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The U.S. Treasury Department and Secret Service have battled constantly to stay one step ahead of professional counterfeiters. Recently with high-resolution color copiers and desktop publishing tools there is a new group of amateur counterfeiters out there trying their hand at making fake currency. The Treasury Department is fighting back with the most radical re-designs to the U.S. currency seen in over 60 years.

The 1996 $100 bill was just the first in the new series of bills that the Treasury Department has recently introduced to combat conterfeiting.

Currency Paper

The paper used to make U.S. Currency has a unique feel and is extemely durable. It is not really paper in a traditional sense. There are no wood fibers are starch in currency paper. Instead it is composed of a special blend of cotton and linen fibers. The strength comes from raw materials continuously refined until the special feel of the currency is achieved. Therefore people can easily tell if a bill is real by the distinctive feel of the currency paper. Also the distinctive yellowish-green tint of the ink on this special paper are extremely difficult for color photocopiers and printers to match using other types of paper.

Red and Blue Fibers

Small red and blue fibers found within currency paper make copying currency even more difficult. Some counterfeiters try to mimic these fibers, however closer inspection often reveals that these fibers are drawn on the bills rather than actual physical fibers that are part of the currency paper.

Security Thread

Security threads have been in U.S. currency for quite some time. In the most recent bills they run the entire width of the currency. In earlier bank notes these security threads were added to the actual paper itself and the number of threads would represent the denomination of the bill.

These security threads prevent conterfeiters from bleaching out one dollar bills and attempting to print hundred dollar bills on the original currency paper.

In these new bills the security thread will appear in a different location depending on the denomination of the bill. The thread for the new $100 bill carries the words “USA 100″ and can only be seen with transmitted light, which makes photocopying impossible. In addition, the new security threads glow red when held over ultraviolet light.

Watermarks

A new watermark was added to the 1996 series one hundred dollar bill. This is not a new concept. Watermarks have been used on foreign currency for hundreds of years. The watermark is created during the paper making process and is caused by variations in the density of the paper. As light passes through these tiny variations in thickness, it creates different tones. When held up to transmitted light these varying tones form a clear image — and in the case of the new $100, a second image of Ben Franklin.

Intaglio Printing

Intaglio printing is what gives the U.S. currency its distinctive look. The process begins with an engraving, both of the portrait and of the fine line detail surrounding the bill. The process begins with the engraving of the steel printing plates. A high-viscosity ink is then applied to the plates, the plates are then wiped clean, leaving only ink in the grooves, then pressed with enormous pressure (15,000 psi) which transfers the ink to the paper. This enormous pressure causes the paper to be embossed with the ink, closeup of pouring ink thus giving the ink a distinctive raised feel which other printing techniques cannot duplicate. The very fine engravings appear muddy when reproduced in counterfeit notes. While most of the front and back part of the bill is produced in this way, the Treasury seal, Federal Reserve seal and serial numbers are not printed with the Intaglio process.

Currency Portrait

The portrait on currenct may not seem to be a security feature, but the U.S. Treasury Department maintains that the portrait face is the most recognizable part of money. People will tend to remember faces, and if the bill is counterfeit, they will see that the face is not exactly right. Everyone already associates Ben Franklin with the $100 bill, the U.S. Treasury Department did not want to change the face on the bill. While the faces on some foreign currency change as the countries political climate changes, the U.S. Treasury Department wants to present an image of stability with their currency. Instead, they decided to enlarge the portrait on the new $100. The portrait was painstakingly engraved by Thomas Hipschen, and the U.S. Treasury Department hopes the new enlarged details will make counterfeit bills stand out more clearly from the real thing. By moving the portrait to the left, the face will suffer less wear from folding. The move also makes extra room for the watermark on the right side of the bill.

