It’s not fair to beat this money drum and not give you a few ideas as to how to become a cadet in the marching band. Here are a few suggestions as to how to jump into your new skin with a little bit of cash in your pocket. The best part is: many are 100 percent legal. Mostly.
Work it. If you are willing to forego a good night’s sleep, get a second job. Or a first one, or a third one—depending on how many you had already. This is no time to act high and mighty: take stock of the kind of grunt work you can handle, and get to grunting. Whatever you choose to do—be it mowing lawns, loading trucks, or spinning signs outside a realty company—put as much of every little check away as you can. Though, if the local strip club wants to cover your car with some scantily clad skin for a cool $5,000 a month, that kind of mobile-billboard advertising might draw more attention than the check is worth. Try not to take on a job so out-of-character that it might make folks around you suspicious.
Cash back! At many grocery and department store checkouts, we get the option when using debit-credit card machines to be handed some cash back. Every time you shop, add twenty bucks or a solid Benjamin to the bill and then tuck that cash away in an old Florsheim shoebox hidden deep in your closet. It might take some time, but eventually you’ll be pretty impressed by the size of the nest egg you’ve built.
You can’t take it with you. eBay, Craigslist, flea markets, whatever—start selling off everything you can think of. You probably won’t need that state-of-the-art speaker system on the other side. Pare your life down to the bare minimum of comforts—it might be unpleasant in the present, but it means you’ll have the capital to afford more of those luxuries when you get where you’re going. So good-bye, collection of vintage Tiger Beats! That mint-condition pinup of Paul Revere and the Raiders has got to ship out to a happy home somewhere far away… and soon you will, too.
Ride shares, etc. Robert De Niro. Mel Gibson. James Cagney. You know what these three actors have in common, other than lustrous hair genes? They all portrayed characters who specialized in the exciting field of taxicab driving. This is similar to the “second job” option—but it’s a lot more flexible these days. You’ll get to meet new folks, have them barf in your backseat, and see the world you already know and are ready to get the hell away from. If you need that green, buddy—hoist up your rickshaw of choice and get moving!
These are just a few of the available options for setting up your get-away funds. And once you’ve collected your personal reserve? Never, ever, under any circumstance do a damned thing with it. No investments. No paper trail. Why? The IRS. Let’s think about the fine men and women tasked with making sure we pay them the appropriate amount of blood money to keep the engines of the national machine cranking along—they’re the most indefatigable bunch of debt collectors on the face of the planet. You think the police, the mob, the courts know best how to deal with those that have done them wrong? Just remember: The IRS finally put Al freaking Capone away.
If a Public Enemy No. 1 like Capone couldn’t escape the long ledger of the Internal Revenue Service, don’t expect that you can, either. In all these things we’re talking about, the most important thing to avoid at every turn is playing Hansel and Gretel with anyone who might one day be moved to come through the forest chasing after you with a big old axe.
I don’t want anyone who reads these words to ever get arrested and put away for a painfully long time in a federal penitentiary with access only to monochromatic closed-circuit television. We’re just spitballing here, right?
So, continuing with our purely academic discussion, here goes: this is how you could theoretically obtain some of the crucial fake or otherwise sketchy papers you’ll need to morph into your newest self…
There are a ridiculous number of ways to get fake papers, but none of them are that easy, all are prone to fatal flaws, and—in the interest of brutal honesty—it’s getting harder to obtain them every day. In other words: the food is terrible, and in such small portions!
You and I, we’re mere mortals. We’re at the mercy of a lot of powerful machines. Stuff that can’t be fooled by a little white-out and a winning smile. I’m talking about the biggest stumbling block when it comes to crafting fake documents: even if you create one that’s utterly convincing, featuring all the requisite materials (the cleverly hidden little hologram of an eagle, scannable bar code, and “I Heart America!” watermark), it could still go bust if databases trade your info fast enough to come up with a hit that indicates a problem. The bad fake doc problem will screw the unwary at borders and in airports nearly every time. Your best bet is to restrict yourself at first to a fake state-issued license or ID.
