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I took a counterfeit bill today

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  • I took a counterfeit bill today

    In my defense, who counterfeits $10 bills?

    It was fairly busy at the beginning of my shift, so by the time I got a chance to drop money into the safe, I had a lot of money in my drawer. I went to drop a stack of $10s, and one of them kept getting spit out by the bill reader. Normally when it does that it's because the bill is wrinkled or faded, but this one looked fine. It did look a little discolored, though, so I held it up to look for the watermark, and there wasn't one. Uh oh. So I check it with the counterfeit pen, and it dries brown. Yeah, it's a fake.

    I show it to my CW, and she agrees that it's phony. She calls the boss to let him know, and he wants to know if I remember who gave it to me or when. No, I don't remember. Nobody stuck out to me as being suspicious, and the bill was a good enough forgery that I didn't notice it until I looked closely at it, which obviously I don't do to every bill when we've got a line out the door.

    I doubt I'm going to get in any trouble for it; store policy is that we only have to use the counterfeit pens on $50s and $100s, and like I said it looked fine at first glance. I'm just really irritated about it.
    It doesn't matter if you win or lose, as long as you look really cool doing it! -- Julio Scoundrel, Order of the Stick

  • #2
    That sucks. Glad to hear, though, that your store won't take it out on you.

    Canada's got these weird, weird $20, $50 and $100 bills now http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/stor...mer-bills.html ... they're heavily plasticized (made of polymer) and have all sorts of odds and ends in terms of design and security, including what looks like transparent areas that actually have "metallic images" and hidden numbers in them. I'm sure somebody will come up with a way to counterfeit them but it's gonna take a lot more than a Xerox machine or a computer scanner.

    I think some counterfeiters periodically deal with smaller-denomination bills precisely because they're far less likely to be carefully scrutinized. Somebody gives you a $50 or a $100 bill, you automatically check it -- but who's got time to check every $10 bill they get?

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    • #3
      Bleh. I hate the new canadian bills. They stick together and make it difficult to count. I pity my friends who work at my previous job who sometimes have to count 5k in twenties.
      Go for the eyes!

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      • #4
        Here in Australia, we have those bills (have had them for about twenty years, after having paper ones). I think they're great, much better than paper and a lot harder to forge. They also don't cop damage if they're wet like paper ones do, and they won't just rip, unless there's already a small tear in them.

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        • #5
          Quoth Pixilated View Post
          That sucks. Glad to hear, though, that your store won't take it out on you.

          Canada's got these weird, weird $20, $50 and $100 bills now http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/stor...mer-bills.html ... they're heavily plasticized (made of polymer) and have all sorts of odds and ends in terms of design and security, including what looks like transparent areas that actually have "metallic images" and hidden numbers in them. I'm sure somebody will come up with a way to counterfeit them but it's gonna take a lot more than a Xerox machine or a computer scanner.

          I think some counterfeiters periodically deal with smaller-denomination bills precisely because they're far less likely to be carefully scrutinized. Somebody gives you a $50 or a $100 bill, you automatically check it -- but who's got time to check every $10 bill they get?
          Sounds like Australian bills. Best way to check for counterfeit bills with the polymer ones is as follows:

          -Try and tear them. Polymer notes are incredibly hard to tear.
          -Try and scrunch it up into a ball. Real notes will bounce back, fake ones don't.

          Quoth SuperNat View Post
          Here in Australia, we have those bills (have had them for about twenty years, after having paper ones). I think they're great, much better than paper and a lot harder to forge. They also don't cop damage if they're wet like paper ones do, and they won't just rip, unless there's already a small tear in them.
          And yet people still forge $50 notes. Usually the issue is based upon either the microprinting, or the fact that the bill feels laminated. (basically each of the notes apart from the $10 note, is microprinted with the denomination somewhere on it. The $10 note has two poems microprinted.)
          The best professors are mad scientists! -Zoom

          Now queen of USSR-Land...

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          • #6
            Could be the person who handed to you didn't know it was fake. If a fake is good, it'll get passed around. Given out as change. Used to purchase something else. Given out as change again. Especially a $10 bill. As noted, smaller bill like that isn't going to be looked at as hard.