Color Shifting Ink

Color-shifting ink is perhaps the most “high-tech” of the new security features. The black to green color-shifting is a new and important element of the redesigned $100 bill. Similar types of ink have already been used on foreign currency and even on the latest U.S. passports. The change in color is the result of multi-layered metallic flakes added to the ink. When the bill is tilted, light reflects off these flakes at different wavelengths and changes the color of the ink. This trick is called color diffraction, which is also responsible for the color variations found on the wings of some butterflies. The U.S. Treasury Department has made sure that the special combination of materials and ink is only available to the United States government to make this one feature that will be extremely difficult to counterfeit.

Microprinting

Microprinting appears as just a thin line to the naked eye, but can be easily read upon magnification. The introduction of microprinting on U.S. currency begain in 1990 with the addition of the words “The United States of America” printed around the edge of the portraits. The new bills still use microprinting, but in a different location around Ben Franklin’s lapel. In addition, the words “USA 100″ are printed within the lower left “100.” Microprinting is very difficult to reproduce accurately on photocopiers because most copiers do not have the ability to work at such a high resolution. This situation may not last long, because improved scanning devices are now able to print at finer detailed level. The Treasury hopes the combination of the many anti-replication features will continue to deter potential counterfeiters in the future.

Fine Line Engraving

Fine circular lines appear around the portrait of the bill. The clarity and detail of these lines are difficult for scanners and photocopiers to reproduce. These lines often cause a blur during the scanning process.

Serial Numbers and Treasury Seal

The serial number is especially important for banks which handle large amounts of cash. No two serial numbers are the same. On the new bills, these serial numbers have been increased to 11 digits.

In addition, the new bills contain a redesigned image of Treasury sealFederal Reserve seal and code which indicate the bill’s issuing bank. While the old bills contain this information, on the new bills the numbers are clearer and easier to identify. The old green Treasury seal hidden behind the “100″ has long been part of U.S currency and will remain an important security feature. This detailed combination of green and black is difficult to reproduce. Like all overt features, however, the new bills will require continuous upgrades and additions as new technology arises that makes the features more vulnerable.

Fake Hundred Dollar Bill

Using the information from the article above can you find all the features which show that the hundred dollar bill below is a fake?

There are five things wrong with the hundred dollar bill above.

FRONT OF BILL

1) The Federal Reserve Bank seal should designate the entire system not one particular bank. It would be fine on an older version of the bill, which features the individual seal of the bank to which the note was issued. But with the new bills a universal seal representing the entire Federal Reserve System should be in its place.

2) The Serial Number does not contain enough letters. The serial number should include 11 letters and numbers. The new sequence will include two letters in the front (instead of one), eight numbers, and one letter at the end.

3) Two numerals are found on the old bills are on the right side of the bill, but should not be on new currency. Instead, a watermark of Benjamin Franklin, which can be seen when the bill is held up to a light should be there. A watermark is hard to counterfeit because it does not photocopy.

4) The misspelled word “DOLLER” (should be DOLLAR) on the lower right hand corner of the bill.

BACK OF BILL

5) The clock is missing from the tower. Details are important to foil counterfeiters. Among the new features added, many include fine detail, such as microprinting and concentric lines.

I just discovered a new way to make money off of those Cash Rebate Credit Cards which give you 1-5% cash back on purchases made using your card at the end of the month.  This trick involves using this credit card to purchase travelers cheques or other liquid assets that can be converted back into cash which can be used to pay off your balance, leaving you with the 1-5% cash rebate reward and the opportunity to repeat the process. 

First of all you need to get a Cash Rebate Credit Card which has no limit on the cash back rewards.

The following cards offer between 1-5% Cash Back Rebates on all purchases made using their credit cards and have no limits on the amount of rewards that you can receive:

Discover More Card

Discover Motiva

Chase PerfectCard Mastercard or Visa

Chase Freedom Card

Blue Cash from American Express

SimplyCash from American Express

Once you have an active Cash Rebate Credit Card you will need to open a free checking account with a bank like Washington Mutual which not only offers free checking with no minimum balance, preferably one that also offers free checks.  So basically you have a free checking account which costs you nothing and doesn’t require you to keep a minimum balance.

