Say you own an establishment that accepts cash payment. The blondie at the register accepts a $50 from a man and sticks it under the drawer as instructed. Upon bringing a drop to the bank, unknown to establishment employees, it is found that said $50 bill is counterfeit. What happens? Does said establishment eat the fake or does the bank or what?
The establishment eats the $50. If a bank catches a fake bill the the deposit, it must confiscate it and report it to the FBI. …guess a teller job wasnt useless after all.
And if the bank doesn’t catch it? How are cash drops ‘audited’?
If the bank doesnt catch it, the teller could either hand it right back out, or they could catch it later on in the process. My bank was pretty good at catchin fakes. Had about 10 or so come throught while i was there.
normally though we would run the bills of large deposits through a machine that would verify the money
There’s apparently the new type of fake that you can’t detect with the pen that they mark the bills with. It’s a $5 bill with all of the graphics washed off and the $100 graphics printed on.
cfagoal2 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > There’s apparently the new type of fake that you > can’t detect with the pen that they mark the bills > with. It’s a $5 bill with all of the graphics > washed off and the $100 graphics printed on. This is the stem of my question. A few showed up in my location so some establishments will no longer accept $100 or $50.
Anyone notice that ATMs are starting to dispense $50 bills more often. I go to take $60 out and get a $50 and a $10… Now I start wondering how to convince someone to take the $50 ASAP so I don’t have large bills that people don’t want to change.
I wonder how much it costs to make a really good counterfeit bill? I would think counterfeit $5’s and $10’s could be passed with remarkable ease. While they obviously wouldn’t have the profit margin of $50’s and $100’s, I would think the ease of dumping them would at least allow for a niche market.
I saw an ‘american greed’ episode on a counterfeiter who made 20’s and 50’s in quantities large enough to make all sorts of bank. He printed them at home on regular inkjet printers, and sprayed hairspray on them to get around the pen (the film of the cheap aerosol hairspray would reproduce the ink reaction on a real bill). He would sell the bills at 30 cents on the dollar, and the buyers would further distribute- idea being to keep it well spread out in terms of quantity per area. This was in LA in early 2000’s and was only caught bc, of course, he got too greedy! And because he printed the same serial number on EVERY bill- so all the fakes were easily tracked to him. Banks don’t use pens, and a decent training session would prevent these issues as all of the new security features are quite difficult to reproduce. The hardest I believe is the raised color-shifting ink.
Watch “Catch me if you can” movie made on counterfeit
Many scanners are programmed to recognize when they are scanning a bill. Some will refuse to do it; others will deliberately rotate or do something that makes it clearly a scanned copy. I was doing this once (to highlight something on a bill that I wanted to show a friend on the net), and it was pretty interesting. I’m not sure if this happens with other currencies, but I remember thinking “Wow, it recognized that this was money”.
Re:^^ the program I watched covered this… the dude it was about inspired this since he was simply scanning the bill, it inspired the FBI to develop technology in concert w/ the printer manufacturers to do this. I was really surprised at how simple his operation was- out of his house in the valley- using a injet, scanner, recycled newsprint and hairspray. Usually I’ve heard of sophisticated counterfeiters and drug cartels doing it… but this dude was one of the most successful and was basically an ex con with a printer 
http://www.details.com/culture-trends/news-and-politics/200908/the-most-notorious-counterfeiter-albert-talton article about the dude
I saw on Discovery I think how they turned a $5 to a $100. It was an undercover sting and was pretty tight.
I used to work for a central bank and part of my job was related to coutnerfeit bills. That pen is BS, only checks whether the paper is wood or cotton-based which is easy to get around in all sorts of ways, including the hairspray method. Counterfeits are rarely top notch (the only exception I can think of was the US$100 supernote being printed in faciliites similar to that of an official bank note manufacturer). If you know what to look for you can spot a good counterfeit in half a second; very few counterfeits will attempt to reproduce less obvious security features such as the security thread or watermark, and when they do, they typically do a very poor job of it. So few people check features such as those that it isn’t worth it for the counterfeiter to reproduce those features, only adds a small amount to his sale price.
Say someone gave you a bunch of twenties as change for a large cash purchase and when you tried to buy something with one it turned out it was fake and you realize all the rest where as well. Would you try to pass them off on others through various purchases orwould you hand them over to the authourities?
bchadwick Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Anyone notice that ATMs are starting to dispense > $50 bills more often. > > I go to take $60 out and get a $50 and a $10… > Now I start wondering how to convince someone to > take the $50 ASAP so I don’t have large bills that > people don’t want to change. Bchad, are you in Manhattan? I figured that would be the first place in the US to start using 50’s more frequently. What bank’s ATM was it? It’s kind of odd how in America it’s rare to carry anything bigger than a $20 (and if you do people think it’s drug related or something you got in a HS graduation card) while in Europe, ATMs toss 50 and 100 euro notes all the time. I’ve been to Europe many times but I haven’t noticed a large aversion to using debit or credit cards, but maybe I’m wrong. about that.