Funny money O_o

[karma_gypsy]

Also, how the hell do you suggest we keep people in the shop til the police get off their fat arses and get over here? With berserk guy I just wanted him out of the shop before he started attacking me! O_O

I agree, if an SC going berserk over a fake bill, then there's no telling what they could do . . . especially if you're by yourself . . . I haven't had a fake bill yet (and we have one of those special markers) although I never bother with the lower demonations, 20s, 10s and 5s . . . Doesn't usually the feel of the bill give it away also?

[Spiffy McMoron]

I work at a Liquor World and since late 2003 (or was it 2004?) we haven't been taking any older $100 bills or any US $50's or $100s.

Sadly, not having any of my own $50 or $100 bills of my own, (Spiffy=broke student) I really don't know if it applies to all bills of that denomination, or just the old style bills. I just don't remember many/any signs that say we'll accept new, but not old.

[jb17kx]

I remember once that some kid around 15 or 16 come down to the computer store I wor in, pulled a game off the shelf and a $100 out of his pocket and gave them both to me.
Now, if anybody here has handled Australian money recently, you'd know why conterfieting isn't much of a problem at all. (If you don't, check these links. You can very elasily tell a fake: 1 2)
So I took the note and voided the sale. The note was made of paper (ie, something that we haven't done since the eighties), and was clearly a very badly made forgery. I had to stilfe a laugh thinking about who could be stupid enough to bother. I just kept the note and told the kid, who was looking less and less cool every minute, to hightail it now, and not to try this again because we've got cameras and the police like to look at the pictures they take.
I don't think we'll see him back.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

Well generally speaking, if a person is dropping over a thousand in cash on a purchase and only $5.00 is fake then there is compelling evidence to show that the passing of the money wasn't intentional.

If you're paying for a small purchase and you drop a fake note then it's a little harder but still possible to prove it was an accident.

Frankly the best way to prevent it is to know the anti-counterfitting measures your money uses and to chek it as soon as you get it. If you pass a bad note you don't get the money back. If your bank passes you a bad note and you check it in front of them (and I do all the time) you get a real one since THEY are the ones passing it on to you and you caught THEM at it.

If they refuse you then threaten to call the police and report it to them...you'll get the cash back quick since the cops will shut them down while they're sorting it out. IF they still are being jerks then you do it for real and watch the fun as the bank gets shut down for an hour or two while the police check for signs of a counterfiting racket.

It's been done before, I saw a bank shut down for three days because a local counterfitter was blanketing the area with fake (old-style) $100 bills. Found 60 of them in their search.

Mongo

[Lace Neil Singer]

I agree, if an SC going berserk over a fake bill, then there's no telling what they could do . . . especially if you're by yourself . . . I haven't had a fake bill yet (and we have one of those special markers) although I never bother with the lower demonations, 20s, 10s and 5s . . . Doesn't usually the feel of the bill give it away also?

Yup, plus all English notes in any case have a shiny look to them. As far as I'm concerned, keeping the note is all you can really do; it at least stops the customer from handing it to someone else. Had I tried to keep berserk guy in the shop, he probably would have taken a swing at me, and since I was all alone at the time I was reluctant to take that risk.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

And here when I read the title "Funny Money" I was thinking Monopoly money . . .

Which, believe it or not, a customer actually tried to use one day many moons ago back when your DGoddess was running a register part-time at the WD. . .

Just another normal day on the register (Express Lane, I think. I usually had some of the more off-the-wall stuff happen on that register than any of the others) when an older lady came through w/a few items to purchase. Nothing unusual throughout the transaction, until she took some money out of her wallet to pay.

It was Monopoly money. Ya know, the money from the popular board game.

Even though it seemed amusing at the time, still I was trying to keep a calm face about the matter and politely explained that she had play money from a board game and couldn't use that to pay for her purchase and did she have any other currency.

She didn't and kept insisting that it was money. Yes, it was money, just not REAL money. Three times I went through the explanation, but the poor lady wasn't understanding it at all (I suspect she may have had a touch of senility or Alzheimer's.) I finally had to get the front end supervisor to see if she could explain it better than I could so that the lady could understand.

The supervisor didn't have much better luck than I, but finally the lady ended up having to go home to get some actual money. I can't even recall if she ever returned for her purchase.

