All correspondence is via email, and payment is accepted in Bitcoin only. Banknovelties.com’s IP address is listed as the Netherlands, and the sometimes stilted wording on the website suggests the people behind the business might not be native English speakers.
The company didn’t respond to email requests for comment and for further information about its business practices. Banksy offers a “get in touch” button on its site for prospective partners next to a signature with a familiar name: Richard Nixon. And yes, the signature looks remarkably similar to that of former U.S. President Richard Nixon, who died in 1994.
Quick Response
As a test last year, Moravek sent an inquiry to the site asking whether it could provide a handful “novelties” in the forms of fake IRS documents. The response came back within hours:
“Dear Customer: We can do all those 5 novelties at a total of $500 USD as a standard order (3 business days completion) or as $650 USD for 24 hours delivery. If you agree to proceed then send us all exact data to insert and we will send you payment instructions to proceed. Please advise.”
While similar products might proliferate on the dark web, the banknovelties site is accessible to anyone. And it has competition. A quick Google search reveals multiple sites that create fake documents. Most state that their products are for educational or entertainment purposes, rather than any unauthorized use.
Banknovelties.com uses the disclaimer “Your use of any information or materials on this website is entirely at your own risk, for which we shall not be liable.”
Buying or selling fake bank documents may not be illegal outright, though using the name of a real bank likely would be, said Jacob Frenkel, a former state and federal prosecutor now at law firm Dickinson-Wright. The real liability centers on the paperwork’s use.
“Where the clear intended purpose or logical use is to enable fraudulent activity, then the person and company selling the fake documents could be charged criminally,” Frenkel said, adding that the chances of prosecution go way down if the site is operated outside of the country.
The last significant enforcement action against purveyors of phony documents in the U.S. took place in 2018, when the Federal Trade Commission shut down three homegrown sites that trafficked in fake financial documents: Fakepaystubonline.com, noveltyexcuses.com and PaycheckStubOnline.com. The FTC charged each of the three owners with unfair trade practices.
The FTC didn’t respond to a request for comment about banknovelties.com.
Moravek shared his discovery of the website last year at a forensic accounting conference sponsored by the U.S. Treasury Department and Florida Atlantic University.
“The law-enforcement people at the conference were astonished,” he said. “They didn’t realize it existed.” And yet, one year later, it’s still in operation.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.