Russ Swain
Appearances
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
No, they don't. Yeah, that's part of the contradiction. He wanted to meet in Salt Lake City at a stripper bar near the airport. And I said, really, I'd never been inside a stripper bar. I didn't know what to expect. And it wasn't quite as raucous as they are nowadays, probably, but they had a little bit of standards. But anyway, we met in a stripper bar where he chose to conduct business.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
That was his office. And at the time, I didn't understand that at all. He didn't really observe the strippers or pay any attention. He would sip on a beer. I was drinking Coke because of my background. And he chose that place because that's where he could read people. He wanted to read you because you were distracted.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And he was searching for signs of body language, for confidence, for whatever it was. I wish I could ask him. But anyway, that's where he chose to conduct business every time we met.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
He gave me a check and I took it to the bank, but he expected cash when I paid back his loan. So.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
So that's 120% or something like that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And I was living pretty close to the bone since I just started my business a handful of months prior. So I panicked. Suddenly, this idea came to me that I know all about paper. I know about ink. I know about design. I can print the money. Money is nothing more than... paper and ink. And why can't I just do that myself? It was a Hail Mary kind of thing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
No. It's created by Crane's company and they will only sell that paper to the US Treasury. Even the composition of the paper is different for the sake of durability. It's got silk fibers and things like that. And I thought, okay, I can't get my hands on any of that, but cranes will sell to printers for letterheads and things like that. They have a paper. It's called 100% rag. It has no wood pulp.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
It's just cotton fibers. And so it feels the same. It has the same tactile feel as currency, and it's a little bit more expensive. And it happened that I was doing... a letterhead for an attorney and he had requested this to be on 100 rag paper and i thought perfect i've got a couple of reams of that And I'm going to use it to at least see if this works.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And so my lovely wife and kids were going out of town for a camping trip with her parents. I was invited, of course, but I said, no, I've got too many deadlines. So I just put out the clothesline, told everybody that we were all on vacation on a camping trip. And then I went to work to see if I couldn't just produce, at least give it a shot.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
So the paper was white and I thought, but I can print the background color of money and I have a good eye for color so I can match it perfectly. And I went to work mixing the inks and I printed a full bleed, solid background color of money. It worked. And so all of a sudden I got a little hope. I thought, well, I've got the paper now, except that as I looked at these bills,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
They've got these red and blue silk fibers. Right. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Right. Hairs. And I thought, well, if I printed the background, couldn't I print those little hairs? Yeah. And so I went into the darkroom. We had a little black piece of carpet, and I pulled some fibers out of it, put them on my graphic camera, and I shrank it down to 25%, which is as small as it would go back in those days. It was before computers. And I photographed them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I shot a plate, and I thought, okay, if I print these red and then flip it upside down... and printed the opposite way in blue, you know, let's see what happens. It worked beautifully. And I thought, okay, so now the fear was evaporating because I was getting caught up in the creativity. I will say this, the essence of creativity and crime are both based on uncertainty.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And the farther you get away from uncertainty, the more you move into a realm of fear. And I'll get into that later because you're moving into the realm of risk, I guess is what I'm saying.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
That is so perceptive of you because that forced out all of the fear. All of a sudden, I had something by the tail here, a masterpiece by the tail as far as I was concerned. Now, the creative side of me just completely took over. It's like scratching a creative itch. Okay, let's see what we can do here. So now, how can I reproduce this?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I had this graphic camera, so I thought I'm going to use photographic technique as much as I can. except that looking at the fine engraver of printed money, I thought, wow, they make this really hard because there's so much detail in this. And I realized every time I try to photograph this, I can hold a shadow dot in the highlight area only if I overexpose it, but I have to underexpose it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
So I started making little masks to put over the face of Andrew Jackson so that I could overexpose this part, underexpose that part. And little by little, it's, damn, it works. This looks perfect. I've got the little fibers. I've got the black ink. The quality of the printing is excellent. And I thought, damn, but it doesn't feel the same. What's missing? I got the paper. I got the currency.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
New bills feel like very fine sandpaper. And it just happened that one of my clients was a jeweler. And she owned a jewelry store and she offered free diamond ring cleaning. And it was just something that she mentioned to me one day when I was in there. I said, what is this stuff?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And she says, oh, that's when I clean rings, it's got this vacuum attachment and a polisher and it pulls all of the residue off and I sort through it and I get little scraps of gold and diamonds and stuff. I use the gold to fix fissures in the rings and so forth. But the diamond dust, it's just ground up diamonds.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And I thought for some reason, I just thought of that stuff and I thought it wouldn't dissolve if I mixed it in the ink because it's little minuscule dusts of diamond. And it's so fine, it probably wouldn't come up my press. So I asked her, I says, hey, what do you do with that stuff? She says, I throw it away. You want some? I says, yeah, I do. Do you mind? And she says, yeah, take all you want.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
So anyway, I took this little bag of this diamond dust, took it back. Put it in the ink, stirred it around. I thought, let's see what happens because it's so fine. It's like baby powder, but it wouldn't dissolve. And so it didn't affect the ink, the darkness, the color value of the ink.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
In any kind of creative endeavor, you always look for that one area that creates the magic. And that diamond dust was that little part that created magic. It came off that press. When it dried, I felt it. And I thought, bingo, that feels like new currency. I can't believe it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Exactly. I was really excited. The problem was, how am I going to launder it? Because I realized I have to sear off my conscience somehow. But in searing off my conscience, I thought, but how do I mask my anxiety? That's really hard if you've grown up the fair-haired Mormon boy your whole life, and now all of a sudden, you're not just a naughty child, you're a first-rate sinner.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
