i was a teenage conterfieter
back when i was about 15 dad had a small time business printing pub menus and the like. so we had some half decent kit sat in the back of the house (corel draw 3.0, motherfuckers!). this gave me the chance to run a handy sideline in fake id cards and that sort of thing. all pretty harmless stuff.. and i was doing a great public service by helping younger and younger people to drink enough to make them forget they were in mansfield.

then one day a friend's dad, who's in the construction trade, grabs me in the village local, hands me a rather formal and legal looking european union insurance document, and asks for 20 more. with the strict instruction that i speak of this to nobody.

so i set to work and, i have to say, produced a fucking masterpiece. when i delivered the product the only way my customer could identify the original was by the watermark on the paper (i was good, but not *that* good). he said 'do you know what these are for'.. i said 'no'.. he said 'be glad' and handed me £20.

the story ends there. and i don't know what bothers me most... the fact that i probably helped put a bunch of brickies in danger of being locked up for working under forged documents, or the fact that the miserly cunt only paid me £20 for doing so.
( deshnoodle agonising over sig files since 1995, Sat 12 Jul 2008, 10:46, 2 replies)

You should have agreed to £20 before you started...
and then raised the cost alot higher for you to keep quiet.
(chrisdood Why yes, I am the shizzle, Sun 13 Jul 2008, 17:32, closed)

Watermarks
Create a waterproof, flat-bottomed mask and lay it on top of the forged paper. Paper should be on a flat, smooth worktop and should itself be flat and smooth.

Drop a small amount of water onto the document.

Repeat a few times. You can get some good effects if you do it right.

If you're quick and do it before it dries it's easily enough to fool a shop assistant- particularly a rushed one. I'm not sure about the long-term viability of this watermark, however, and it probably wouldn't stand up to any sort of detailed scrutiny.
( uberdeity Wondered why Owen Lars knew of the term "hell" on, Tue 15 Jul 2008, 13:26, closed)