Woman made $20k using home printer

Tarshema Brice, a 34-year-old hairstylist and janitor in Richmond, USA, has made $20,000 in counterfeit money for the last two years using a Hewlett-Packard 3-in-1 inkjet printer.

The woman made only $50 and $100 fake bills and used them to pay for products at local shops in order to sustain herself and her six children.

The woman's actions are not themselves as outrageous as how easy it is, nowadays, to make counterfeit money. Digital technology has made such actions much easier for all. US officials recognized that, in the last 20 years, phony bills made on digital or laser printers recovered by the feds have increased in numbers from 1% to 60%.

Brice's technique was a standard one: she took a $5 watermark bill, applied a supermarket degreaser, microwaved the bill, scrubbed the ink off and then she ran the paper through her printer. From then on, it was only about editing skills.