The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten [102]
A few days later, Senior and Anice visited Vicki and Jim Shanigan, their friends from Wasilla, the latter of whom was also Senior’s partner in the pot and OxyContin operation. They were slightly younger than Senior and Anice, and in addition to their “business” partnership the two couples often spent a lot of time socializing together. Anice thought of Vicki almost like a daughter, while Jim had looks remarkably similar to Senior himself, with a thin mustache and square-framed glasses. Since Wasilla was as comparatively populated as Chickaloon, and closer to Anchorage, Jim covered the distribution end of their drug business, dealing much of their product to local Native American tribes. With these connections, the Shanigans were the natural choices to include in a passing scheme. To boot, Jim Shanigan was a licensed bush pilot who owned a float plane, meaning that he could fly them to far-flung destinations in Alaska, Canada, and, theoretically, even eastern Russia, where they could pass or sell counterfeit at a safe distance from their home.
Like always, all it took to rope in Jim and Vicki was a gander at Art’s product. They saw the possibilities right away and, interestingly, even before holding Art’s bills they were already deep into greed’s blinding grip. At the time, Vicki and Jim were themselves victims of a “419” scam, which derives its name from the criminal code of Nigeria, where the scam first originated. It usually begins with a “confidential” e-mail from a distinguished exile of an African government who needs help accessing tens of millions of dollars in frozen funds, often attributed to a defunct oil company, ousted political regime, or an inheritance. Through a series of highly convincing cross-references, the scam builds the confidence of the recipients, then engages them in a series of bureaucratic hurdles in which they must first deposit money in foreign bank accounts in order to realize the golden hoard of millions at the end. In Vicki and Jim’s case, the money was in South Africa, where they would presumably meet with the banker or lawyer who would hand them the keys to happiness. For weeks they had been talking of little else except raising the money to go to South Africa.
“This can help you get to South Africa,” Anice told them. She and Senior were apparently as caught up in the scheme as the Shanigans, because in return for helping them raise the travel money, they wanted a piece of the final cut. Since there would be plenty of money to go around, the Shanigans were more than happy with the arrangement, and as their meeting progressed it elevated into talk of buying yachts and mansions and luxury cars. The only real thing they had in front of them were Art’s bills; fakes themselves, but real enough to make the wild fantasies seem as equally close. They stared at Art’s bills, held them in their hands, and saw in them their own dreams.
“How much do you have?” Jim asked Senior, who had been hoping for just such an inroad. Senior explained that he still had five thousand dollars left over from the road trip. If the couple was interested, he and Anice were willing to give them all of it to try out. All they had to do was go shopping, buy items under twenty dollars, and bring back the receipts and change.
“There’s a lot more where this came from,” he told his friend. “Spend this, and I can get you twice as much when you’re done.” When Vicki and Jim asked how the bills were made, Senior and Anice revealed their source without hesitation.
“My boy made them,” Senior said. “He’s got a gift, and he’s told me how to do it.”
The Shanigans were in. Soon afterward,