gave him back, but I gave him a hundred dollars so he didn't care. When I first started, I was working on them for 30 minutes, but eventually I got it down to where I could make $100 bill in probably five minutes. I would constantly edit the images in Photoshop and sharpen them and they just got better and better as time went on. Basically like scanners and printers recognized the image of a hundred dollar bill. And by recognizing that it knows that it's currency and it won't let you print it or scan it. So in order to get the digital images, I would simply take a photo of them, get a new crisp hundred dollar bill, lay it on flat on the table, take a high resolution camera and just snap a photo and then you can upload that photo and crop around it to take out the background and edit the image. I'd print the background color and then I'd put it back in the printer and print the green treasury seals and serial numbers and then put it back in the printer and print all the black work and that was the front of the bill and I would take the reverse side and just lightly mist on some Gorilla Glue splash spray and I'd line it up just right and then squeegee them together. And then after that I would spray on a thick coat of matte lacquer spray which that would coat the paper so the counterfeit pens wouldn't turn black because the counterfeit pens basically are iodine ink and the iodine in the ink reacts to starch and paper. So if I sprayed the bills with a matte lacquer spray, it would coat the paper so the ink in the pens couldn't react to the starch in the paper because it's not touching it because it's coated with matte lacquer. You get the muscle memory of just the right amount of misting on, you know, because if you spray too much Gorilla Glue it it'll be too thick. Just one little that's

[Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer]

Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Number 5 FINRA and SIPC advisory services by Public Advisors LLC. SEC registered advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete Disclosures [e-mail] have you heard about Klarna?

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[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

when I first was able to make a hundred dollar bill, I thought, you know, this is it. I'm going to be rich for the rest of my life. Like, money will no longer be a problem ever again, you know. And at this point I wasn't considering that I'd get caught. You don't really think you're going to get caught until they kick your door in.

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

The first build that I broke myself

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

in a store was at a Taco

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

Bell across from the Knoxville airport. I was definitely super nervous going into it. I kind of broke this bill out of desperation. It was probably just before midnight. It was late. I parked my car a couple businesses down and I walked in to this Taco Bell, ordered a couple soft tacos, and it turns out that the cashier was the manager. And this manager basically just took the bill, held it up, looked for a strip and a watermark, and she put it in the register and gave me my change. I walked a couple blocks back to my car and I just threw the tacos in the bushes. I kind of thought, this is going to be easier than I thought. I knew that I was on to something.

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

I was living at a hotel, so we needed Visa cards to pay for the hotel rooms. So I started buying prepaid Visa cards and I realized that there's like a $3 fee attached to a prepaid Visa card. So to get a hundred dollar prepaid Visa card, it would be $103. So I would give them two counterfeit hundred dollar bills and not get the $100 prepaid Visa card and $97 change. So that kind of doubled my, my income. And, and most big chain stores have multiple registers. So you know, me and my wife would go into one store and buy prepaid Visa cards, but we'd go to multiple registers. So we could leave a Walmart with, you know, a thousand dollars just by going to different registers.

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

And when your job is breaking hundred dollar bills at Walmarts and stuff like that, of course my kids got pretty much whatever they wanted. And if they say, oh, can I have this toy? It's like, sure, I'll make 50 bucks off of getting you that toy. I would go to my children and specifically say, what do you want? Because I need to buy stuff. I mean, yeah, anything they wanted. I was eager to get them because that's how I made my money. I remember having Christmas in a hotel room and we had so many toys, it filled up like the whole floor of the hotel room with presents. And you know, we had a Christmas tree in the hotel room. So the kids had a great time, you know what I mean?