You're doing something across the line.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah, that's exactly right. My mom was 46. years old when I was born, so I was essentially being raised by someone of other kids' grandparents' era. Penmanship was very important back in those days, and so my mother, who was also a schoolteacher, had been really strict about teaching us really good penmanship. It happened that my penmanship matched the penmanship style of the previous generation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
So being raised in Ogden, Utah, which is a ski town, we wanted to go skiing every chance we could. And so that meant we had to slough school. So I could write these really well-crafted excuse notes that looked like it was legitimately from someone's parents, because kids of this generation don't write with that kind of penmanship. And so I thought, this is easy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Please excuse my son Ralph's absence from school. He has a dentist appointment, a doctor appointment, whatever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
and it worked and pretty soon kids that i didn't even know were coming to me asking me for excuses i need to slough i need to go skiing i need to do whatever and it worked really well the problem was we were skipping so much school that we were going to be grounded for life if we couldn't get our grades up also nobody's teeth are that clean come on right four times this month
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
That's exactly right. So now the grades are slipping and how are we going to fix that? And I thought if I can forge these excuses, how hard would it be to forge a report card? A little bit of paper and ink again. So I started manufacturing for my wayward friends report cards. And I'd say, hey, for a buck, I'll get you the excuse to get you in and out of class.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
But then I'm going to have to have five bucks. And that was a good chunk of change.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Oh, this was in 1967, 68. You said five bucks for a report card. That's $47. Holy smokes. That'll get you a ski pass in those days, but it was worth it. And the well-heeled students in the class would come and say, okay, I need a report card.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And I say, okay, but it's going to cost you a buck because we got to have your parents signature on your real report card with a note that says, I promise my son will do better. And it was a little bit of a business. It certainly gave me dating money on the weekend. And so I was happy and know really well until one of the students ratted me out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And from that point on, my feet were a virtual path to the principal's office. And I was in really some pretty serious trouble.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
That's true. But when you're that young, you don't have the ability to assess risk the way that you do when life gives you more experience.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Did you do one of those? Yeah, I did. I went to Brazil. Cool. They give you a crash course in the language and expect that you're going to pick it up more fluently as you go through and it was great. But when you get there in a foreign country and you're just dropped off, I remember in the book I pointed out, it sounds like everybody's talking at once.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And I felt like they sounded like a bunch of parrots whose crackers have been laced with crystal meth. It was like, I can't understand anybody.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And Mormons feel their faith very strongly. And growing up, it's like you go to church on Sunday, it feels like you don't get out until Tuesday. It's a big part of your life. And I had just deluded myself into thinking, yeah, I'm just a regular fair-haired Mormon boy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
But there's something about the strictness of the religion that sometimes relates to people and they like conformity and they like to go by the rules. But I was always a little bit rebellious. So I pushed against it a little bit. But I was very committed for the two years that I was in Brazil.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
makes total sense and i was reluctant at first as well it's a widely known fact that bad decisions make for pretty interesting stories yeah there was a lot of conversation about this stuff with my best friend mike who suggested that we do this and i was reluctant And it seems that our sins cast long shadows over our lives sometimes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah, which at the time I think had 7 million people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
That is so perceptive of you. Yeah, that's exactly what it was. It was a huge cultural shock. And I thought, it is so rigid the way that it's organized. It's like being in the military. And you wonder if this impressive two years of if it's ever going to end. But I had a moment I was really wrestling. Am I going to do any good here? I pointed this out in the book.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
You're assigned a companion that you're with all the time. You feel like a Siamese twin practically. You never get space alone unless you go to the bathroom. But we'd had a hard day of talking to people. We were walking home. It was late at night.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
and light rain was falling and i says hey let's duck into this little neighborhood bar just get some hot chocolate or something just to keep us going and when i was there this young fellow he was maybe early 20s he had no shoes he was wearing just a pair of shorts no shirt but he had a bucket of crabs and he wanted to sell these crabs to the owner of this little neighborhood bar
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And he stuck a stick into the bucket and one of the crabs grabbed a hold of it. And he's swinging it around saying, look how fresh my crabs are. And of course, he's speaking in Portuguese. And it dawned on me as he's saying, I thought, I understand what he's saying. Little by little, the language barrier had been evaporating.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And everybody in the bar, they were clapping at this little one-man impromptu circus show. And we were laughing, and the owner came out and shook hands, showing that a transaction had been made. Everybody was clapping. I thought, I can't have an experience like this in the United States. I'm looking at the cobblestone streets that are wet and shiny and the halo of the street lamps.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And I thought, this is magical. And I've got to embrace everything that's different from my culture and throw myself into experiencing this culture. And it was extremely stimulating and it made all the difference in the world to me. And so I enjoyed every moment after that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah, that's very true. That is so true. And so now I was absorbing all of these experiences like a sponge because I wanted to. I don't know if it deepened my commitment to my faith. It deepened my commitment to life itself. and certainly made me more appreciative of other cultures, other races, because we're all the same fabric with different experiences.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And it seems to me that we increase our intelligence if we can learn to look at life, not just from our own narrow field of view, but from another culture's viewpoint. Then we get a broader perspective.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And my friend Mike says, but you can't beat yourself up about that. Without those mistakes that we make, our lives would be little more than a paper puppet show. He says, the name we give our mistakes is experience. And if you can accept that, forgive yourself and move on and learn from it, then you're maybe there's something cathartic about this. So that was the approach we took.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
