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Thread: Counterfeit $1 Bills Seized

  1. #46
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kev Williams View Post
    There was a movie several years ago, forget the name, one of you will probably remember - the counterfeiters had a clever way to make money from low $ bills:

    All paper money 'in the system' eventually ends up incinerated. After making up their bogus bills, they broke into the place where pallets of cash about to be incinerated was stored- they swapped in their bad cash for good cash. They made a ton of money watching their bogus money burn up, and nobody was the wiser...

    The problem with this idea is that most, if not all, Fed Reserves process all currency they receive on counter/sorters that off sort bills that are mutilated then auto destroy them on the spot. They are shredded into very small confetti. Most Feds have tours and you can buy small containers of the confetti to take home. As far as I know, there is no master depot for burning old cash. The counter/sorters used by the Fed are large machines that cost in the millions.

    Mutilated coin on the other hand is a whole other beast.

    In the early 90's, I was at a convention and one of the speakers was from Bureau of Engraving and Printing. This was about a year before the first redesign of the hundred. He asked that the doors be closed and locked, then posted a couple of his fellow workers at the doors. He then passed around samples of the new hundreds so we could see them. He talked about the new anti-counterfeiting features the bills would have, but only about half of them. The rest were classified and he couldn't tell us. When he was done, no one could leave until he had every sample back in his hands.

    Printing $1 makes no sense to me. As others have said, the cost to pass them would be high for little return. A $5 or a $10 would make so much more sense.
    I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love.... It seems to me that Montana is a great splash of grandeur....the mountains are the kind I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda. Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans. Montana has a spell on me. It is grandeur and warmth. Of all the states it is my favorite and my love.

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  2. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by Pat Barry View Post
    Mike, I dont understand your question about the waiter and pocketbook. All the waiters either took our card to run it at their station or plugged it into a device they carried with them.
    You should never let someone take your card somewhere to run it.... insist it be done at the table or go with him to run it....

  3. #48
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    Why would you counterfeit a $1? Wouldn't it be just as easy to counterfeit $20 or any of the bills without the metal strip?
    Printing $1 makes no sense to me. As others have said, the cost to pass them would be high for little return. A $5 or a $10 would make so much more sense.
    The people printing the bogus bills are not the same people as those passing them. They are making their money by printing then selling the bills at a discount.

    Found this at > https://www.bostonfed.org/news-and-e...ake-money.aspx :

    The major counterfeiters are usually part of organized crime, drug cartels, or rogue governments, and they sell their counterfeit bills wholesale, for 50 cents on the dollar or sometimes even less, Panariti said. Once these bills are purchased, they are tried in the retail world, and if they succeed, they become a part of the currency circulation.
    Society tends to hold together because most people prefer to be honest. It is those who do not have a well aligned moral compass who are willing to make a few extra dollars every day through less than honest means.

    Another question in this, was this an intent to profit by an unscrupulous printer or was it an attempt to disrupt commerce?

    jtk
    Last edited by Jim Koepke; 01-29-2020 at 3:30 PM. Reason: wording & added quoute
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  4. #49
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    Quote Originally Posted by Barry McFadden View Post
    You should never let someone take your card somewhere to run it.... insist it be done at the table or go with him to run it....
    ? Never a problem with this. It is common practice. Go with him to run it? No. Not necessary.

  5. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by Pat Barry View Post
    ? Never a problem with this. It is common practice. Go with him to run it? No. Not necessary.
    I've heard far too many stories of the card being scanned numerous times when it is out of your sight....

  6. #51
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    Quote Originally Posted by Barry McFadden View Post
    You should never let someone take your card somewhere to run it.... insist it be done at the table or go with him to run it....
    In Europe all credit cards are chip and PIN so they are required to use those handheld readers at the table in order for the customer to enter a PIN to complete the transaction at the table. Its the American tourists with the primitive chip & sign cards that are the exception. In some countries, like Germany, people still prefer to use cash for small transactions. They also dont have "mileage points" connections with credit cards, and some places add a surcharge for card transactions or have high minimums.

