I saw the History Channel’s program on counterfeiting last night, and I got to wondering:
Has anyone ever received counterfeit money in change? What did you do with it? How did you know it was counterfeit?
If you were a clerk running a cash register, how are you trained to recognize bogus bills?
I got a counterfeit $5 in change from a grocery store about a year ago. I didn’t realize it a first, but I found out when I tried to buy something with it later in the day.
The bill was clearly faked, the backside was upside down. I admit that I had not given the money any more than a cursory glance when it had been handed to me. I called the store as soon as I found out. I went in the next day and spoke to the manager. She took the counterfit fin and gave me a legal one. I left my name and number in case there was some follow up by the police. There wasn’t any.
I just want to know who is wasting their time by making fake $5’s?
We had a little brochure provided by the treasury department.
Now in the age of the web, there is of course a page called’‘Know Your Money’’ at http://www.treasury.gov.
See numbers 9 and 10 specifically for details on counterfeit paper bills.
I always figured that unless you had a very sophisticated counterfeiting scheme, you’d be less likely to get caught if you printed lower denominations. Who are you more likely to suspect is counterfeiting, the guy with 10 grand in new, crisp 100 dollar bills or a guy with a few grand in 1s, 5s and 10s?
In reply to adam yax, the reason counterfeiters make $5 bills is that customers like you, and presumably many store employees, are less likely to check whether they are in fact real. Some stores tell their cashiers to check all bills larger than a $20, and the chance of smaller bills passing undetected is consequently greater. On an individual level, the discovery of such a fake is also less likely to induce action (calling the police etc.) on the part of the victim - many people might laugh off being stiffed for five bucks, but would feel pfretty angry if the faked head was that of Benjamin Franklin.
On a related note, as someone who moved to the US last year from Australia, i (along with many people i know from other countries) am somewhat perplexed by the sameness of all American banknotes. This takes some getting used to - it is easy to look in your wallet and have little idea, without going through all the bills, of how much is actually in there. Also, the monotone nature of US bills makes them the easiest in the world to counterfeit, apparently.
Australia introduced in the early 1990s bills made from a thin plastic. They are all brightly coloured, with each denomination having a different colour, and they have a clear “window” in the bottom corner. The composition, colouring and window make them just about impossible to reproduce. Not only that, but the fact that they are plastic means that they last in circulation for many times longer than a paper banknot. But best of all, when you go to the beach you no longer have to leave your money in your shoe or buried in the sand - you can put it in the pocket of your swimming trunks or even clip it to a bikini, and then just shake it off when you come out of the water. Now that’s progress. 
In Canada, they’re redoing the paper money again, to make it more difficult to counterfeit. There is a new ten-dollar bill in circulation. There was going to be a new five before the end of the year, but the Bank of Canada delayed it for ‘design changes’ and it won’t appear until midwinter (January or so).
Unfortunately the new notes aren’t plastic. I thought that would have been kind of cool.
I didn’t get one as change, I got one as payment on a tab. And the guy knew what he was doing, too, because he bolted out of the bar before we could get to him.
It happened years ago, at a large bar where I worked. The bar was busy and noticing the details isn’t an option when it’s packed.
But this was hard to miss.
As I collected the cash from the guy (All I could remember was the fact that it was a guy, not much else) I looked at the bill he gave me briefly and headed for the register to make change. The unfortunate part for the guy was that the bar had quite a bit of blue lights as part of it’s lighting scheme.
As I made my way to the till, I again looked down to see what denomination the guy had given me. When I looked down, the bill was glowing. Not a pale glow, but almost a blinding glow.
I was perplexed.
I turned to another bartender working the bar and kinda went, ‘Look at this thing’. He looked at me and basically said, ‘Hmmmm. What’s up with that?’.
By the time either of us figured it out (Hey, we were allowed to drink behind the bar. It probably slowed down our reaction times) the guy had fled. He must have seen me having problems with the bill- rubbing it, having others look at it, holding up to the light, discussing it endlessly with those around me.
We, err, I (The other bartender was amazingly quite about the incident by the time the manager came over) called over the manager and he immediately knew it was fake.
We wrote up an incident report and that was about it. That was about it in that I never heard any follow-up things around it.
As far as I was concerned, the bar didn’t charge me for my error. Instead (And if I knew then what I know now, I’d have paid it and kept quiet about the whole thing) they proceeded to give me no end of shit about it.
In the end, I don’t know who was stupider, him or me. Him for passing a bill that reacted with the lights in the bar, or me, for taking so long realizing the thing was fake.
I’ve seen this, too.
I was at a strip club a couple of years ago and they gave me counterfeit singles to tip the dancers with. Hell, I’ll name the club, because this was a pretty sleazy thingto do. It was the Star Strip, in Beverly Hills.
My friend and I paid our cover and we sat down at one of the little stages. Immediately, a very attractive girl that looked entirely too young to be working there asked if I needed change for tips. So I gave her a $20. Of course, I’m supposed to tip the change girl too, so I’ve only got 18 singles in my hand when she leaves, and I look down and four of them are glowing brightly in the black lights of the club.
