It's totally ok that you wouldn't have had the same gut feeling — but I absolutely did. I wrote that because it seemed like the binder was unnecessary information posed specifically in the photo to try to gain my trust. I think that's largely because the binder was unnecessary information posed specifically in the photo to try to gain my trust.
Bonus trivia I didn't mention: if you look at the invoice preceding the one in the binder, it has the logo for the 1992 (!) Barcelona Olympics at the top. A real weird thing to put in your 'Bills 2000 — 2010' binder! I do think this binder is totally real, but should actually be labelled 'My Forged Invoices' ;)
> I wrote that because it seemed like the binder was unnecessary information posed specifically in the photo to try to gain my trust
As opposed to just being something he grabbed to use as a quick kind of table? I mean out of the two possibilities of just quickly throwing something on the couch to use as a platform to take a photo or purposely trying to set up a staged scene to look 'casual', I think Occam would say the first is significantly more likely.
Nothing wrong with having suspicions or gut feelings, but this just seemed a stretch too far to me personally. Nice article though!
Bonus trivia I didn't mention: if you look at the invoice preceding the one in the binder, it has the logo for the 1992 (!) Barcelona Olympics at the top. A real weird thing to put in your 'Bills 2000 — 2010' binder! I do think this binder is totally real, but should actually be labelled 'My Forged Invoices' ;)