You're someone who understands the difference between world travel and tourism. I can tell just by that attitude right there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And I wanted them to look like they'd been circulated. So I thought, I used to refer to, you know, I need some walking around money when you go out somewhere. So I thought, you know what? I'll just wad them up, shove them in my shoes, and walk around on them. And it's amazing how that gave them that well-worn look of circulation. That's funny. Okay, so this is great. But...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Like I said, I had to sear off my conscience, but I had never had any real experience, other than in high school with forging report cards, of being a bad guy. And I thought, how do I mask the anxiety? How am I going to launder this? I had no idea. But I've got all this money that's spendable. I think it is. And I had to try it out. But I was anxious. I was sweating.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I went into a little drugstore. They had these little corner stores back in those days.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
and i thought i'm going to give myself away just because i'm so anxious and i looked around and i reached over and i picked up a box of tampons took him to the counter the lady could see that i was a little bit unnerved she says are you okay i says it's so embarrassing buying something like this especially in front of a lovely lady like yourself i don't want you to think that i'm stranger
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
wonder as a guy what I'm going to do with these she says no it's for your mom or your girlfriend or something I says and she says look we'll put these in a little brown bag so it'll be our secret and snickered a little bit like here's this aw shucks kind of guy she handed me back my change so the rest of the day I just went around buying tampons so you have 40 boxes of tampons in your office
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I've got 40 boxes of tampons and I took them home. And when my wife came home and she discovered them, she thought, what the hell is this? I said, remember that night you made me get up and go over to 7-Eleven in the middle of the night when you needed a box of those? I just didn't want that to happen again. She says, I'm sorry you were traumatized by it. Lifetime supply.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
As I mentioned, the essence of creativity and crime are based on the uncertainty. And the more you get away from uncertainty, the more you get into the realm of risk. And that's frightening at some level, but at some other level, it becomes very bracing, even stimulating. And that's what I found out the more that I got used to this. So after I bought a bunch of tampons, and it worked very well.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
It kind of emboldens you a little bit. Now you've got confidence that this is going to work. And so now you spread out and try different avenues. And I remember distinctly there was always this feeling that any second something could happen. You could be called out or whatever. That little bit of fear, it's very stimulating. It's very bracing. And it pumps a lot of adrenaline and it's exhausting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And it was cathartic to just open up, give yourself a little bit of self-acceptance and say, you know what, we make mistakes and we move on from them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
But by the time you go home, you fall into a deep sleep because you're so exhausted by it all, by the emotion of it. But then when you wake up in the morning, you realize your feet can't wait to get back and feel that again, feel that stimulation, feel that risk, feel the adrenaline pumping through your veins.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And I didn't realize it at the time, but I was slowly getting addicted to my own body chemistry of adrenaline, that rush. I needed that fix, and I couldn't wait to get back to it. Biblically, there's a passage that said two things that God hates. One is a lying tongue. Another is feet that are quick to run to mischief. And I didn't realize, but I'm getting some foot trouble.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And I'm living exactly what God doesn't want you to live.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And I did not have a numbering machine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah, I had no use for one. So what I had to do was I had to create serial numbers. I would blow a sample up on my graphic camera to 400% and I would precisely draw them crisply these serial numbers, but I was printing them six up to a page because I wanted to control the quality. All I needed to solve this problem was 10 grand and I was already printing a couple of hundred thousand dollars worth.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
So what I did was I just made sure that I had six different serial numbers and that meant I could never print or I could never pass more than six bills in any one place. And so that seemed fair enough.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
That wasn't moving fast enough. And I could see that my time deadline, I had 30 days to do this. My lovely wife and the kids got home from their little outing up in the mountains. And she says, how's business? Fine. Everything's fine. I lied. And I said, in fact, things are so good. I says, you know what I want to do? I want to get away my own self. Maybe take the weekend.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Go, let's run up to Sun Valley, Idaho. Because I thought, okay, in Sun Valley, Idaho, come on, it's Idaho. A bunch of farming communities and people like that. If something quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it's probably a duck. So I thought Idaho would be a safe bet because I don't want to spend a lot of this in Utah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
How many tampons can you buy in Ogden?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
So I went up there because... I thought, let's get out of this state. If anybody ever starts looking around, they'll look in Idaho. So we went up to Sun Valley. And my then wife, she gets up early, goes to bed early by 10 o'clock. She wants to hit the sack. And I said, you know what? I want to run over to the Idaho State Fair because it just seemed like a good place to at least try it out. And
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
the hawkers, the gawkers, those guys that, hey, buddy, come on over here. You look like you're a sportsman. Let's see if you can throw a basketball. You know what? That'd be fun. Maybe I can win something, but all I got is a 20. Hey, that's fine, man. I can break change. And because he's taken in all these ones and fives and tens, so he's looking for a way to get rid of some of them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And so he welcomes taking a $20 bill. And I'd shoot the baskets and say, I guess I'm no good at shooting baskets. I'd love to stick around to try it again, but my girlfriend's waiting. Every guy can relate to that. You don't want to anger your girlfriend, but you'll walk to the next one. Hey man, you want to come over and throw some pitches at jugs?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