Those four went into the g-strings first. (Actually, IIRC you can’t touch the girls there even to tip them. You just throw your money on the stage. How classy!)
But of course, what it means is that the club is taking 20% of the tips these girls are making, before they even get them. I’m sure the girls know which “ones” are fake… they stand out like a sore thumb under a black light.
I’ve always wondered why nobody (or… maybe someone does) counterfeits coins. Quarters… or even the new dollar coin. Yeah, the simple answer is “the metal costs more than the value of the coin” but i don’t think that’s accurate. Buy 100 pounds of cheap metal, melt it down, and pour it into molds (which would be easy to make - just an impression of a real coin). 100 pounds of metal could probably make a LOT of $1 coins. And there are no fancy strips, microprint, or other really hard things to copy like on paper currency. Anyone who fakes $100 bills is asking for trouble… but it seems to me that faking $1 coins (i bet even quarters would be profitable) would be pretty safe.
Comments? (no i have no intention of doing this)
I think the OP is asking for opinions on whether anyone got any counterfeit change. When I do, I just give it back. Usually its just some canadian coins & Im in the US.
Kalt, someone took a page out of that book already – with a twist. I recently learned this tale on one of those “how they tried to beat the casino” shows on TLC.
A former jeweler, with access to precious metals and the know-how to work them, minted bogus casino tokens. The phonies were perfect duplicates – complete with a thin plating of silver to fool the slot machines’ slug-detecor.
He took them to the casino and played a slot machine normally. The worthless slugs piled up at the top of the coinbox; his payouts spilled from the bottom of the box – where the real tokens were. After a while he’d move on to another machine. At the end of the day he’d cash out for real money.
They didn’t detect the scam until one day they did a token inventory and found, IIRC, 16,000 extra tokens.
Quite clever, really.
stuyguy i think casino tokens are more intricate and harder to copy than US Coins! Also, the “inventory discovery” problem woudln’t apply to going around town spending fake quarters.
The US Treasury site linked earlier mentions counterfeit coins (#12 off the main menu).
It implies that they aren’t too common because they are usually moulded instead of being stamped, and can be easily distinguished by presence of defects where the mould was broken apart.
I have never actually received a fake bill. But, I did a stint as a cashier at a fast food restaurant while in high school. We had to clear it with the manager before we could give change for anything larger then a $20.
I had a customer give me a $100 and called the manager for approval. She insisted the bill was fake. She wouldn’t take it and threatened to call the police on the customer.
She knew it had to be fake because “That man doesn’t have a fur collar on a real $100.”
As you can see, Alexander Hamilton does wear fur!
I briefly worked a register at an ice-cream shop my senior year, and store policy required us to check any bill larger than a five. I usually held them up the light to check for the security strip, but some other cashiers used one of those special markers which changes color on genuine currency. No, I never found one; most customers paid using their ID card, not cash.
No, actually U.S. currency is quite difficult to counterfeit with any real success. While there has been a lot of information about the new features of the redesigned bills being introduced now, the old style had some that also were extremely difficult or impossible to duplicate. Some of these were the dual-color silk threads embedded in the paper and the very precise engraving lines.
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I like the old currency, and can’t quite get used to the new stuff. Of course, I also like silver dollars and Mercury dimes, too. I wonder how many people realize that the Jefferson $2 bill will probably not be redesigned, simply because it’s not common enough to make it worth the effort?
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I’m surprised that $2 bills are still being made. I’ve only seen about 1 a year for the last 10 years, and I see a lot of currency as a pizza delivery guy.
Either collectors are hoarding them, or people who get them put them right back in the bank.
I think it’s been a topic before, but why aren’t there $25 bills instead of $20’s, paralleling the coin denominations?
Zumba wrote:
“As you can see, Alexander Hamilton does wear fur!”
::cough::
Alexander Hamilton?
Ah, you say counterfeit money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of counterfeit money? Counterfeit money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Counterfeit money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Counterfeit money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take if from you by force. Counterfeit money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
[sub]I’m guessing by your screen name you get the reference.[/sub]
Leaving aside waterj2’s somewhat tortuous logic about the connection between counterfeit money, production and exchange (i agree there is a link, but i’m not quite sure how you’re trying to explain it), i was just wondering whether s/he is aware that women have been agents of production since about the year dot. While we might sometimes like to kid ourselves, even in this smewhat postindustrial age, that production involves some guy in a boilersuit inserting rivets or welding things, the social definition of the term is much broader than that. And it doesn’t necessarily (or even in the majority of cases) involve paid work.
While Victorian society might have been able to live under the illusion that the world existed due to “goods produced and men able to produce them” and “men who wish to deal with one another”, it seems that in the early 21st century it moght behoove us to acknowledge a bit more fully the contribution of women to the maintenance of the species (and i don’t just mean by having babies).
Some might say i’m being anal about this, but it’s only when we problematise this gender-exclusive language that people are forced to think about these things.
michael.