Using your Cash Rebate Credit Card go and purchase items that can easily be converted back into cash without losing their value.

Traveler’s Cheques work the best.  So find a place that offers free traveler’s cheques.  My bank, Citibank, offers free Visa travelers cheques to anyone that keeps a balance of over $25,000. Wells Fargo has the same type of deal on free traveler’s cheques. You can also get free traveler’s cheques from AAA if you have a AAA membership.

So purchase the maximum number of travelers cheques that your card will allow you to purchase. For my card it was $10,000 with a 2% rebate on all purchases. Make sure that they ring up this charge as a POS (point of sale) transaction and not a cash advance.  This is important because if they treat the transaction as a cash advance then you will not get rebate credit for this transaction.  So find a place that will ring up the purchase as a Point of Sale transaction.

Deposit these traveler’s cheques into your checking account and they will take approximately 24-48 hours to clear and post into your bank account. 

Immediately write a check to your credit card company from your checking account for the full amount charged for the traveler’s cheques. So if you bought $10,000 of travelers cheques then mail them a check for $10,000 to immediately pay off your balance.  It will take them 24-48 hours to credit your credit card back to a $0 balance and this is about the same time it will take the traveler’s cheques to post into your checking account.

So now your credit card balance is back down to $0 on your Rebate Credit Card and you will also have a 2% reward accrued on your credit card.  For me it was $200 for the $10,000 purchase.

As soon as the balance is paid off you will be able to repeat this process and make another $200 for every $10,000 that you charge onto your card.

If you do the timing right you can run two of these transactions a week making an additional $400 per week. That’s $1,600 per month.

If you are really good, then you can apply for five of the card above and do this trick on all five of them, which would mean that you would be making around $8,000 a month, if you were able to charge a maximum of $10,000 twice a week on each of these five cards.

Over time they will increase your available credit which will enable you to do this with even larger amounts of money.

The money received from these rewards are completely tax free because this money is from a rebate on purchases that you have already made, so you won’t have to worry about paying taxes on this money at the end of the year.

If you are unable to purchase traveler’s cheques. You could purchase some other item that can be easily turned into cash without losing any value such as Gold Bullion Bars or Coins, stocks, or even post office money orders.  Can you think of anything else that could be purchased using a credit card and then converted back into cash? 

Back in the 1980s local telephone carriers across the country set aside the telephone prefix, 976, so that companies and individuals could set up premium phone services where they could charge a high per-minute or per-call rate to anyone calling into these numbers.  

These 976 numbers are exactly like 1-900 numbers except they are generally limited to the local calling area.  So unlike 1-900 numbers which are national these 976 numbers only work within the same area code.  

However these 976 numbers have a big advantage over 1-900 numbers.  The 976 numbers are one easier to dial than 1-900 numbers (both intentionally and accidentally), less people know about 976 numbers and thus don’t realize that they will be charged when they call these numbers, and these 976 numbers appear no different than normal residential or business phone numbers.

So get a 976 number and NOT a 1-900 number, this scam won’t work well with a 1-900 number, but it works great with a 976 number.

Only Still Available in Certain Areas

In some areas 976 numbers are no longer available and have been completely replaced by 1-900 numbers, however these 976 numbers are still available in many local areas.

On the west coast, the 976 service is operated by SBC/Pacific Bell/AT&T Telephone and is known as a ‘local 900 service’.  This service is only offered within the state of California and to California callers.  There is a similar 976 service available in Nevada through Nevada Bell/AT&T Telephone.

In the mid-west, SBC (formerly Ameritech) offers 976 services in Chicago and Detroit.

On the east coast, Verizon operates ‘976′ in a variety of markets. In New York city, Verizon quit the market and ‘976′ transport and billing are operated by smaller private companies in New York Cities.

