The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten [75]
“Where were you? I tried calling around but no one knew where you were,” she asked Art after he came back.
He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had been on a spending spree across America, having the greatest time of his life.
ART FOUND THE ROAD TRIP with Natalie so liberating that he decided to make passing his bills a permanent feature of his operation. From then on, almost every time he executed a deal in Chicago, he’d print up an extra twenty or thirty thousand, then invite a select group of friends or family on a prolonged shopping spree. He called it “slamming,” and if you were one of the chosen few picked to participate in the adventure, it was akin to winning a game-show prize without ever having to compete. Not only would Art pay all your expenses, but you were allowed to keep twenty percent of the change and whatever goods you could fit into your allotted trunk space.
The trips were like abbreviated versions of Art and Natalie’s first summer with the New Note. Part serious criminal enterprise and part play, they lasted anywhere from a weekend to a week, depending on how much counterfeit Art had printed and his sense of security, which could shift dramatically if he felt the slightest whiff of discovery.
As the orchestrator of the operations, Art never spent money himself; it was enough work managing three or four people high on unlimited cash from succumbing to stupidity.
Avarice would set in long before he parceled out the money. Prior to hitting a mall, he would hand out maps to everyone in order to review the layout and assign stores. At first he tried letting them choose the stores themselves, but that invariably led to conflict.
Friends would argue about who got to shop where until Art stepped in to say, “Listen, you assholes. You’re going to go where I tell you to go.” Even when spenders swore to follow a program, they’d invariably be tempted to sneak a visit to each other’s targets, an act that Art strictly forbade because stores that discover a counterfeit immediately go on the lookout for more. To avoid this, Art warned everyone that whoever ignored his orders would be summarily dumped off at the nearest Greyhound station for a lonely bus ride back to Chicago. On two occasions, he delivered on the threat.
Like any good businessman (or parent) he found that positive incentives worked best. “A good spender knew they had a good chance of being invited on another trip, so I always encouraged them to compete with each other,” he says. “Whoever cleaned the most money might get to keep a few hundred extra, or maybe I’d reward everybody with an expensive dinner.” With three spenders competing, Art could suck five thousand dollars from a large-sized mall in less than two hours.
Spending trips were as much about living it up as they were about making money. During a trip through Missouri, one of Art’s friends found that his assigned section of a mall included a costume store. He bought two clerical collars and declared that he intended to spend the rest of the trip passing counterfeit money dressed as a priest. After a philosophical debate in the car as to whether or not this constituted a mortal sin, Art declared that it was the best idea he’d ever seen. “So another friend of mine on the trip buys two black shirts, and these two guys spend the next three days passing money as priests, competing with each other the whole time. We destroyed