How difficult would it be for a foreigner to pull off printing fake Chavitos for their next trip? In a demand economy you would have to wonder how often bank deposits get made. Furthermore, even if you were busted, the first thought would be that you were just a dumb tourist that got taken advantage of and sold funny money. As far as ethics go, is it really unethical to steal from a thief like Castro?
REDNECK Wrote:How difficult would it be for a foreigner to pull off printing fake Chavitos for their next trip? In a demand economy you would have to wonder how often bank deposits get made. Furthermore, even if you were busted, the first thought would be that you were just a dumb tourist that got taken advantage of and sold funny money. As far as ethics go, is it really unethical to steal from a thief like Castro?
I would offer that stealing from a thief wouldn't actually be stealing.
However, thieves usually buddy up with pretty shady characters, and I'm sure Fido wouldn't mind having you chopped up and fed to the fish if he caught you "stealing" from him, especially being a foreigner. Besides, you'd make a real nice example for him to illustrate what the yanqui imperalists are up to nowadays.
Have you seen a CUC? It's professionally printed script on special paper.
Give it a shot. If anyone can pull it off, I'm sure it's you.
Yes I recommend you try it also. You can buy a pretty good printer from Epson for less then $100 bucks now. Print about a million dollars, go to a bank and ask them to to change it back to Euros. Tell them you have no problem taking a 10% loss on the transaction.
pblee Wrote:Yes I recommend you try it also. You can buy a pretty good printer from Epson for less then $100 bucks now. Print about a million dollars, go to a bank and ask them to to change it back to Euros. Tell them you have no problem taking a 10% loss on the transaction.
Actually I was thinking of one of those exchange shacks like you see about a block away from the "Habana Libre". All they have is a single worker in a booth. As far as the paper goes, you would need to make two trips. One to buy a bunch of one CUC notes, then you could wash out them out and reprint as twenties in Mexico.
Easier to take counterfit US currency down to Cuba and exchange it for Chavitos.
Its worth about .40 cents per dollar, rather than print it, just buy it.
You could probably launder it in the streets. If you get caught with them (depending how much), they would think you were a dumb tourist that got scammed by an ingenious Cuban. Coming thru aduana with a wad of it would be different. But if you took just enough for spending money on a trip, no problem. Just put it in your pocket.
The store clerks at the cash register in Cuba hold up the CUC's to a window light or up to a lamp. There is an invisible imprint throughout these bills that shows up very easily when held up to light but not when viewed by obliquely by your eye.
For instance I'm holding up the 10 CUC right now against this monitor and it has Jose Marti's mug on it on the left hand side, his mug is about 1 1/4 inches high.
Nice try!
That's a watermark. Those can be duplicated too but it would take a second pass through the printer to make it look good.