If you have a high end color copier, say at work, try to copy money. It will not even make you a copy for Monopoly. The copier knows and will not play.
Hey, the game show Cash cab passes out handfuls of fake bills.
I lost interest in the show when I found that out. I don’t know why.
Near the end of his life (and long after the statute of limitations had expired), director William Friedkin told an interviewer he’d successfully spent a number of the fake bills that were produced as props for To Live and Die in LA. (Of course, he might well have been lying about that too.)
If you’re fast enough on the pause button, you can see other game shows like the Price is Right also uses Motion Picture money. Sad indeed.
Our local coin club had a discussion about counterfeits (mostly fake Chinese knock-offs of rare coins). I brought in one of the Motion Picture bills, since no one had seen one in real life. Unfortunately, no one wanted to buy it from me for, say $100.
Come to think of it, one of my mom’s neighbors is an electrician who often works on movies. She probably got one from the set of some movie, and that’s how my mom got it.
This video is about how photocopiers work (part of “The Secret Life of…” series from the BBC) by Tim Hunkin who is an absolute legend amongst makers.
The link is to a “re-mastered” version of the episode which includes Tim talking about how the episode was made, at the end (from about the 25min mark). He has a funny story relevant to your comment.
Funny. Or rather, funny money. I already stated that my store is in possession of fake $1’s and $5’s. They’re not the most common fake denominations but they do exist. In one case singles were the only bills made by a counterfeiter.
The most commonly faked bill is the $20, not the $50 or $100. If stores scrutinize the higher denominations it’s because they’re a greater amount of money to lose.
The correct course of action for the store employee is to refuse to accept the bill. That does mean, technically, handing the bill back to the person who offered it, but doing that is not illegal. At least not according to the corporate lawyers employed by the corporation I work for.
Yes. This is true. I have caught a $100 with an Abe Lincoln watermark and other security features for a $5, so it happens. Why they used a 5 instead of a 1 I don’t know.
I believe there’s no security thread on the one-dollar bill but only on the five-dollar bills and above, so perhaps they’re counting on the recipient looking only for the security thread without looking at what it says.
I’m surprised at the movie money getting out into the wild. They used a bunch of it in Breaking Bad, and listening to the commentary/podcast about the show’s production, they said using real money would probably have been easier. The company that provides the fake money is so strict and controlling, because obviously they don’t want the money to escape, that they basically had to treat it as if it was real money.
Movie money is readily available on eBay. I bought a single note once, just for fun, but you can get packs of 200 or 400 notes, if you’re feeling like a big spender. Stuff your wallet with a wad of notes!
I met a guy in September who has purchased a lot of movie money. He says he drops notes in casinos and at conferences. He also said he’s been banned from several casinos, and at a hacking conference (that’s his job, professional computer security) he was asked by the organizers to please stop. “We know this is a conference about hacking, any you are demonstrating a form of social hacking, but a large fraction of our security is spending their time dealing with those bills, and we’d appreciate it if you stopped.”
I understand why he was banned and asked to stop.
That’s incredibly irresponsible.
I take it you didn’t like Abby Hoffman, either. 
Abbie❤
This is the correct response.
Cheap counterfeit bills will fail. Real bills- unless very old- will not.
No. Look, a lot of bad bills are cheap, and they look bad too. Mostly they take a couple of good bills and pass the bad one in between.
Right.
Technically, you are supposed to turn those in.
Yep.
The cheap counterfeiter goes for 50s and 20s.
It is okay to refuse the bill. You are not a official. The Secret Service would really you send the bills to them, telling them how you got them, and where. They prefer a store not keep them for ‘examples”, but other than a mild chiding they arent gonna arrest anyone for that.
Right, but the 20’s are pretty bad. There are some 100’s that are really hard to spot- a lot of American 100s overseas is fake.
Right, I mean- you just dont take it in the first place. In theory, once you accept it, you cant give it back of course.
It’s about 19.5 years old, but this is a gift link to a New York Times Magazine article about extremely high quality counterfeits believed to be produced by the North Korean government. They are produced on intaglio presses similar to the kind used by the US Treasury. They also feature the same sort of color-changing ink that the US Treasury uses. The American government has exclusive rights to green-to-black color-changing ink, while the North Koreans bought rights to green-to-magenta color-changing ink. The ink the North Koreans use may have been manipulated to look more black.
And here is the Wikipedia article on the same subject.
Almost all copiers will refuse to copy banknotes. Copiers look for the so-called “EURion constellation”, a distinctive pattern of five circles that appears on most modern banknotes, and refuse to copy anything that contains that pattern. Sometimes the circles are integrated into the bill design, looking like the zeros in a bunch of numbers, sometimes they are just bare circles in the background. Look at any of the bills in your wallet and you’ll probably see them.
The details of the constellation and how it works are a secret supposedly known only to banknote designers and photocopy/printer companies. It was discovered accidentally in 2002 by Markus Kuhn, a fellow I’ve collaborated with slightly on another project.
The corporate lawyers and our store security asked the relevant authorities if we could keep a few examples for training purposes and it was OK’d. Presumably if the rules change the funny money will be turned over to the proper authorities.
Do they still use the pens? When I worked at Wal-Mart we were supposed to use them on $50’s and $100’s. I don’t reckon they’re all that accurate with all varieties, yet they will indicate some is.
What you do is call the manager and it’s their problem.
I have handled some pretty good looking fake $100s yet they don’t have that USA paper feel. With the holograms and other security stuff I’m surprised the Secret Service is doing anything besides partying everywhere they go/