  7. #52
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    The $20 bill has been redesigned multiple times since the $1 bill was last redesigned in the 1960s. The Bureau of Engraving states there are no plans to redesign the $1 due to little counterfeiting.

    My Epson scanner will not scan US currency. One day I had a large pile of checks and a hundred dollar bill to deposit at the bank. I was scanning all the checks before I deposited them and somehow ended up putting the hundred dollar bill in the scanner. The software would not let me scan US currency.

  8. #53
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    I listened to a podcast about a guy that used to supply prop money to movie sets (his business is in movie props). I think he supplied the cash for Ocean's 11. If you haven't seen it, the last scene is this huge cash everywhere getting stolen, etc in a Las Vegas casino. So lots of cash. Well, they followed the rules regarding fake cash (you can sort of pick and choose it sounds like, but things have to be obviously wrong with the cash. It can't actually look real upon examination). Some people walked off set with fake cash and started spending it and getting away with it. The FBI showed up to his business and he said something like "I thought it was just funny at first, but it got serious very quickly". He said he no longer supplies prop cash, the risk isn't worth it. It sounded like he could have been in serious trouble if he hadn't been able to prove that he followed the gov't rules for prop money.

  9. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian Elfert View Post
    The $20 bill has been redesigned multiple times since the $1 bill was last redesigned in the 1960s. The Bureau of Engraving states there are no plans to redesign the $1 due to little counterfeiting.

    My Epson scanner will not scan US currency. One day I had a large pile of checks and a hundred dollar bill to deposit at the bank. I was scanning all the checks before I deposited them and somehow ended up putting the hundred dollar bill in the scanner. The software would not let me scan US currency.
    Maybe it didn't care about the $1 bill. Or one of the features in a $100 bill is that it tells the scanner it can't copy it.

  10. #55
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    Quote Originally Posted by Leo Graywacz View Post
    Maybe it didn't care about the $1 bill. Or one of the features in a $100 bill is that it tells the scanner it can't copy it.
    An alphabet soup of federal and international agencies have been working with technology manufactures to help counter unwanted activities and to help with forensic investigations.

    Here is a part of a page on laser printers:

    Some of the documents that we previously received through FOIA suggested that all major manufacturers of color laser printers entered a secret agreement with governments to ensure that the output of those printers is forensically traceable. Although we still don't know if this is correct, or how subsequent generations of forensic tracking technologies might work, it is probably safest to assume that all modern color laser printers do include some form of tracking information that associates documents with the printer's serial number.
    This came from a link (to the Electronic Frontier Foundation) in an article about the secret codes printers place on documents
    > https://gadgets.ndtv.com/laptops/fea...tadata-1714577 <

    It is likely that the scanning software in copiers and printers that are multi-function also have a form of recognition software built in to them.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  11. #56
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    Quote Originally Posted by Leo Graywacz View Post
    Maybe it didn't care about the $1 bill. Or one of the features in a $100 bill is that it tells the scanner it can't copy it.
    I didn't try the scanner with other denominations, but I assume the software knows what each denomination of US currency looks like and won't scan any of it.

  12. #57
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    I doubt that the scanner can identify the various denominations. But $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 notes have all been redesigned within the last 20 years to incorporate features that make it easier to identify counterfeit currency - e.g., images that are only visible when you hold the bill up to the light and images that change/move when you tilt the bill. These are probably things that the scanner can identify. The $1 bill on the other hand, hasn't been redesigned since the early 60's, so these features aren't present.

  13. #58
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    My only knowledge on bill scanning is having worked in an environment using bill scanners in vending machines. My work on them mostly involved removing jammed bills. The actual repair and testing was done by others in my department.

    The bill scanners could determine if a bill had the valid markings to indicate its authenticity and value. This, to the best of my understanding, was done with software. There may be similar detection software in scanners.

    If this is the case and a person new the 'points of detection' would it be possible to use the 'points of detection' when printing a document to make the document unable to be copied?

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

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