How to Cut Out 115,000 All-Seeing Eyes

Withdraw $400 from an ATM. Take this money to two or three different banks, converting the twenties into singles. Banks typically don’t want to give out 400 singles at a time, particularly if you are not a member. Making smaller requests requires more driving but easier exchanges. When you have $400 in singles, head home. Cut out all of the all-seeing eyes with a razor blade. Time per bill will decrease dramatically as you go. When I started, it was taking around 13 seconds to carefully cut out the eye from each bill. This time was later shaved down to around 3 seconds. Next, repair each bill, placing a tiny triangle of tape over the hole, front and back. Take the money back out and deposit into ATMs. Don’t try to put all the money into one ATM. Not only will third party ATM companies notice the altered bills more quickly, but more importantly, you will jam the machine. After all singles have been successfully deposited, you are done for the day. Repeat.  

Spending the bills helps a bit, but is far too slow to make a significant dent in the total number. I spent the bills almost exclusively for three years, sometimes counting out 40 or 50 at a time. No one ever noticed the alteration. For one, the eye makes up less than 1/700th of the bill. Perhaps more importantly, people don’t pay attention to money, particularly in the case of singles.

Defacing US currency remains a legally gray area. Still, when banks find out what you are doing, they will be annoyed and you will be kicked out. It took Chase around 70,000 bills to kick me out the first time (they gave me another account shortly after). Other banks figured things out more quickly. The vast majority of bills, if not all of them, were put back into circulation.