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

At this point, I was used to cashiers only marking the bills with a counterfeit detection pin. And, and like I said, my bills I sprayed with lacquer, so the pens were no problem. But the first time I went to break a bill out of cvs, the cashier pulled out the counterfeit pen, marked it, it marked properly. But then she turned the pen around and shined a black light on my bill and the strip didn't glow red. So it was a real close call for me. I was like, I thought I was going to get caught. So at that point I knew I needed to somehow make the strip glow red. Then I found these invisible ink UV pens online. They're basically marketed toward little girls diaries. So the girl can write in her diary with this invisible ink pen so no one can read her diary. So I googled that. I found them in red ink. You know, I ordered them and after I glued my bills together, I would take a ruler and put it over the strip and just draw a line with this invisible ink UV pencil. So when you shine the black light on it appeared to glow red, just like a real bill. I'd normally wake up at about 9am and print for about three hours, usually make a couple thousand at least. By noon, I had a couple thousand dollars in fake hundreds. And then, you know, you spend the rest of the day just kind of breaking them, going to different stores. Some days, some heroin dealers I knew would put in an order for like $10,000. So some days I'd just print all day to give them 10,000. They'd give me like 2,500 for the 10,000, and I'd probably print a couple thousand for myself to break as well. A big part of it was buying heroin from dealers with counterfeit money. This one dealer was buying like an eight ball of heroin off of him every day for like a month straight. We'd go up to Cleveland together. He'd re up, and I'd drive around Cleveland breaking bills and getting bible paper and doing the whole routine. He went up to Cleveland without me, and he got arrested while he was up there. A day or two goes by and he calls me. I figured the feds were listening to that conversation, but I also said I wasn't a drug dealer, but I didn't expect. Expect anything to come of it. I was in a hotel room at, at the time of that phone call. And about 30 minutes later, I hear a knock on the door of the hotel room. And I. I kind of peek out the window of the hotel and I see the corner of a. A Knox county sheriff. So at that point, fucked, Fucked. I threw about 10,000 roughly into the toilet and flushed it. Took another probably 5,10,000, threw it in the toilet. But when I went to flush it the second time, it just kind of blub, blub, blub, blub. Water was shut off. At this point, there's a bunch of counterfeit money just floating in or like, stuck to the. The rim of this toilet. I heard people yell, multiple people yelling through the door. Knox county sheriff u. S. Secret service. And then they just start kicking it in. But the. The hotel room door was like, reinforced with steel. It was like a thick metal door. They just, you know, boom, boom, boom, over and over again. There was nothing I could do. There was nowhere I could go. So I did a line of heroin and lit a cigarette and just sat on the bed. He smoked a cigarette while they were kicking the door.

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

When they offered me that deal to not charge my wife, I always planned on taking it whether the deal was good or bad. Like, I wouldn't have let my wife go to prison.

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

We went to a meeting with my lawyer, and the secret service was really, like, impressed, and they wanted me to explain to them how I did everything. And he's like, we want you to make a training video for Secret Service agents as a part of cooperation. As soon as I walk into the room, there's like, lights and a tripod with cameramen. There was, like, a sound guy that put a mic on me. I was, like, shocked at first. I'm like, oh, shit. They had all the evidence that they seized from my hotel room. They had my computer and my printers and a suitcase I had with all these different pens and sprays. So they had everything I needed to make money. He kind of was just like, go. And I'm like, what do you mean go? Like, what do you want me to do? And he's like, make two counterfeit bills. Explain every step of the process. They kept saying, who taught you? I mean, I really just taught myself, you know, I mean, trial and error, the Secret Service.

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

They kept saying, this will really help train Secret Service agents. You know, I spent a lot of time and effort into really perfecting this

[Jeff Turner (Counterfeiter, Main Subject)]

recipe in the Secret Service. What they said, like, they were super excited to meet me.

[Jessica (Jeff Turner's Wife)]

So I guess in a way it made me feel good.

[Steve Fishman (Podcast Host)]

In return for cooperating with the government and making that impressive instructional video, Jeff served just three years in prison and his wife served none. Today, he's a changed man. He's been drug free for years and has a steady job. He calls himself a professional printer. Sadly, he and his wife are divorced. The creator and host of Lives of Crime is Steve Fishman. Executive producers Steve Fishman and Kevin Wardes. Senior producer Michael Epstein. Producer and engineer Austin Smith. Story editor Dan Bobkoff. Our sound designer is Bianca Salinas. Assistant producer Eric Axelrod. Special thanks to the inimitable Fisher Stevens, the glamorous Rhea Julian and our agents at wme, Evan Krasic, Marissa Hurwitz, Ben Davis. Lives of Crime is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Company Number one. Follow us @orbitmediafm on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

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