There are few ways to make it over the speed bump of acquiring one with your vehicle’s suspension intact.…
State-Issued ID. This doesn’t permit you to do anything but buy booze and cash checks. Well, it will also get you on most domestic flights. It’s a dirt simple piece of identification to acquire—though in most states it helps if you have a birth certificate, proof of local address, and a past ID of some sort.
Let’s say you’ve acquired the birth certificate. After that, the forgery part of the festivities isn’t too complicated and at an average DMV it won’t be scrutinized that closely. It won’t be hard to draw up a fake electric bill to verify your identity, and the old ID needed could conceivably be altered from one of your own.
I’m over-simplifying, but let’s consider the problem with a simple state ID in most places: no driving. Seriously, you may cruise not one mile per hour above the speed limit, but—there’s still that outside chance you might run into an old-fashioned roadblock one night. Sober or not, your state identification isn’t an operator’s license—and everything would start to unravel then.
Of course there’s another option, but it takes some finesse: straight up bribing a DMV employee to make a new driver’s license for you.
First you’ve gotta suss out the most easily compromised DMV clerk. Sure, sure, the standard take on DMV drones is that they are deeply dissatisfied public servants who delight in torturing us with their control over our ability to freely move from strip mall to strip club. And while that’s often the case, there are a few ripe peaches in that bushel who haven’t turned rotten yet! However, that doesn’t mean it’s as simple as grabbing a big hunk of that cash you’ve been setting aside to lubricate said civil servant into handing you a totally authentic piece of fake identification.
To begin, take a few trips to the bureau of motor vehicles. Pick up various pamphlets from all corners of the room—or pretend you’re waiting for an appointment, but you’re too impatient to sit long. Stake the whole place out, get a feel for who’s who. Eventually, you’ll spot the easiest mark—surlier than average, perfunctory in every transaction, more monotonous than a white noise generator—and that’s the clerk to keep an eye on. Even civil servants have needs! Figure out how to get some I-scratch-you-scratch action, and hopefully your new pal will be able to hook you up.
That’s a very iffy plan, unless you go into it with a solid lead on a slippery employee. Let’s sketch out how you might just take care of this issue yourself.…
Unleash your inner da Vinci! Admittedly that’s not an artful way to put this, but I’m making a point: you may have to call upon all your considerable visual genius to enact this part of the plan.
Forging an identity card isn’t that tricky, but be wary—many now come with a special bar code on the back that’s encoded with your information. That bar code can tell anyone who laser scans it with the right software a ton of stuff about you.
For example: the bar code on the back of the Illinois state-issued license and nondriving ID contains only basic info like your name, its expiration date, and a couple of other bits of data. On a fake ID, I’d suggest this bar code needs to be half-plausible and programmed with something, but as long as you steer clear of airport security and drugstores that sell pseudoephedrine, it’s likely no one will ask to scan your ID.
Ignore Web sites that offer fake IDs: they’re mostly just after a quick buck, even on the so-called Dark Web. To make a temporary fake ID yourself, you will need a pretty up-to-date computer and a killer scanner. Use a little bit of the cash you’ve set aside to buy whichever one you need.
Start with an existing piece of identification that’s essentially what you’re looking to build. For example, if you’re in Kentucky and are a six-foot tall white guy in your forties, politely borrow an ID from another dude who fits those specs. Then scan that puppy at the highest possible resolution.
Now pop that scanned image into your favorite image manipulation program and go to town. Steal the background color in the other guy’s photo, then grab a photo of yourself and cut and paste it in there. Change whatever else you can think of to better build this identity in your own image.
Once all that artistic image manipulation is complete, examine your masterpiece closely. If it’s satisfactory, you have another challenge to face: choosing the best stock on which to print.
Brothers and sisters, I know it’s tiresome. These little picayune details are just killing you, right? But what price for a new life, friends? What’s it worth to you to breathe that fresh air of freedom under a new name with that nasty old slate of yours newly wiped clean? You sat down and started reading, so here it is: we have to escape the devil at our heels by focusing on these details.