            My sympathies. Pisses me off to no end to let something like that get past me. I haven't (that I know of) missed a counterfeit bill, but I did allow a fraudulent check get deposited. Sure, I put it on hold, but that didn't protect my customer since when the legal hold limit passed, they figured "oh, it must be good then" and followed the instructions to western union the money away before the check bounced out of their account a few days later. So many people don't want to deal with the questions, but a simple "do you know who this check came from" can work wonders to trigger the red-flag answers to catch those scam checks before they're deposited. And they make a person out a hell of a lot more than ten bucks when they're missed.

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            • #7
              My store also got a fake $10 this week. It sucks but now we're checking all but the ones.
              I'm sorry, but I've reached my maximum allowable exposure to stupidity limit for the day. I'll have to get back to you tomorrow.

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              • #8
                To be fair, the person who handed it to you might not have known it was a fake. The 100s and 50s tend to be found pretty quickly, because people take them to stores to break them. 10s, on the other hand, can get passed around in small, person-to-person transactions where people don't think to use a counterfeit pen.

                We had someone try to use a fake $100 bill in our store recently. My CW who was working the register refused to accept it, and our manager ended up getting involved and refused it, too. Why? Because it was a fresh, crisp, perfect $100 bill from the 90s. You know, the ones without all the newfangled fail safes. My manager even explained to the guy why we wouldn't take it, but her answer of, "You couldn't have gotten this 'fresh from the bank' because they don't make these anymore" didn't seem to phase him.

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                • #9
                  Quoth Lady_Foxfire View Post
                  who counterfeits $10 bills?
                  Sorry this happened to you. While your question was probably a rhetorical one, a couple of years ago there was a rash of fake $10s being circulated at a popular teen hangout in town. A group of teens were knowingly passing off the fakes and even selling them to other kids in the area. The bills looked so much like real ones, the police thought some other source was behind actually making the bills. Most likely a relative or another connection to one of the boys in the group.

                  Counterfeiters tend not to just go for the larger bills. A former co-worker got a fake $1 bill once.

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                  • #10
                    Ah, bugger, fake $10s are going around again? I better let my people know. Newbie doesn't even CHECK any of her bills, I check them all during cash out.
                    Now a member of that alien race called Management.

                    Yeah, you see that right. Pink. Harness.

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                    • #11
                      I haven't gotten any fake ten's recently but I know we have a rather bad fake one taped to the inside of the video cabinet from a few years back. We did have a fake $100 come through, it was reprinted on to I think a bleached $5 so it looked and FELT very real except no strip or water mark.

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                      • #12
                        I think Canada has the same basic bills as Australia; you're one of the main reason we're transitioning to them now, and I believe it's fundamentally the same technology (just different security keys and pictures).

                        Of course as the more common bills come into circulation (20's just showed up last month), the news is doing their usual "experiments' on the new currency to show it's better/worse than what we had before.

                        I remember when the Toonies came out, just about every local news outlet would have one or two stories about how the centre of the coin could be popped out.

                        With these bills, they seem to be really stressing the Dryer test (toss them in the dryer and see what happens), and some other more extreme heat and cold tests, looking for the one example they can use to show they fail.
                        Last edited by MadMike; 12-15-2012, 05:15 AM. Reason: Please don't quote the entire post.

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                        • #13
                          I use to work for the company that made the polymer notes. They are the only company that makes them, and they're made here in Australia. My job was to count the finished product, looking for defects and to also destroy bad print runs.

                          What the company does is the base coats, the security features and product support. The country then prints the images on it. The company can do the whole production if required (which was for Vietnam).

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                          • #14
                            The pens aren't as effective as they used to be. We don't even have them in the cage cuz people are taking five's and washing them with 50's. Unless they give you good money checking training it's not really fair.

                            The only ways we check is by the feel, the strip and the face. But even then if its busy there's just no time. It sucks to take a fake bill. I'm glad they won't hold it against you. They hold us responsible which I think is plain crap.

                            I LOVE the new canadian money and I've always loved australian money. I wish our (american) money was like that! They're tough and I heard (dunno if its true) that if you accidentally wash them they float to the top of the washer. If we could wash our money there'd be less germs! lol

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                            • #15
                              I had a counterfeit $1 the other day..... It was obviously printed off a colour copier on regular copy paper....

                              Honestly, isn't that the most UNmotivated crook ever? Work an eight-hour day and make, what? $243?

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