In the movie ‘21’ there is a scene where the main character is trying to get large quantities of cash through airport security, and there is some concern that the currency in his carry-on bag will get detected by the X-ray, so he shoves the money in his underwear because the metal detector won’t catch it.
My understanding of current banking regulations in a similar vein is that regulations in the U.S. make it very difficult for drug dealers and other ‘cash heavy’ type crimes to launder their money such that bulk currency smuggling out of the country has become a more common crime. Presumably this is because depositing large amounts of cash in other countries is easier/less traceable.
My question is, is there a way to detect large quantities of cash on a person or in a vehicle? Even if it was in a car trunk (or for creativity, lets say it’s stuffed inside a car door), is there some way to generically detect U.S. currency? I assume an X-ray would work, but I don’t think that would be safe to use on people. I know our currency has unusual paper qualities and unusual inks that would presumably differentiate it from someone with lots of regular paper, but I don’t know if it’s ‘different enough’ that any known technology could detect it. How does DHS/DEA stop this crime now? Can dogs maybe be trained to smell money somehow?
I can’t answer your question with 100% confidence, but I am almost positive that there is no way you could detect bulk U. S. currency on a person or hidden in an unviewable car part. There’s just nothing in the currency to show up. Xrays don’t help. Many conspiracy types used to hype the mylar strips which the US started using only in the last ?15 years. But, they were quite thinking that the strips would be detectable with a metal detector. They aren’t.
I’m also curious if there is anything that actually differentiates American bills from each other. In addition to the unusual paper/ ink used to defeat counterfeiters, is the paper/ink different between, say a stack of $5 bills versus a stack of $20 bills? Or is it literally just the printing on the paper itself that makes a $100 bill different from a $1 bill? Is there a site somewhere that discusses all this? I don’t know why, but I got fascinated with the idea that casinos could use technology like this to discretely scan people from a distance and figure out how much money they had on them (or if it was counterfeit!)
Again, not 100% positive on this, but I’m 90+% confident that there is absolutely NO differance in the ink or paper used for the different denominations of bills. It’s almost like trying to prove a negative. RAther hard.
Not an answer to your question, but I just wanted to say that x-rays wouldn’t help in a “stuffed inside a car door” situation. Most (All?) car doors are sheet metal on the outside which are completely opaque to x-rays.
A few years ago I was in the customs line at LAX, and I was asked to step out of line for questioning. The only question asked of me was how much cash I was carrying.
I replied “about $5000”, and I was allowed to go.
I am guessing that they somehow knew that I was carrying a lot of cash.
How did they know ? Money sniffing dog, or ?
I don’t think that is correct.
The new versions of bills have a 3-D ribbon on it, which shows the denomination of the bill when looked at from an angle. And according to the US Treasury website (http://www.newmoney.gov/newmoney/flash/interactive100/index.html), this ribbon “is woven into the paper, not printed on it”. So it would seem that they would have to use different paper for the different denominations.