ID cards are printed on plastic or on paper that’s coated (or specially laminated). It’s important that you get as close as you can to what the state you’re in really uses. Before you even begin the labor of cutting and pasting your handsome mug onto John or Jane Doe’s ID scan, be sure you are clear on the kind of medium you’ll be printing it on, be it PVC (polyvinyl chloride), Teslin, or whatever magical synthetic substance the federal government decides to make use of next.
So what if you’re in New York and your fake license says it was printed in 2006? Order yourself up a stiff drink and a flimsy, bendable ID, because the tactile is just as important as the visual when it comes to fooling your local bar bouncers and bank tellers. Final touches will include sizing the card so it looks and feels right in the hands of whomever handles it, but if you’ve nailed the finer details, that’s just busy work.
Earlier, I said one of your options for fake identification was among the spookiest you could try. This is the spookiest, for several reasons. Those reasons include the fact it’s one that’s been used by spies—aka “spooks”—and it involves the dead.
That’s right, we’re talking about robbing the dearly departed folks who have barely begun to cool on a slab in the morgue.
Here is one tried-and-true method for copping another’s name…
Obituaries. Keep a close eye on the death notices. If you are an African American male age forty-two, pay attention to blurbs about the demise of other black men who have just crested over the hill before fatally crashing into a telephone pole. Same if you’re a Caucasian woman, age sixty-two—look for white ladies who had a little too much fun in their early retirement. You get the picture. Bank on a death in the biggest city close to you as well. Everyone knows everyone in a small town—you don’t want to mistakenly acquire the identity of the Billy Joel of Podunk, USA.
Once you have a good match, pay close attention to how they went: if it was a particularly gruesome or violent death, that’s not your target. Law enforcement and national news reporters alike will be flying circles above that body like investigative vultures. We’re only interested in the unfortunate folks who passed relatively gently, from a rough go of pneumonia or a sudden cardiac event.
If you’ve happened on a decent candidate, track down his or her address. Here’s where the endeavor gets extremely squirmy, so steel yourself and get thee to an improv class—you can either A: go to the decedent’s (dead guy or gal’s) house and pretend you are a long-lost friend from elementary school who happened to be glancing through the grisly pages. Once there, you might ask for a better photo to remember them by than the one on your prayer card. Or B: you can straight-out burglarize the place of vital documents. Nothing else, of course—we’re not talking common criminality here, just some papers, that’s all. What’s the decedent going to need with those now?
At bare minimum, this will get you the foundation for securing some kind of temporary identification. There’s a period after a recent death, and that period varies widely, when the deceased person’s information is in limbo.
How that might work: much of the time, funeral directors are the folks who take vital information from death certificates or family records and bite the bullet of getting that stuff turned in to the authorities. Under their auspices, the dead person’s social security number, for example, is reported to the very cheerfully named Social Security Death Index. Yes, as advertised, it’s a big list of dead peoples’ social security numbers.
There’s no way that list is complete at any given time, but a good many of these folks who help burn up and bury our dearly departed are very serious about their jobs. It isn’t, after all, a career path for the lighthearted. So the method for securing papers from the dead just outlined above has to either be for an identification intended for short-term use or—if you are really enterprising, not to mention plain good at stealing—you can chance snatching up the decedent’s info before the funeral home gets hold of it. Fortune favors the bold!
Let’s say you’ve established a solid new set of vital documents. On paper, the new you is well-established. Now all that’s needed is to walk away from everything, right? Just put the necessities in a go-bag, drizzle some hi-test rum throughout the place, drop a match and walk. In the morning, the arson investigators will conclude you were roasted to a crisp. Hopefully this is something you do in your own discrete living space, not a shared condominium complex. I’ll keep a happy thought, and assume that any fires lit will be contained only to the space you settled in alone, preferably surrounded by a hydrated moat or not-so-flammable dirt lot.