In the Mid-Atlantic area , Verizon has received permission for the Public Services Commission to cease taking new customers after October 18, 2004. Verizon plans to close 976 operations in Washington, DC and baltimore, MD in June 2005, and in Philadelphia, PA and Pittsburgh, PA in 2006.

Setup the 976 Service

You will need to contact one of the phone companies above and request a 976 number from them.  Setting up this service is no different from setting up a second telephone line.  There is no special equipment required.  It’s normal have a one-time setup fee of around $59-79 depending on your local company and a monthly fee of around $49 which will also give you unlimited local calls.  The charges don’t stop there, they generally also charge you one-third of any of the money that you make from the incoming calls.

Setting up the Per-Call Fees

I prefer charging my callers a per-call fee rather than a per-minute charge.  You need to keep the per-call fee lower than $2 per call.   This is important, don’t be greedy. 

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) requires all 1-900 numbers and 976 numbers which charge more than $2 per-call to provide a free 20-second message at the beginning of the call describing the service, the name of the company providing the service, and the cost of the call. It also must state that anyone under age 18 needs parental permission to complete the call.  You cannot start charging until 3 seconds after this message has been completed, which would bot call your bluff and give them plenty of opportunity to hang up.

But if you charge under $2 per call you are NOT required to provide this message and can immediately charge them as soon as the connection is made.  I would charge them $1.99 per-call to keep it just under $2 to be safe.  Also people are not likely to dispute or even notice a small charge of $1.99 on their phone bill because it is so small. 

Since you are only charging $1.99 per call you will need a high volume of callers to make it worth your wild.

Getting Tons of Callers

There are three easy ways to get callers.

1) Call up people and hang up or make a prank call.  Most people nowadays have caller id so make sure that your number is not blocked and many of these people will return the call without even thinking about it to see who just called them.  Each of them will be charged $1.99 per-call.

2) Get the yellow pages and call businesses such as doctors offices, dentists, and other businesses after business hours.  You will reach their voicemail, answering machines, or answering services.  Leave them a voice message asking them to return your call and give them your 976 number.  You will be surprised how many of them actually do return your call without even thinking about it.

3) Page or text people and ask them to call you at this number.  Some websites offer text spoofing so you can make it seem like the text messages are being sent from this 976 number causing them to assume that it’s just a cell phone number.

Provide a Service

To meet FTC regulations you must provide some sort of service.  You don’t have to go into details about it or the charges since you are charging less than $2 a call, but you must provide something to them.  I would suggest setting up a simple recorded message on an answering machine giving them useless information or either their daily horoscope, any local auto auctions, or on local real estate.  It can be anything, but you need to provide them with something to stay within FTC guidelines - even though most people will just immediately hang up.

How Much Can You Make

For example if you get 1000 callers in a month, you will get a revenue of $1990 and then the phone company will charge you $670 (one-third of your billings) for the service and a $49 monthly fee.  So you will make a profit of $1271 per thousand callers.  Not bad at all!

So 2000 callers will make you a profit of $2542 and 5000 callers will make you $6355.  So you can make quite a bit from this if you get enough callers.  The cool thing is that you leave voice messages for people to call this 976 number from any phone and it doesn’t have to be from the actual 976 number.

This scheme works really well and it can make great money for you if you pull it off correctly.

Recently websites have been popping up all over the internet advertising forex trading like it’s the hottest online craze since the invention of viagra.

Forex trading is also known as currency or foreign exchange trading and it involves trading one currency for another. This is the largest financial market in the world with an average daily currency trade of US$3.21 trillion. Forex trading is really risky and there are tons of scam forex trading websites that rip people off. Even through legitimate forex trading 90% of currency traders lose money.

So I want to introduce a new type of forex trading where you are almost guaranteed to make money. Sound too good to be true, it’s not.

STEP ONE: Always Buy Low

With this form of forex trading you invest in coinage from other countries that is the exact same size but less valuable than specific American coinage.

These low-valued foreign coins can be obtained at overseas, at some banks, at foreign exchange counters, or at foreign coin stores.