It's amazing how quickly you can launder a lot of money for a dollar throw. at a state fair, and I had to keep going back to the car to unload all of this currency, stash it under the seat of the car and so forth. And I was quickly amassing a good deal of money, so I thought, I want to do that again.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah, that was my first attempt at counterfeiting. After art school, there was one potential job in Ogden, Utah. It was an advertising agency. They were looking for an art director. And they said, we don't want to see anything but a resume. And I thought, well, how am I going to stand out among the other applicants.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
So I put on a baseball cap and a jacket, and I went back through, and nobody seemed to recognize me. They didn't recognize you?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
But hey, their job isn't to pay attention to anything, but collecting some money and getting some sucker to chuck a ball. So anyway, that worked better than anything. And so I bought a gym bag and I just stuffed it full of the cash. And I realized, okay, when we go home, I've got my date with Tommy the Shark coming up, and I pretty well got the money that I'm going to need.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
So what I did was I'd walk into a credit union, and I said, I'm the junior high school band teacher, and we've had a big car wash fundraiser. We've got to buy new band uniforms. And this is all the money from the car wash. Can I just get some hundreds for all of this? I don't want to deposit it just yet, but I just need some hundreds so we can
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
by our band uniforms and everybody wanted to help out the junior high school band teacher. So I was lying through both sides of my mouth just trying to cover my tracks and it was working very well.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah, and that was the case back in those days as well. Okay. And I was lucky that I had done enough homework to know a little bit about that. So what I did was...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
i mixed suntan lotion with a uv inhibitor into the oil-based ink they're both oil-based and the suntan lotion did not affect the opacity of the ink thank heaven but i also just to make sure i was covered i did a full bleed cover of dead flat varnish on top of the bills after they were printed. And that cut out all of the UV reflection.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And so it was amazing, because I was scared to death of getting caught. I didn't want to go to prison. I didn't want the humiliation of my wife and kids. So I was laser focused on trying to stay out of trouble at this point, because I crossed that bridge.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah, the stress level was really intense. It made me realize I'm becoming someone completely different than I used to be. And I had to keep asking myself, do I like this new version of myself? Because I remember referring to it as the ghost that was always there taunting me, asking me, do you like this new version of yourself? Because you're becoming someone completely different.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And so, the resume that I sent in, I said, if you're reading my resume, it's a testament that I know how to think outside the box because I hand painted the postage stamp in which it came in. And they quickly grabbed the envelope and they were rubbing their finger over it, examining it. My gosh, the postage stamp was hand painted. That's pretty damn creative.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I used to be at least true-hearted, tried to... do the right thing and so forth. And now I realized I am completely different than the guy that my wife thought she was marrying, the guy that I thought I was. And I had to keep putting that ghost in the closet and that he was always there coming out of the shadows, taunting me, asking me, do you like this version of yourself?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And the honest answer was not very much. It was a trade, but I felt like I was trading part of my soul and I didn't like it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
they have to be perfect and so i went through and with an eagle eye everything that looked even remotely suspicious because you're printing these off by the hundreds and so it's okay but then you're exactly right what do you do with the bills that don't pass muster And it happened that my in-laws, my wife's parents, had a wood-burning stove.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And I thought, great, I'll just take them over there because I didn't want to go out in the woods, have somebody go through the ashes and say this was a bunch of money or something.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
So I went over to my parents-in-law's home, shoved these all in their wood-burning stove, lit a match, made sure that the fire was going. and closed the little door. But I didn't understand because I'd never had a wood-burning stove. There's little flues and things that you have to open up to let the oxygen come in. So soon, the fire basically went out and they just smoldered.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah. But anyway, that was one of the things later on in the book that led to the demise of my little scheme is when my in-laws came home and they thought, what's that smell? It's the middle of the summer. Who would be messing around with our wood-burning stove? And they opened it up and thought, my God, there's money in here.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Anyway, it was all charred beyond being usable, but they couldn't imagine what was going on.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Right, and I showed up at the little strip place that he always wanted to conduct his business. I had under my arm a cigar box that I had procured solely because it just fit these rows of $100 bills, and his interest payment was in an envelope with his name on it, and I slid it across the table, and he counted it out, and he says, okay, that's the interest. And what's with the cigar box?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And so, that made my resume stand out and that was pretty fun. I got the job.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
You know I don't smoke. I says, I didn't think you would want me walking around with this much cash. And I opened it up and he could see it was full of bills. And so I put the lid down and he just said to me, he says, you're all right, Swain. I could tell he gained a certain level of respect because he had heard through the grapevine that my big project had gone haywire.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And he was wondering, how are you ever going to pay me back? And he thought, okay, is he just going to make interest payments for the rest of his life? Or how's this going to work? And anyway, I guess it gained a certain level of respect and confidence with him.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I kept printing it. And there's a side of me that's very empathetic. And the fellow that I bought the press from was a great guy. And he was a horrible businessman, but a really decent guy. And he had some financial problems. He had sold me his press so he could get a job, but he wasn't making the money he was making when he had his own business. And he was in arrears on his home.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
