If you bleached out a dollar bill, but could still tell it was real, could you cash it in at a bank?
I got one that a friend had put through the wash. It was just a little dull and slightly smaller, so he kept putting it through the wash, and adding bleaches and spot removers until it was a ghost, nearly white. Then I bought it.
Oh, and it did get a lot of tiny holes and crease crack splits in it.
As long as the serial number is complete and readable…its legal tender.
I should point out that that’s not what they mean by “money laundering.”
[sub]sorry, sorry, I just had to say it . . . [/sub]
I once put a dollar bill in pure bleach for a day. It faded to barely legible, but it would’ve still been legal tender.
I say “would’ve”, because when I reached in to pull it out, it disintegrated into tiny little bits of fiber floating around the remaining bleach. :rolleyes:
I did the exact same thing to a pair of jeans once.
I’m shocked, why don’t you people give me your money? I’m starving!
But yeah, as long as the serial number is on it, they will HAVE to accept it (unless they can prove otherwise).
Quoting from the relevant Secret Service website:
[Edited by UncleBeer on 10-11-2001 at 11:48 AM]
Crap. Moderators, can someone fix the coding?
Biggest URL i have ever seen there, Otto.
I burned a dollar bill, then had to bleach it so it looked better & the bank took it. But they didn’t take one that was burned brown before. Only way to know is to take it to the bank & ask them.
So long as “they” in the quote above refers to the Treasury Department you are correct. No other entity has an obligation to accept mutilated money.
A bank is not the final determinor of whether mutilated currency can be replaced. This includes the Federal Reserve Bank. As mentioned above, the Treasury Department has the final say. If you cannot get your bill redeemed at a bank you can present it, in person or by mail, to the Treasury Department. They have facilities where they can determine whether the bills are replaceable. I know of instances where currency burned nearly to ashes was reconstructed by the TD and replaced. Don’t try that at a bank.
FYI - while the TD regs state that currency can be replaced if “clearly more than half the bill remains”, most banks use the following criteria - 3 fifths of the bill, including one complete serial number, must be present. We even have a clear template, divided into 25 squares, which can be placed over a damage bill. If the bill fills at least 15 squares it is deemed to be 3 fifths present.
Based on my experience, a bank would accept it, although they might call the Secret Service on the serial number first. When I worked in a bank that’s what we were supposed to do on any “unusual” looking or feeling money. The bank would simply turn it in for a new one. You would probably have a VERY hard time spending it at a store.
Remember it is illegal to deface bills in such a way as to make them unfit for recirculation. The maximum penalty is $100 fine and 6 months imprisonment.
It is incredible what lengths the Treasury will go to to replace damaged bills. I saw the following story on TV once:
Some old lady had kept her life saving in a shoe box under her bed. Unfortunately her house burned down and her money-shoe box was severly damaged along with the money inside. Several people at the Treasury were tasked with recovering what they could (the Treasury maintains people specifically for this task). With tweezers the women were piecing back together what they could of the badly damaged money. They were literally picking up tiny shreds of burnt money and putting what they could back together like some obnoxious jigsaw puzzle. The woman had a fair quantity of bills in that box so the job looked insanely tedious and neverending. As long as they could get a serial number and at least part of the other serial number printed on the bill they would replace the whole thing. They were replacing bills that were well more than 90% destroyed.
off topic of where the thread has gone, but still relevant to the OP:
of course, if you can’t get anybody to take your bleached bill, you could always use the old “bleach a low denomination bill and intaglio print a circa 1988 design onto the resulting blank paper to make a very convincing counterfeit c-note” trick. the feel of american currency is the hardest thing to get right.
(note- please do NOT actually do this- you and i will both get in trouble. sure, probably you more than me. but i would rather spend some time in prison than get chewed out madcore by the mods)
pah-pah-pah palimpsest!
jb