Donald Trump’s former White House aide is under fire after a video showed him claiming to distribute fake money to homeless people so that they will be arrested when they spend it.
Johnny McEntee, formerly the White House Presidential Personnel Office under the former president, posted a video on TikTok in which he discusses the purported scheme to “clean up the community.”
“So I always keep this fake Hollywood money in my car, so when a homeless person asks for money, and I give them like a $5 bill, I feel good about myself, they feel good,” said McEntee, also a senior advisor to Project 2025. “And then when they go to use it, they get arrested, so I’m actually helping to clean up the community and get them off the street.”
Shows how stupid this guy is. Obviously it isn’t illegal for someone to own “Hollywood money” or else he wouldn’t admit to owning it himself. If a homeless person gives it to a store and they accept it, that’s on them.
It clearly states on the bills “For Motion Picture use Only”, doesn’t feel right, and isn’t the right size.
If a homeless man accepts a Hollywood bill, believes it genuine, and tries to spend it - they’re not at fault for most of the currency related laws. Simply handing a homeless person a fake bill with the intent that they believe it is genuine is the super illegal thing. There’s a large mens rhea component to most crimes but especially around fraud… the basis of most fraud cases is inequal information: you purposefully don’t disclose a significant quality of the goods being transferred.
I hope this shitheel learns thoroughly that the secret service are really fucking serious about their non-bodyguard duty.
(Also, shout out to Warehouse 13 for being a fucking hilarious premise right in this area)
It’s absolutely not legal. But you’d need a lawyer, and the homeless don’t have a lawyer. The wealthy and well to do love this trick… Punching down is kind of their thing.
Hollywood money is highly regulated, and secret service is very strict about it. Adam Savage recently made a YouTube vid about movie money, which has stories about the secret service at the beginning of the video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=drLzVcgnBfI