Marked bills

[Ben]

When the police mark bills of ransom money, how do they track the marked (or sequentially numbered) bills after they are spent?

-Ben

[tomndebb]

They rarely do, and probably don’t care to.

Suppose I get the modest sum of $25,000 in small bills in a kidnapping. It’s pretty hard to simply spend $25,000, so the police are betting that they can find the perp and that that person will still have some substantial portion of the $25,000 still on their person or in their car or in their house.

“Ah!” you say, “But $25,000 will buy a nice car leaving only a modest amount of money on your person.” True, but then I will have a brand new car. The police will go to the dealership, ask about my purchase (including whether I paid cash) and then go to the bank where the dealer deposited it.

Basically, though, they hope to find it in the perp’s possession.

[tcburnett]

I have to disagree. They do mark the bills in kidnapping cases. Sometimes the marked bills are the only lead in the case. But it’s not the police. Usually it’s the FBI who either supplies the marked bills or obtains them from the Treasury Department. I’m not sure the tracking details are public information, but I can tell you that counterfeiters always make sure their bills have serial numbers which match real bills.

[Ben]

*Originally posted by tomndebb *
**Basically, though, they hope to find it in the perp’s possession. **

And the markings are intended to indentify the particular money in that person’s possession?

-Ben

[tomndebb]

tc, sorry, I should have been clearer: they do mark the bills, but they rarely try to run all over creation looking at every bill in every bank in every town in order to see where the bills have been spent. (They may issue a list of serial numbers and ask the banks to keep an eye out for those numbers, but if a bank in NYC or LA reports finding several bills, the FBI does not have an immediate lead on the location of the kidnapper. I suppose that if the bills turned up in Minot, ND for a Florida kidnapping, that would be a pretty good lead.)

Ben, yes. If the FBI finds a substantial amount of cash in your possession that was marked or recorded prior to being handed to a kidnapper, they are going to expect you to provide a really good reason why you are now in possession of that money. If you claim to have received it from someoneelse, you are going to be expected to name that person (and explain why you were given that cash).

[tcburnett]

*Originally posted by tomndebb *
tc, sorry, I should have been clearer: they do mark the bills, but they rarely try to run all over creation looking at every bill in every bank in every town in order to see where the bills have been spent

Now we are on the same wavelength. Or I might be off on an harmonic, but at least I agree with you, Tom.

[scr4]

If I may ask a related question - in all movies the kidnapper requests unmarked, non-sequential bills. Are there ways to mark the bills which is not detectable by the kidnapper? Or would they simply record the numbers on each bill?

[tcburnett]

*Originally posted by scr4 *
**If I may ask a related question - in all movies the kidnapper requests unmarked, non-sequential bills. Are there ways to mark the bills which is not detectable by the kidnapper? Or would they simply record the numbers on each bill? **

They do both. Obviously the bills are not marked in a manner visible to the suspects (“ATTENTION: This is a marked bill! Anyone seeing this should call the police immediately”), but there are various compounds that can mark linen. Some flouresce under various wavelengths of light. Some leave an indelible mark on anyone who touches the bill (invisible in regular light of course). Other things are used occasionally. Radioactive compounds were considered at one time but I have no evidence that they were ever used.

[RealityChuck]

I know that banks keep a supply of “marked” bills in every teller’s cash drawer. These bills are never used in normal transactions – only when the drawer is completely emptied (i.e., in a robbery).

The marking is simply a matter of writing down the serial numbers. The list is kept in a safe place away from the drawer. After the robbery, the list of marked bills is given to the police. Nothing is written on the bill.

I don’t know if this method is used in kidnapping cases (it may not be possible to write down all the serial numbers in the time allowed), but it seems to be better than writing on the bill itself, since it leaves no trace.

[whitetho]

The Lindbergh baby kidnapping was one of the rare cases when a marked bill was found in circulation, and helped crack the case:

From The Lindbergh Kidnapping

The Lindbergh case remained unsolved for two-and-a-half years, until September 1934. At that time, an alert gas station attendant in New York City became suspicious when a customer used a $10 gold certificate to pay for his gas – all gold certificates were to have been turned in to banks by April 1933, when the United States went off the gold standard. The attendant made a note of the customer’s vehicle license number on the certificate, although at the time, he did not link it to the Lindbergh kidnapping. A few days later, a teller at a Manhattan bank recognized the gold certificate as one of the marked bills in the Lindbergh ransom and reported it to the Bureau’s New York City office. Checking the automobile license number recorded by the gas station attendant with the Department of Motor Vehicles, Bureau investigators found a vehicle registered to Bruno Richard Hauptmann, an unemployed carpenter who lived in the Bronx.

[tcburnett]

*Originally posted by RealityChuck *
**I know that banks keep a supply of “marked” bills in every teller’s cash drawer. These bills are never used in normal transactions – only when the drawer is completely emptied (i.e., in a robbery).

The marking is simply a matter of writing down the serial numbers. The list is kept in a safe place away from the drawer. After the robbery, the list of marked bills is given to the police. Nothing is written on the bill.

I don’t know if this method is used in kidnapping cases (it may not be possible to write down all the serial numbers in the time allowed), but it seems to be better than writing on the bill itself, since it leaves no trace. **

Chuck is correct in the case of banks. Many of them also try to slip in ‘dye packs’ that go off after a few minutes leaving the money worthless and the suspect brightly colored.

In kidnapping cases it is different, but I have already covered that in a previous post.