I have a $20 CDN bill that I know is counterfeit. I’ve had people put it in the counterfeit detectors in shops, etc., and only one of the machines caught it. I haven’t asked my bank to check it, though.
I’ve had 2 counterfeit $5s, both pretty poor quality, that I got in payment. The guy gives our driver a pile of $5s and $10s and I don’t know if he knows he’s passing queer or not. I’ve told him about it and since I got snarky the second time we haven’t had another. When I deposited the cash, both times my bank’s cash counter caught the bills and kept them and of course we were out the money. What they did with the bills I don’t know, we don’t have the Secret Service in Canada. I’m going to ask today, now I’m curious.
I like the terminology for making or passing counterfeit: you are “uttering” it.
[QUOTE=Cluricaun]
What does it look like? Does it seem false or fake to you? Can you post a pic? I’ve never seen one.
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If you are curious, next time you are in downtown Chicago stop by the Fed Reserve Bank on the W side of LaSalle N of Jackson. They have a neat little museum there with plenty of information and several examples of counterfeit bills. They also have a box containing $1 million, just in case you wondered what it looks like!
[QUOTE=tremorviolet]
Even if the PH manager had not explicitly mentioned counterfeits, she might still have been freaked out by the $20 and want to get rid of it. (that’s exactly what happened to my mom that I mentioned in my other post, the girl at the grocery had taken it, was scared and passed it on) That’s why the OP should go to the SS. They’ll talk to the bank and the PH girl and, if it was her, figure out where she got it from. Counterfeiting is taken very seriously and they will try to track the bill all the way back to the source.
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When I was a teller, Loss Prevention told us scare stories about tellers being fired for not wanting to be caught holding a counterfeit that they missed and trying to pass it on. Never saw it happen, but it is easy to understand. It is not bright, but it is human nature - they’ll risk getting fired to avoid a sure reprimand. Poor risk/reward tradeoff, IMO.
[QUOTE=Uncommon Sense]
You’re missing something. If the OP merely claimed that the 20 came out of the ATM the teller could match the serial number of the fake with all the serial numbers that actually came out of the machine. If there is a match what are the odds that it didn’t come from that ATM? Conversely, if it didn’t match the serial numbers of any bills in the ATM then the OP should have been detained.
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Here again, you are assuming that the bank keeps a list of the serial numbers of the several thousand bills in each of their ATM’s. They don’t. Or at least, they didn’t when I worked at a Bank holding company. Why would they? Just more records to keep, for no benefit.
If you ever want to figure out if a bank does something, ask yourself ‘will they make more money by doing this?’ Unless the answer is yes, the bank won’t be doing it.
[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
Here again, you are assuming that the bank keeps a list of the serial numbers of the several thousand bills in each of their ATM’s. They don’t. Or at least, they didn’t when I worked at a Bank holding company. Why would they? Just more records to keep, for no benefit.
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I wasn’t assuming they did. My post was based on if they did.
So, like most answers in this world: “It depends”. My original question to them also asked about any Federal, or State laws, but as you see that wasn’t specifically addressed.
[QUOTE=vison]
I have a $20 CDN bill that I know is counterfeit. I’ve had people put it in the counterfeit detectors in shops, etc., and only one of the machines caught it. I haven’t asked my bank to check it, though.
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[QUOTE=SpoilerVirgin]
Actually, the Secret Service was created (in 1865) to fight counterfeiting. Later their duties were expanded to include fighting all types of fraud against the government. They didn’t start protecting the president until 1902. They are still responsible for protecting against counterfeiting, along with investigating other types of financial fraud like identity theft.
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Not only that, but since hacking falls under wire fraud, they have a major role in investigating so-called hacking and cybercrime incidents.
…and there’s always a small chance that the bill is genuine, but an earlier series. I"ve seen bank personnel who know nothing about older currency. That’s why I asked about the year on the bill.
[QUOTE=pmwgreen]
Or did she just get confused about who gave her the bad $20? And did she get an extra tip?
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Well, I gave her $23, and when she came back to the door she had $23 in her hand. It’s possible she was that on the ball, but really, I’ve worked at Pizza Hut, and I’m going to guess a great big “no” on that one.
There’s no way for them to know that, of course. I know it, because my standard routine is Deposit paycheck->Go to ATM to get my spending money to the next paycheck. Basically, it means that the only way a $20 ends up in my pocket is if it comes from the bank’s ATM, and there’s only two branches of theirs I use, and it was most certainly the one closest to my house.
It came from their ATM.
Yes, despite what I wrote above, this is possible. But, the manager did call me from Domino’s and tell me that they had discovered it was a bad bill and brought it back. So, unless there is a two-person scam going on, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt.
[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
And then do what with all those serial numbers?
Compare it to something? What?
The Treasury does NOT publish a list of all the valid serial numbers on all the millions of bills in circulation. I doubt they even have such a listing. Besides the massive size of such a list, it would be incredibly useful to counterfeiters – a list of valid numbers to put on your fakes.
About the only useful thing the bank could do is record all the serial numbers (creating a huge file), and watch for a duplicate one coming in. And then you know that either this bill is a fake, or the one that came in a few days ago was a fake. Again, not much use.
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Keeping track of the money that comes through your bank has obvious value. I’m surprised it’s not required. It would make tracing counterfeiters in situations like this easier work. Searching a list of millions of integers can be done quickly with binary search. Your first computer could easily handle the task.
[QUOTE=alterego]
Keeping track of the money that comes through your bank has obvious value. I’m surprised it’s not required. It would make tracing counterfeiters in situations like this easier work.
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If it’s so obvious, specify it. How does it make more money for the bank?
They don’t take the loss from a counterfeit bill, the customer does (as the OP said). And tracing counterfeiters is the job of the police, not the bank. How would catching them make more money for the bank?
Even if there got to be too many counterfeits in circulation, people might begin to be hesitant to use cash, and would use bank credit/debit cards instead – now that would make money for the bank.
[QUOTE=alterego]
Searching a list of millions of integers can be done quickly with binary search.
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But serial numbers aren’t integers, they contain letters and would have to be treated as strings.
[QUOTE=alterego]
Your first computer could easily handle the task.
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No, the first computer I worked on was a Univac 1004; it could not have “easily handled” this task. The entire memory was less than 1,000 characters (and 6-bit characters, at that).
[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
If it’s so obvious, specify it. How does it make more money for the bank?
They don’t take the loss from a counterfeit bill, the customer does (as the OP said). And tracing counterfeiters is the job of the police, not the bank. How would catching them make more money for the bank?
Even if there got to be too many counterfeits in circulation, people might begin to be hesitant to use cash, and would use bank credit/debit cards instead – now that would make money for the bank.But serial numbers aren’t integers, they contain letters and would have to be treated as strings.No, the first computer I worked on was a Univac 1004; it could not have “easily handled” this task. The entire memory was less than 1,000 characters (and 6-bit characters, at that).
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Congratulations on your ancient computer. There are patents for modified bill scanners that do OCR on the bill and record the serial numbers in a database. Some of the machines are fully integrated into a system designed to be used by a teller. The Department of Homeland Security has also shown an interest in the devices. I don’t see why the idea is such a shock to you. Having the serial numbers of a large number of bills joined with a customer database allows you to track people. That’s valuable, useful information.
By the way, binary search works just as well on strings. If we’re nitpicking data types, I’m not really interested.