He was afraid it was going to get repossessed. And I said, hey, look, I said, I might have something that'll help you. It helped me out of a jam. I explained to him. His wife said, no, there's no way in hell we could do that. But I guess they went home and discussed it and slept on it because the next day he called me and says, thanks for inviting me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah, we want this guy right now. He just saved 14 cents.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And can you do it just so I can make enough money to pay off my house? And I says, yeah, let's do it. I said, let's just swear to each other, I don't know you, you don't know me, you go your way, I'll go my way, and we'll hope for a happy outcome. Instead of just some backwoodsy place like Idaho, he went to Las Vegas where people know money and it's very sacred to them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah. Exactly. And he wasn't a gambler. He didn't go to the casinos. He went to the little strip malls, he and his wife, and she would be on his heels. He'd grab a pack of gum, she'd grab some chapstick, and they'd each pay with a 20. And This caught the attention of a security guard at the mall. He said, see that couple? They've gone to every store making little purchases.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I'll bet they're kiting checks to cover gambling debts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Writing bad checks to get the money and then you write a check for 50 bucks or whatever. So he was curious and so he went into each one of the places and says, hey, that couple that was in here, did they write a check for their purchase? Now they gave me cash. And so he went on down through and he thought, I recognize the behavior. It's abnormal behavior.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
This guy, he was kind of a simple guy and he thought worked so well last time. Let's just go do the same thing. And we went to the same place and there's the security guard saying, there they are. What is going on? And it caught his attention. So now the curiosity was just eating him alive. He thought, what are they doing? Buying the same little items.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And so he said, could I buy that bill from you? And as he went down, he's looking at him and bingo, he found duplicating serial numbers. And so he called the Secret Service. And they came down and they said, could you recognize? He says, hey, trust me, they'll be back again next weekend. They come down here every weekend. They do this, the same thing, the same place. I'll spot them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I'll let you know. And so the Secret Service just showed up the next weekend and grabbed them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah. And he tried not to rat me out. The Secret Service are so thorough. So anyway, they at least traced it back to me. I'm the guy who owns the print shop. And I was out of town. I was still up in Idaho spending more money because I loved going to Idaho. And anyway, the Secret Service had interviewed my in-laws, and they said, you know what?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
This explains a lot, because we found a bunch of burned-up bills in our wood-burning stove. At that point, I can't lie my way out of this. There isn't an alibi big enough. And so I had to just come clean. And I said, yeah, you've got the right guy. And the other fellow and his wife—I won't mention their names— They were accomplices, but I'm the guy that you'll want. So I at least gave myself up.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
It's time to just give myself up and go peaceably.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
This was 40 years ago. So you lick the stamp, you stuck it to the envelope. hand wrote everything. It was a different world back then.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah, these weren't printed by your uncle in the basement. What was going on here? And the secret serviceman that was in charge, his name was Roger Rodak, a really wonderful gentleman, also a Mormon, and I apologize to him for being such a failure in representing the faith that we both adhered to. But he was intrigued by it all. And he asked me 100 questions, 50 of which he knew the answer to.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And he pulled me aside. He says, I got to tell you, he says, under different circumstances, you and I would be very good friends. He says, one thing I respect, you never lied to me. He says, I asked you so many questions. And I said, well, you know what? At this point, what would be the point in lying to you? I just, I'm guilty. And he says, but I respected that you didn't lie. And so...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Anyway, he kind of understood, okay, here's a guy. He's a creative guy. His back was against the wall. He did something thinking way outside the box, and I understand it. And so we became actually very amicable together. Later, he came to my aid in a big way when I faced a federal judge.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Tedious for those guys. Gosh, can you imagine? And they said, I got a corner of a bill and... This bill was only printed on one side because you scrapped it. And he says, it has your thumbprint on it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
It was incriminating. And it was almost cathartic to be able to just confess and say, yeah, it's over. But you've got the guy. And what you're going to do with me, God only knows.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I would bet you're right, and I have no idea what those figures would be. But it does beg the question, doesn't it? I was just focused on trying to get rid of my stash, but I have no idea how widespread that is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah, nationally, but that's still a lot of cash floating around that we probably pass it on our own services.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
That is so perceptive of you. And I remember one day I was walking around a little mall in Idaho and there was a Hispanic lady and she had her little three-year-old daughter with her while she was cleaning windows of these little shops. And I thought, that poor lady, she's out here, you know, busting her back, Can't afford a babysitter.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And so I remember at the time throwing one of the bills down at her feet and thinking that she'd see it. But she was so focused on making sure the streaks were out of the windows. And I said, pardon me, ma'am. I says, pardon me. And I pointed to her and I said, you dropped that. And she said, she looked at her, she says, yes. No, no es mio. Come on. Take the hint. Go with it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I said, no, I'm sure it's yours. You stood on it. You must have dropped it. So please pick it up. It's yours. And she was amazingly grateful that somehow manna from heaven had just fallen to bless her life a little bit. An extra 20 bucks. But you do. You look around for ways that you can help somebody, just a beggar on the street, anybody. Hey, 20 bucks will make a big difference in your day.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And there was a great deal of joy in that. That's very perceptive.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Oh, yeah. It ended up that Tommy the Shark and I, after I paid him off... We stayed in touch, and I saw a different side of him that I'd seen, not just the gruff, menacing guy, but I saw the human side. And he and I became relatively close. He called me one day. He says, Russ, I've got some health problems, and I don't know how serious it is, but I want to go get away. I want to go to Mazatlan.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
You speak pretty good Spanish. Let's you and I go to Mazatlan together. And I said, sure, Tommy, I'd love to. I had to run it past my wife and make sure that she was. I said, hey, I said, because I can speak Spanish pretty well, would you mind if I had this experience? And she says, hey, you've worked hard. She says, no, go ahead.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
This is before the arrest. And I thought I could take a few of these bills and maybe unload them in Mexico. Sure, Tommy, let's go. And Tommy and I have different tastes. I like to explore the cultural nuances. And I didn't want to go to bars. I still didn't drink. I didn't do any of that. So I feigned a headache. We went to a little bar and I says, hey, do you mind if I leave you here?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
