be added to capsules of drugs that can then be authenticated with test strips.
Another new technique is DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) marking. Joe Barbera, the creator of "The Flintstones," and "The Jetsons," used to employ a DNA pen with ink that contained fragments of his own genetic code to authenticate his drawings. And now a company called DNA Technologies has come up with a means of mass-marking items with an ink containing DNA. The company marked millions of items of official merchandise at the Sydney Olympics, using an ink that contained DNA strands from an Australian athlete and a chemical that can be identified with an optical scanner. The company gets the DNA either from a blood sample or a swab of the mouth, and then makes copies of it that it mixes into the ink. The ink was put right on the souvenirs or on a tag attached to them. Among other things, DNA Technologies put a DNA tag on Mark McGuire's seventieth homerun ball.
Holograms can be copied, but DNA is pretty much counterfeit-proof. The company estimates that there's about one chance in a trillion that a counterfeiter could duplicate the DNA sample. Those aren't the kind of odds that any sane criminal would take.
One shortcoming is there's no hand-held device that can test for the DNA. Vendors can scan a shirt and pick up the chemical in the ink, but not the DNA. If something seems fishy, the product has to be sent to the company for further testing.
EVERYONE HAS TO GET INVOLVED
Fighting counterfeit goods is going to take a lot more dedication, and I don't mean simply on the part of manufacturers. Stores have to do a better job of training their employees to discriminate the real from the fake. Packaging with blurry lettering or misspellings - "certifidate" instead of "certificate" of authenticity - is a giveaway. Sometimes, counterfeiters will try to protect themselves by slightly altering a product name - for instance, "Yeal" locks that resemble and are packaged to look like "Yale" locks.
If the problem is ever going to be contained, the general public has to start to care. You can't perpetuate a scam unless there's an honest person willing to go along. Years ago, I was visiting New York with my family. My boys were young then. We had eaten lunch at Wolf's Delicatessen, and while I was paying the check, my kids asked if they could wait outside. I said, fine, as long as they were close enough so I could see them through the windows. Almost immediately, some guy came up to them with a satchel. He swung it open and it was filled with watches. By the time I hurried out to them, they were already picking out famous designer watches at ludicrously low prices. I shooed the guy away, and I had to explain to my kids that the watches were counterfeit and the guy was a crook.
Adults know better, and ought to behave better. Do you really want to keep buying those fakes on the street corner and putting money in the pockets of criminals, or do you want to support legitimate business?
Chapter 10
[EMPTY PROMISES]
Uniprime Capital Acceptance was a small automobile dealer based in Las Vegas. Its shares were publicly traded, but it hadn't made much earth-shattering news in awhile, and its stock price reflected that. You could buy a share for less than a buck, and normal volume was a meager 20,000 shares a day. Then one day in the summer of 1999, it made a stunning announcement for any company, but particularly for a car dealer: it had come up with a cure for AIDS.
Not surprisingly, the news was the talk of Internet stock chat rooms. There was, of course, patter about the considerable medical and humanistic ramifications of this development, but the chat room talk was more focused on monetary impact. One message called Uniprime "the greatest stock ever." Another spoke of it as "a once in a lifetime opportunity!!!" and was like "buying Microsoft now at a nickel."
The day of the announcement, Uniprime's stock rocketed from $1.75 to $5.00, and 5 million shares changed hands. Just like that, the company had a market value of $100 million. One bulletin board message said: "Hallah! Hallah! Hallah! Shout it from the rooftops of the banks." Thousands of messages were posted about the stock.
The AIDS cure was reported as the work of a new Uniprime subsidiary, New Technologies and Concepts, which was headed by a man named Alfred Flores,