Below are some low-valued foreign coins (worth less than a penny each) that could be used in American vending machines:

American Quarter:

  Icelandic five-auran (worth 0.0008 cents each)
Uruguayan ten-céntimos (worth 0.0046 cents each)
Mexican ten-centavos (worth 0.009 cents each)
Danish fiveore (worth 0.0098 cents each)
Pervuian twenty-céntimos (worth 0.6 cents each)

American Dime:

Trinidad penny (worth 0.0016 cents each)
Malaysian penny (worth 0.003 cents each)

STEP TWO: Always Sell High

These low valued foreign coins can either be used to purchase goods from American vending machines or even exchanged for the more valuable American coins of the exact same size. The coin return button on some vending machines will give you the lowest coin in the internal coin hopper for a particular coin type which is usually different than the actual coins that you had dropped into the machine.

Try looking at the date of a quarter that you drop into a soda machine, then hit the coin return button and wait for the coin to drop into the change return area - look at the date again and you will probably notice that its a totally different quarter than the one that you put into the machine.  These type of machines can be used for exchanging your foreign coins into more valuable American coins.

You could also cash these coins in using Coinstar or Coinmaster at your local supermarket however they charge a fee of 8.9 cents per every dollar cashed in using their machines. They have the option of cashing in your coins for a giftcard for free so this may be a convenient way of exchanging your foreign currency into more valuable American coins.

I would advise against trying to use these foreign coins at casinos since many newer slot and video poker machines have security measures in place to catch people using foreign coins. I would also avoid using these coins at the post office or at other federal facilities.

However, you could even cash these coins in at your local banks. It’s rather easy, take the very cheap foreign couns that are the same size as quarters.  Get a paper coin wrapper. Wrap a few real quarters on the ends but fill the rest of the roll with the cheap foreign coins. Wrap the roll and with felt-tip pen write some phony account number on it to add an element of authenticity. Take the roll of coins into the targeted bank. If you dress like a business person and go at a busy time, especially with the account number written on each roll, and the rolls in a bank sack or your briefcase, the teller will probably give you ten dollars per roll without checking. The only downside to this convenient method is that the entire transaction will be captured by the banks cameras.

Guaranteed Profits

Since the low-valued foreign coins listed above have a value of less than one cent each. You will be making 24-25 cents for every coin that you cash as a quarter and 9-10 cents for every coin you cash in as a dime. A roll of quarters is worth ten dollars each and a roll of dimes is worth five dollars each.

With the holiday season in swing and with tons of people going out drinking at all the hotels, bars, restaurants, and night clubs I have noticed lots of empty beer kegs all over the place.  Many restaurants and bars keep their empty kegs out back between their dumpster and their grease trap.  The kegs are empty, right?  So why not keep them next to the worthless garbage?  

They fail to realize that these kegs have a $10 deposit on each of them and that they can be returned to just about any large beverage distributer for $10 each regardless of whether or not they were originally purchased from them.  So would you leave a stack of $10 bills behind your restaurant near the garbage?  That’s essentially what they are doing.

So it would be really easy for someone to take these kegs since they are leaving them out near the garbage (sometimes even in shared or public areas) and return them at the local beverage center for $10 each.

Another crazy thing is that beer kegs only have a $10 deposit, but they cost about $150 to make and they can be sold at scrap yards for as much as $15-$35.  So it may be possible to actually purchase the empty kegs for $10 each and then sell them as scrap metal for even more money.  According to the beer institute this type of practice costs the industry as much as $50 million a year.

They have even considered raising the deposit amount from $10 to $30 to prevent people from selling their empty beer kegs rather than returning them.  See the following article: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3244421 for details on this.  So it may even make even sense to hold onto these empty beer kegs that are now worth $10 each (deposit value) until this increase takes place and raises the deposit value on kegs to $30. 