and let you enjoy yourself but i says i'm just going back to the hotel because what i wanted to do i wanted to get out i wanted to mingle with people see how well i could work the spanish and it's those little encapsulated relationships that you remember where you strike up a friendship with someone so i jumped in the first cab that i came to and it was a young guy his name was marco
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I drew that too. I used a very fine sable brush. It happened at that time that the Postal Service had stopped printing dead presidents on the postage stamps. And this particular stamp, I thought it was beautiful. It was these exotic butterflies. And I looked at him and I thought, wow, whoever designed that did a hell of a job. And I almost wanted to recreate it myself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And he struck up a conversation, Marco, how you doing? How long you been doing this? You married? You got a family? Yeah, yeah, I'm married. I says, you got any kids? He says, I'm expecting one, a little baron, a boy child. I says, good for you. I says, when's he due? He says, tonight, actually. I said, tonight? I says, what are you doing here?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
He says, she's at the hospital, but her parents are there. I says, Marco, I said, you know what? I said, you're going to have an empty ring finger thinking the way you're thinking right now. This is the biggest moment of life so far, seeing your firstborn be born. I said, how much do you make? He says, I have to work. I can't afford to take a night off work. I says, you have to.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
How much do you make in a night? And he said, $30. I says, okay, look, here's your $30. You're covered. I thought, it's the least I can do to help a young guy out so he can be there to see his firstborn be born, to be with his wife in that special moment. And he says, no, that's not going to cover it because he says, I have to make $200 in a night. And I thought, all right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
So maybe some of these fake 20s, six of them would help because I just, my heart went out to this guy. I says, okay, now call your boss, do whatever you got to do. If you have to feign sickness or something, but drive me to the hospital, drive me to where your wife is giving birth and pray to God you're not late. And he says, really? I says, yeah. So he says, this is nice of you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
So he says, what are you going to do? I says, I'll just get another cab. I'm fine. He says, look, you talked a lot of sense into me. Come up and meet my wife. And I thought, all right, now this is the kind of cultural experience you want. You would have done the same thing, Jordan. And I says, I would love to meet your wife. So we go up the stairs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
But as we were walking down the hall, her eyes lit up because she was in the bed. She could see us coming because the door was open. And she says, Marco, somehow I knew you would come. And her parents were there looking very,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
grimly at him saying it's a damn good thing you came and so he turned around and very silently mouthed to me the word gracias and i just nodded and i said so i went in i shook hands with the in-laws met the lovely wife and i said you know what i'm just a friend of marco's i wanted to make sure that he could juggle everything around and help him so that he'd be here on this special night
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Anyway, it made a big difference. And so he says, look, let me walk my American friend to the door here. And so he walked down the hall. And he said, hey, you made such a huge impression. I had Hispanic friends back in Utah. They couldn't say the name Russ very well, so they called me Rocks. It was easy to say. Anyway, I had shared that with him, and he says, I like that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
He says, I want you to know I'm going to nickname my little son the Little Rock, after an American friend who helped me tonight to usher him into the world. And it was a big deal. It was fun. It was exactly the kind of flavor that I was looking for, and I never forgot it. And he probably doesn't either.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Devastated. Because now there's a big breach of trust. Who are you? Yeah. You told me business was going great. You told me everything was fine. Nothing is fine. Nothing in our life is fine right now.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
and i don't even know who you are and once the trust is gone i could just see the love drain out of her eyes i knew there was no fixing that but she stayed with me to get me through all of the the courts and everything i mean what else could we do i hired a cheap attorney and he wasn't great he was anything but he didn't put his heart and soul into this
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And I thought, well, why don't I? And on the serrated edge, I thought if I use this fine sable brush and just put a hint of a shadow on one edge and a hint of a highlight on the other, and then just duplicate. with precision, copying it line for line, stroke for stroke, using these tiny little sable brushes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
But strangely enough, Roger Rodak, the Secret Service man, was there at the courthouse that day that I had to go before the judge. And the prosecuting attorney did a very convincing job. He said, the quality of these bills are a testament to his criminal intent to defraud the government, to defraud the American people. He would have done this. He would have expanded on it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
He was lucky he was caught, but he needs to be punished to the full extent of the law. And as he's giving his argument of how much criminal intent there was, Roger Rodak, the Secret Service man, raised his hand and he says, I object to this, Your Honor. And he said, you're objecting to the prosecution. He says, yes, I am. He says, but you're on our team. You're on the other side. He says, yes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
He says, what he's saying is that this proves criminal intent. He says, I argue that it proves creative intent. There is a big difference. And that's why I said the essence of creativity and criminality is it's all based on getting away from certainty. And so anyway, he said, it shows creative intent.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And he says, I've spent at least 100 hours interrogating, interviewing, questioning this gentleman. And the judge says, well, you're the one who drug him into my courtroom. And he said, yeah, he says, I've spent 20 years chasing bad guys. You get a sense of who's a good guy and who's just somebody who's lost his way. And he says, I say that this guy isn't a threat.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And he says, what if you gave him a biblical seven years probation? And the judge says, you know what? You know him better than I do. You know him better than the prosecutor. He says, that's fine with me. And he said, seven years probation with the understanding that you have to pay back.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
government for all of the bills that you spent and i said okay if that'll keep me out of jail of course and i said but you're going to have to put me on a payment program because now things upside down again and he says the secret service people are very adept at gathering up the bills they know where to look you have to buy them back from them as they gather up these bills and i said okay
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
