‘Rush Hour 2’ Extras Pocketed the Movie’s Fake Cash and Then Tried to Spend It
The franchise may be hopelessly tainted now, thanks to director Brett Ratner, but a whole lot of people have been watching the Rush Hour movies lately. Both Rush Hour and Rush Hour 2 are currently in Netflix’s Top 10 — of course, the list also contains Boss Baby, so it isn’t exactly the highest of honors.
While the Rush Hour series is mostly remembered for its martial arts action (and Chris Tucker being Chris Tucker action), one of the most interesting things about Rush Hour 2 is that it inadvertently inspired multiple people to commit a federal crime.
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The sequel finds Detective Carter and Chief Inspector Lee teaming up to battle a counterfeiting ring, which, it turns out, is laundering the fraudulent cash through their casino. So, naturally, the filmmakers needed to acquire a lot of fake money for the shoot. One sequence literally involved Jackie Chan beating up some guys using wads of bills and coins.
In another scene, a bomb detonates on a roulette table, sending casino chips and bills flying all over the place.
According to Priceonomics, the counterfeit money was provided to the production by a prop house called Independent Studio Services. But they did such a good job that a number of extras and randos passing by the set decided to discreetly pocket some of the bills, and later attempted to spend them.
Oddly enough, that’s also kind of how Rush Hour 2 ends. Carter pulls out a stack of cash that he won at the casino, which may or may not be legit, and he and Lee decide to forget about being cops and just go ahead and spend it anyway.
The Rush Hour 2 bills soon caught the attention of the Secret Service. Yes, the movie about busting counterfeiters was itself busted for counterfeiting. The authorities reportedly seized “north of $100 million worth of prop money” from ISS, and “ordered a cease and desist on all of their faux cash.”
The prop maker claimed that the bills actually looked “pretty god awful” and contained 28 different factors that distinguished the prop money from the real thing. And you didn’t need a magnifying glass to spot some of these differences; the text on the back of the note read “In Dog We Trust.”
But that wasn’t good enough for the feds. They ordered the company to destroy billions of fake dollars worth of fake money. This was still a substantial loss for the company, since the custom made bills were worth around $8 in real money for every $10,000 in prop money.
No word on whether or not any of the real-life investigators were a comically mismatched duo from different backgrounds who ultimately formed a friendship during the course of the case.