Just thought I'd share that one tonight (and I'm starting to feel like an old woman out here in my rocking chair, recalling vintage war stories.)

[repsac]

I've had to turn in counterfeits before. The easiest thing to do is approach the bank and lay it out. Most of the time,I say to them quote "Listen, I got this in change and it just doesn't feel/look/seem right. Would you mind checking it for me?" The bank runs it through a scanner or blacklight and gets right back. Nine times out of ten, it's real, but just odd. The one time though, they take it after I sign it and date when I got it. Then it goes in a baggie and is turned over to the police.

[BrassCowboy]

This is sorta the same, I guess. One guy handed a cashier at work a stack of quarters, with a fake "arcade coin" mixed inside. We didn't catch it until later that night, but still, it was 25 cents, who cares?

[Canarr]

I find it hard to believe that you'd have to prove you didn't intend to pay with counterfeit money (innocent until proven guilty and all that).

AFAIK, in Germany you just lose the cash and need to answer a few questions. Of course, if you tried paying with a stack of fake bills, you'd get a much closer scrutiny, but for a single note? It'd be impossible to prove the intent, and just a waste of time to even try.

[Barefootgirl]

When I worked for the police, one of my jobs was in the Property Office, which handled evidence, rather than lost property. We had racks and racks full of fake money, some of it brilliant, some of it laughable. My favourite one was the pile of PHOTOCOPIED £10 notes, that had been copied on a colour photocopier by someone with good ideas, but zero intelligence...he had only copied the fronts. So they felt wrong as soon as you picked them up, and as soon as you turned them over they were just blank paper. Muppet.

Some of the notes were exceptionally good, printed on the right paper, watermarks, strip, hologram, everything. In one case, the only way you could tell they were counterfeits was that they all had the same serial number. Quite a few of those were being passed by banks, worryingly.

In the UK, you won't be arrested for simply using a fake note, unless you are the photocopier genius and have forty more of them stuffed in your pockets (honestly, I'm not making this up). The shop staff WILL confiscate them, and should hand them over to the police, even if its only one or two notes, becasue you don't know how many other shops in the area have also had one or two fakes passed, and if they are all the same sort of fake, its easy to deduce that there's someone running a ring in the area.

[Anakah]

Man If I come across counterfeit bills everybody goes postal. I once came across a counterfeit 20 and for all the money in the world I couldn't recall what the old woman had looked like that passed it to me. Honestly I'm more interested in their money than their faces and that's what I told security when they were interrogating me. Treated ME like the criminal. I went out 20 short in my drawer. Jerks. I work in a cage though.
You'd think with all their survelliance that they'd be able to spot her? Hmm.

[MadMike]

Man If I come across counterfeit bills everybody goes postal. I once came across a counterfeit 20 and for all the money in the world I couldn't recall what the old woman had looked like that passed it to me. Honestly I'm more interested in their money than their faces and that's what I told security when they were interrogating me. Treated ME like the criminal. I went out 20 short in my drawer. Jerks. I work in a cage though.
You'd think with all their survelliance that they'd be able to spot her? Hmm.

I'm glad that never happened to me then. I am terrible at remembering faces. At least you were able to remember it was an old woman, I wouldn't even have remembered that much.

[TruthHurts]

I never got funny money in a work enviroment (that I know of). One time though I was at a local bar with my boyfriend, we were walking home kinda drunk and I wanted to pop into a nearby candy store for junk food. I gave the clerk a five that I got as change from the bar and she used that pen thing on it and discovered it was fake. No prob I payed with another bill and returned to the bar simply to inform them that they got fake money. The bartender merely exchanged the 5 for another and placed back in the till, I tried to remind her the bill was fake but she simply said "I'll remember what bill it is"

I have a funny feeling the fake most likely ended up in the hands of another unsuspecting patron.

[Kelly Lynne]

This is sorta the same, I guess. One guy handed a cashier at work a stack of quarters, with a fake "arcade coin" mixed inside.

I kind of did that in reverse once. That is, I was at a LARP (live-action roleplay), and the in-game money was "silver," little fake coins, about quarter-sized. I went to pay for my spell components or whatever, and the merchant looked at me oddly. "What kind of fake money is this, and who is this ugly bald man?" Yep, I had a real quarter mixed in with my game coins.