So far, I haven't had to buy any of them back yet. So after 40 years, I doubt that there's any in existence. So that's kind of nice.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I did, indeed. There must have been some kind of angel looking out for me, for which I'm grateful.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Correct. And then she divorced me, which was the right thing to do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
yeah at the time they were like 12 13 and it was really hard so we tried to soften the blow as best we could we didn't immediately separate but they understood and the nice thing my ex-wife handled it so beautifully she remained amicable she remained respectful we stayed in touch And even after we were divorced, we still considered ourselves a family.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
It took several hours, but I pulled it off and I thought, hopefully this will make an impression on whoever sees it. And apparently it did. So I got the job. I was really happy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
We'd been divorced for some time and she met a wonderful human being who, crazily enough, later became my best friend. And it really turned out beautifully because He's taken such good care of her and insisted that I be back as an integral part of the family circle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
He said the family circle just expanded, the circle of family and friends, and they both are wonderful friends now, and I think it worked out exactly the way that the heavens intended it to be. He's a great best friend, a better companion to my former wife than I could have been.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
my kids and grandkids love him and they know of my affection for him and so they feel free to love him because there's not a competition that way which is really a beautiful way to live your life and so i'm grateful for that
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And I'm going to sucker him into buying me some lunch because I took my wallet.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
yeah that was crazy i still had the secret service people after they released me i was still free to go back to my design studio and i was working and one day a gentleman walked in he introduced himself and he said i have followed your case so closely and he said the problem you had he said i understand that these bills were impeccable And you had the wrong partner. You didn't have a partner.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
He says, I'm a cop from Vegas. And that's where I found out and learned about this stuff. And he said, but sometimes our personalities are different. You work both sides of that fence. And he says, I think I could be a very good partner if you'll do it again. Show me how you did it. You've got the printing presses. You've got everything. Let's do it again. And I said, you know what?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I went through the most stressful time of my entire life. I never want to relive it. I want to forget it. And I'm going to show you the door. I didn't bite. I never knew if he was a plant or if he was real. I'll never know. But I'm glad that I wasn't tempted. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
This was a couple of months later. Okay, wow. Back with my nose to the grindstone. And I was scrambling to try to salvage my business, my marriage, whatever I could do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah, their rules are you have to obey the laws of the land, and I wasn't obeying the tenets of the church, and so they held their own court, and I was excommunicated, disenfranchised from the church.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And so I stayed away and stayed out of it because I was an embarrassment to them, but then eventually I wanted to regain some church activity, and I'm more private about my church affiliation now than I ever was, probably for that reason. But anyway, they eventually, in time, let me rejoin the ranks. And so all is well. That's interesting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And they make sure that you've learned your lesson and that you're not going to go back because they can't have that be smirching their reputation. And rightfully so. I wouldn't want to. And like I say, I'm very private about my church involvement and so forth, much more than I ever was. But I'm grateful that I never did completely shed my Mormon skin.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yes. I'm so glad you asked that question. Years later, this was 25 years after I'd graduated from high school, a knock came to the door. I opened the door. It was my old high school principal. I was shocked. I said, Principal Snow. And he looked at me and he said, Rusty Swain. That was what they called me, my friends back in the day. I said, am I still in trouble?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
He says, Rusty, you have never in my book been out of trouble. He says, you see these few gray hairs that are remaining? You put the gray in them with all that mischief you got into back in high school. But I brought you some good news, Rusty. I says, what is that? He says, I brought you an opportunity to atone for all that mischief. I said, please come in, have a seat, tell me how I can do that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And together, we concocted a little scheme that he needed a counterfeiter for. He had been, before he was principal, he was the coach. at the New Ogden High School, very classy high school in Ogden, Utah. First million-dollar high school ever built on this side of the Mississippi River. And it was elegant in its Art Deco architecture.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
He was, in college, state champion quarterback for the football team. And he was offered this job to be the head coach at the New Ogden High School. And he instigated a rivalry between Ogden High School and another high school. It was called Weber High.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah. I'm glad they overlooked it. I don't know. If you see a thousand mail pieces in a day, I think you just pass it on. For sure.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And as a trophy, he had found this earthen jug, had a sign painter doll it up and create the artistry on it that said, the little brown jug champion. And that was the trophy that was passed each year to the winner. And he said, after I retired, because there were fights breaking out in school, we canceled that competition. And I always wondered, what happened to my trophy?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And so nobody seemed to know where it went. And so I was asking former students, former teachers, anybody know where that trophy went? And anyway, finally a janitor came to him and said, I think it's in a box in the basement, a storage room of the Weber County Library. So he went, he asked for permission to go through all these boxes. It was like looking for the Holy Grail.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
One day he found it and tears welled up in his eyes. He was emotional about it. This was a part of my history. I want this to be permanently displayed in the Ogden High School trophy case. And no sooner had it been displayed there, given a place of honor, but the coach at Weber High said, I think that belongs in our trophy case because we won more games than you guys did.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
He was really offended at that because it was his creation. It was a tribute to his legacy. And so he said, Rusty, he says, I got to give them something. So here's the trophy, and I want you to make one identical. And I said, and I'm forgiven? He says, you're forgiven. And we had the most fun. And we bonded over this fun little mischievous prank to pull on the coach at Weber High School.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And he gave it to him and said, hey, give it a place of respect. Whereas the real trophy, he built a special case for it. And it's in the teacher's lounge, where only the administration can enjoy it and see it. But it's in its proper place at Ogden High School. And I promised I wouldn't tell that, divulge that to anybody as long as he walked the earth. And he passed away a few years later.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And so now I can talk about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