I was amazed at the fact that so many bars, restaurants, hotels, and night clubs leave their empty kegs (worth $10 each) near the garbage, but I was totally baffled at the fact that the entire beer keg industry would only require a $10 deposit for something worth as much as $150 and that could be sold elsewhere for as much as $35.  This could totally set someone up to start a business where they purchase kegs for $10 each and sell them for $35 each for a whopping 250% return on each or even as little as $25 each for a 150% return which is still not bad. 

As it stands right now, there is lots of money to be made from the faulty practices and standards with the keg return industry.

Go to all the cellphone stores in your area, sign up all the demo phones for your very own premium SMS text service, and make $9.99 per demo phone!  Find out how.

Every now and then I receive a random text message on my cell phone.  Sometimes it’s a horoscope reading, sometimes it’s a random stock pick, sometimes it’s a weather report and other times its just some advertising spam. 

I initially thought that it was just an annoyance so I would simply either ignore or delete the message.  I bet the majority of people have the same type of reaction in this situation.

However sometimes the messages reoccur and other times they do not.

Either way at the end of the month I recieve my cell phone bill only to find that I have an additional $4.99 charge for a “third-party” service!

I call up my cell phone company and ask them what this charge is for and they tell me that’s it either a subscription or one-time text messaging service.  They go on to tell me that I can’t cancel through them or get a refund because these charges are from a third-party company and not my actual cellphone carrier.

They simply tell me to reply to all further text messages with the words: STOP or CANCEL to prevent these text messages from reoccurring.  This will cancel the service from here on out, but it will not refund any current or previous charges.

So what does this mean?  This means that you will still be charged for the initial text message regardless of whether you cancel the service immediately and that this “third-party” company could be getting anywhere between 99 cents and $9.99 for sending you this single text message.

I checked my previous cell phone bills from past months only to find that there were similar charges those months that I did not even notice! 

Initially this made me angry, but once I thought about this ingenious business model, I immediately wanted in! 

I bet that at least 70% of the people who receive these type of text messages don’t even notice that they are being charged for these extra services and just pay their bills. 

Background

This type of service is known as Reverse SMS billing or a premium SMS service where companies can bill a user through an SMS text.  This even goes beyond just charging for text messages.  Services like PayPay or GPay allows people to send and transfer money via SMS. People can also charge money to their cell phone account with similar types of services.

Where this money goes

I did some research on this type of third-party text message billing and found that these companies make between half to a third of what they bill, the cell phone company takes one-third and the payment gateway service also gets one-third.

So if they charge 99 cents per month and bill 30,000 people they will be making approximately $10,000 per month.

If they bump this up to $4.99 per month they will be making over $45,000 per month.

So how do YOU set up this type of service?

Companies like Telemedia and TextMarks allow people to set up their own text messaging services for free.

Textmarks is the easiest service to use and allows people to set up a keyword for use on their short code of 41411.

You could set up the keyword, MakeMoney, and when anyone sends an SMS text with the word, MakeMoney, to 41411. They would be signed up for your premium SMS service for either $4.99 or $9.99 per month depending what you want to charge for your service.

Now the difficulty is advertising and getting people to sign up for your keyword.  Unless you want to go the spamming route like many companies do.

Bulk SMS messaging

There are services out there like ClickaTell which allows users to send bulk SMS messages to thousands or perhaps millions of cellphone users.

You could also write a web-based application to do bulk PC-to-Phone SMS texting. 

To stop the use of spamming some of the premium SMS services requires all potential subscribers to reply with a “Y” indicating that they actually understand the charges and want to subscribe to the service.  However, this could potentially be countered and defeated with SMS text spoofing or by writing a web-based application to sign people up for your text service regardless of whether or not they have actually willingly subscribed.

Signing tens-of-thousands of people up for your premium SMS service requires a bit work however it could be highly rewarding and bring in thousands of dollars per month.  However there is an easier way to make a couple hundred per month with much less time and work involved.

