"the counterfeit millionaire" - summary

Imagine creating $15,000,000.00 of counterfeit currency in a secret printing room hidden deep within a Miami home—then successfully cashing it for genuine currency through famous Las Vegas casinos.

The Counterfeit Millionaire is a true-crime adventure of extraordinary scope and ingenuity, based on the real-life story of Wayne Victor Dennis and what National Geographic Channel described as “The largest, most sensational case of counterfeiting in U.S. history.”

Like Bugsy Siegel reincarnated, Wayne Victor Dennis lived a life of criminal enterprise that was as audacious as it was ingenious.  For years, his operations challenged some of law enforcement's most experienced investigators from coast to coast.

Now, step inside and experience what it was like to photograph real currency, create printing plates, mix inks, operate a printing press, and manufacture millions of dollars in counterfeit $20 bills—at the rate of $500,000.00 each day.

Printing $15,000,000.00 was only the beginning. Cutting, counting, aging and concealing 2,332 pounds of counterfeit currency, stacked seven feet high on a wooden pallet, required an operation of astonishing scale—and created a nightmarish fear of the counterfeit being discovered in its multiple hiding places. 

Millions of dollars in counterfeit currency were deliberately set ablaze after Dennis determined that some of it was imperfect.  But when one fire literally exploded out of control, twenty-dollar bills, still in flames, began raining into neighboring yards.  He must capture and contain the burning evidence or face 45 years in prison. 

Board the apprehensive flight to Las Vegas, where Dennis and his beautiful Argentinian girlfriend-in-crime, Alexia, embark upon a high-stakes operation to convert counterfeit $20 bills into genuine money throughout the city's bustling casinos.

At a "cash-in rate" of $4,000 per hour, counterfeit currency moves rapidly from hand to hand, passing through some of Las Vegas' most experienced money handlers.  Until one unexpected discovery changes everything. A teenage girl notices something nobody else has detected. 

The United States Secret Service does not give warnings. From there, the story moves into a massive and intimidating federal courtroom filled with lies, truth, shocking revelations, unexpected humor, stunned jurors, and consequences no one can escape.

The cranky old federal judge wasn't having any of it… and he shows little mercy.

His co-conspirators receive light consequences. Wayne receives the maximum punishment.  Many years of imprisonment begin at the end of that catastrophic day in court.

Surrounded by a sea of deadly razor wire, within a maximum-security penitentiary, he is forced to live among mafia capos, arms dealers, arsonists, bank robbers, drug traffickers, embezzlers, hackers, notorious foreign generals, smugglers, yacht thieves, and other hardened criminals.

The Counterfeit Millionaire isn't simply a story about counterfeit money.  It's a story about ambition, ingenuity, deception, greed, loyalty, betrayal, consequence, and the extraordinary lengths one man went to create something that was never supposed to exist.