That's exactly right. People have since asked me, were you tempted to make two and keep the real one? And I said, no, I wasn't going to do that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And becoming very good friends through it all. Yeah, it was great.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Next. That's very kind of you. I appreciate that. And I have to say, you're a very imaginative question asker. You're very good at the art of interrogation, I guess you would say.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
No doubt. No doubt. Thank you so much. It's been a joy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah, I wasn't really planning on doing that again until I thought, okay, I want to open up my own studio. And that little graphic design studio actually was an out-of-the-shoot galloping success from the time that it opened. I got a couple of large clients and they liked the fact that They could deal with me as a designer one-on-one, and they didn't have to go through a chain of people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And it was a business school that was one of my first big clients, and they had an office in Ogden. They also had another school in Provo. And the work that I was doing for brochures in that caught the attention of people. their New York office, who was the head of, I guess it was a national chain of these little colleges.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I won't mention the name because I don't want to get anybody in trouble, especially myself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
No kidding. But he said, hey, we really like your approach to design and you're making our school look really great. And I thought, terrific. And he says, we'd like to have you design the brochure that we use nationwide. And I thought, this is going to be great because we had a little print shop as well. And I thought, this is going to assure my success as a designer, as a printer.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And we've got this one huge client that will feed us for a long time. Problem was, it took all the money, all the credit that I had to open the studio, get the print shop going and typesetting equipment and things like that. I had to find an outside source to finance this. So I went to a loan shark. And I borrowed at a usurious rate of interest, $10,000, which back in those days.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
What year was this? This was in 1984.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
But I thought, okay, I only need this for 30 days. And so that's fine. I'll pay it and I'll be fine because this will be great. It's a national company. They're going to pay the bills and so forth. And I put my heart and soul. I mean, this thing had extraordinary folds. It had foil stamping. It had blind embossed. The logo looked sharp. And this was before... where he could fax things.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Faxing was rudimentary. I mean, it was rough. So I would send him line art and saying, this is the kind of photograph, this is where we show students this. And they said, great, great. It looks beautiful. Love the composition. We love the layout. This is going to be great. What I didn't anticipate, because I was trying to think nationally, I thought everybody's money spends the same.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
And so there was this really attractive black girl that was one of the students in the photo and muscular toned Asian fellow who was also very attractive. These guys were model quality people that we used to set up for the photo shoot on this. The old guy in New York, he was a Jewish fellow, which surprised me because he said, I can't accept this. This was after it went to print.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I said, why can't you? I said, you okayed everything. And he said, because you put, pardon the expression, but back in those days, a Chinaman and N-word in my brochure. Jeez, that's terrible. I said, pardon me? And I started backpedaling like crazy. He says, no, he says, we try to keep our clientele a cut above those kind of people. And he says, and you just threw down the welcome mat.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I said, with all due respect, I mean, you being of... the Jewish persuasion, and that ignited something in him that he says, oh, so now you're calling me, he says, a Jew boy? And I says, I did not use that term. I said, I'm trying to be as delicate as I can here. And he said, you know what, this conversation is over and I'm not paying you for these brochures and I will not accept them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
I was flummoxed, I was flabbergasted, and I didn't know what to do. And I thought, I don't think there's any begging anything that I can do to resurrect this. And how am I going to pay back this loan shark who was very menacing and frightening to me at a very usurious rate? And I thought, I may have just sunk my ship.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
So I thought, how can I think outside the box? And I thought... okay, remember that postage stamp? That was clever and it was thinking outside the box. And I will say, being clever doesn't prevent you from doing things that are stupid. What it does is it enables you to do more grandiose forms of stupidity, which is what I did in thinking, if I can recreate a postage stamp, what is money other than
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
paper and ink and i know the bricks and mortar of printing i know paper i know design and all of a sudden this seemed like the most brilliant idea that i could have thought of to solve a problem
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Coming up next on The Jordan Harbinger Show. How can I think outside the box? And I thought, okay, remember that postage stamp? That was clever, and it was thinking outside the box. And I will say, being clever doesn't prevent you from doing things that are stupid. It enables you to do more grandiose forms of stupidity.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Kind of a jerk. Yeah, he was.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
That's very true. And I am integrally a Mormon. It's combed into my being. It's impossible for me to shed my Mormon skin. And so what I did in deciding then to print money to solve this problem, it was a performative contradiction. I know it was going against my faith, my personal beliefs, and my own inner core.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
But I also knew that, okay, I've got a family that I'm responsible for, and I need to draw on all of my resources to solve this problem. And so I thought... That's the way to do it. It was like my moral compass was finally lying somewhere in a magnet factory. I didn't know which way to turn at that point.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
Yeah, one of my best friends in high school had started a small t-shirt printing company And I was talking to him and he said, you know what I did to get my t-shirt business started? He says, there's this guy named Tommy and he's a rough guy. He's very menacing and he'll charge you through the nose as an interest rate and he'll scare you to death.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1129: Russ Swain | The Good Mormon Who Made Bad Money
But he's got the money and he'll loan it to you if you can pass his test. And he says, and I can vouch for you. And I says, great. That's what I want to do. So anyway, it was a referral kind of thing. And we got together, we met, and he says, okay, I'll loan you the money. And he did. Where did you meet him?