Bill the Cellphone Companies Back

Go to all the cellphone stores in your area and sign up all the demo phones for your premium SMS text service! 

In my immediate area there are 3 Sprint/Nextel Stores, 4 AT&T stores, 4 Verizon stores, 3 T-Mobile Stores, and 1 Helio Store.  These 15 cell phone stores had a total of 328 active demo phones that I was able to sign up for my $9.99 a month service.

After the cellphone companies take their cut (~33%) and the premium SMS billing gateways take their cut (~33%).  I am left with $3.00 per subscriber, not too bad, but not great.  Better than nothing though!  So with 328 subscribers at $3.00 per month I am making an easy $984.00 per month.  That’s a decent car payment (this may even cover rent for some people)! 

The Process:
1) Sign up for a shortcode keyword.
2) Set your keyword for premium billing (either $4.99 or $9.99 per month).
3) Go to your local cellphone store and use all the demo phones to text your keyword to their 41411 short code.
4) Clear out all inboxed and sent text messages from phones.
5) Repeat this process at more cellphone stores.
6) Wait for them to mail you a check for approx $1.50 per subscriber ($4.99) or $3.00 per subscriber ($9.99). The more subscribers you have the more you make!

I am billing the cellphone companies back and they are paying for it!  I got my
first check last month.

And things are just getting started…

If I head further into the bay area there are hundreds of cell phone stores with thousands of demo phones so my subscriber list is sure to increase!  I can sign up more phones at my leisure.

Also, the cellphone companies get new phones every few months so this would allow me to return to these stores and sign up all their new phones for my premium service.  Things are just getting better and better!

So what is your take on these premium SMS scam ideas?

Today is December 26th, the day after Christmas, the day where the majority of retail stores brace for large numbers of store returns.  People receive presents for Christmas that they do not want, that are the wrong size, or that they already have so they go to the store where they are purchased and then either exchange them or return them for cash. 

Sometimes stores offer a gift receipt, other times there is no receipt, however many high-end retail stores do not require receipts on returns especially for people who have a line of credit with this retail store.

Make a Quick $100 with a little Return Scam

So what if you buy an item from the factory outlet store at a discounted price and then return it to a high-end retail store for full price?

Chelsea Premium Outlets is the largest operator of premium factory outlet malls across the United States.  They have a mall in Petaluma, Napa, and Vacaville in the bay area (just to name a few).  They have high end stores such as Fendi, Nautica, Coach, Calvin Klein, Liz Claiborne, Ralph Lauren, Sak’s Fifth Avenue, Perry Ellis, Gucci, etc and thousands of others.  They offer regular mechandise at discounted prices and frequently have sales on these discounted prices for even more savings. 

Here are some examples:

Polo Black Cologne Set w/4.2 oz cologne and deodorant.
$69.78 retail price
$30.00 factory outlet store price w/40% off sale
——————-
$39.78 difference

Coach Soho Purse.
$289.99 retail price
$189.00 factory outlet store price w/20% off sale
——————-
$100.00 difference

If there are no factory outlets near you.  You can always purchase items from an online store or off of ebay for a discounted price.

The next step is to head down to an expensive shopping district such as Union Square in San Francisco, Times Square in NYC, or even your local shopping mall and then return the merchandise purchased at the outlet mall, online, or off of ebay for full price.

Stores such as Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales, Macy’s, Nordstroms, Filenes, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Sephora have very lenient return policies where they will accept returned merchandise without a receipt and sometimes even without the actual box.  I have only encountered a small amount of questioning and resistence when making these types of returns.  It may help if you show them a charge card from their store especially a high-end platinum card, but most of the time this is not necessary.  They will often make the return without any questions and give you cash.  If they ask questions you can always tell them that you either lost the receipt or that it was a gift and there never was a receipt.

Using this trick you can make a quick and easy $100 or even more!  I made my quick $139.78 today.   Shhh!  Don’t tell them that I told ya, tho.  It’s our little secret, ok?