Posted on 01/06/2009 9:56:25 AM PST by BGHater
The Secret Service agent in Kansas City peered hard at a counterfeit $100 bill, ran a finger over it and grimaced in disgust.
It was bad, ugly work.
“Too slick, too,” said Charles Green, special agent in charge.
More counterfeiters are using today’s ink-jet printers, computers and copiers to make money that’s just good enough to pass, he said, even though their product is awful.
In the past, he said, the best American counterfeiters were skilled printers who used heavy offset presses to turn out decent 20s, 50s and 100s. Now that kind of work is rare and almost all comes from abroad.
Among American thieves, the 22-year veteran said sadly, “it’s a lost art.”
But as art fades, greed goes on. Ink-jet counterfeiting is thriving.
Part of the problem, Green said, is that the government has changed the money so much to foil counterfeiting. With all the new bills out there, citizens and even many police officers don’t know what they’re supposed to look like.
Moreover, many people see paper money less because they use credit or debit cards.
The result: Ink-jet counterfeiting accounted for 60 percent of $103 million in fake money removed from circulation from October 2007 to August 2008, the Secret Service reports. In 1995, the figure was less than 1 percent.
No other kind hits the Kansas City area, Green said, except a rare “floater” fake that comes in from New York or some other coastal metropolis.
Counterfeiting is a constant problem that gets worse during a slow economy. The 15 Secret Service agents in Kansas City collect an average of $300,000 in fake bills in the metro area each year, he said.
But Green shook his head. Some fake bills nowadays are for $5 and $10 — even $1.
“It’s crazy.”
An era passes
(Excerpt) Read more at kansascity.com ...
Google supernotes.
We have more to be concerned about other than homegrown counterfeiters.
Maybe it's a vending machine operator seeking to boost his bank deposits by emptying competitors' change machines.
what they do here is get a fake $50 and go into a bar. ask for a shot. take the shot, and get $44 in real money as change. then walk right out of the bar. bars are dark. the bartenders have wet hands and work quick. they never know until the end of the night.
I often thought that a good little side "charity" for a counterfeiting operation would involve the mass production of $1 bills, and "distribution" through donations to homeless people, street bums, etc.
Google for magnetic ink printers.
It's routine for businesses to print checks, including the magnetic ink.
That's true. It's also the primary motivation for all the recent improvements in our notes. The Russian mafia was getting really good at Franklins.
Sounds like it’s time for the bar owners to buy their bartenders a good flashlight or another tool for spotting fakes.
Yeah, but they use those pens on anything over $10.
I was in an establishment some years back where lots of ones get passed out(The Bada-Bing i.e. Satin Dolls in Lodi) and got change for a beer. Two of the $1 bills were glowing under the black lights, the other 10 or so weren’t. It’s an easy way to know they were printed on plain paper...also easy to know which ones to give out first too :)
Lots do. Cheap blacklight by the register. Fakes glow.
Define fake.
Counterfeit Fives are out there. I just saw one yesterday - an awful color copy which looked like someone pissed on the bill.
Interesting, this means the new measures worked.
$1 bills must be to because of the new measures.
I wonder what the injet fakes are being used for? do machines accept them?
Also I thought ALL printers give a microscopic serial number.
Warm, salt water into a coin slot has been known to produce both coins and cokes.
I remember back in the early 70’s copying a dollar bill on a black & white copier. I was surprised how good it looked, even without color, of course if anyone was at all being careful they would spot it as a fake.
With modern copying equipment it should be easy to make halfway decent copies.
BTW, I was just looking at some old German money by father brought back from WWII. It was actually made in the early 1920’s and was way better made for defying copying than our current money. It had all kinds of interesting colors and watermarks.
In 1978 I visited Hong Kong where a friend of mine, who was then head of the Fraud Squad of The Royal Hong Kong Police, told me they were having a problem with the Chinese counterfeiting the coins, not the notes.
He said that fortunately they were able to detect the counterfeit coins relatively easily as they had less imperfections and were better purity than the ones they got from the Royal Mint!
I remember at one time the same being true of Soviet militaria; badges and such. The reproductions were always of better quality than the originals.
today we call “counterfit money” mortgage backed securities.
(essentially the lenders were printing their own money)
The engineers at the vending machine companies are onto that one. Most drink machines divert the coins off to one side before they drop into the changer- the chute they roll through is slotted on the bottom, and there is a drain tube underneath.
I've been vending for eight years now, and I've only had two machines salted- and nobody's even tried in the past five years or so.
We do have thieves come through periodically who either punch out locks, or pry open machines with a large crowbar. Then there was the manager that was stopping by my largest stop before she came to work every morning....
Vending machine technology may have advanced in 20+ years, but back in the mid 80’s several of us in the USAF learned that the South Korean 100 Won coin worked just as well as a US quarter in the vending machines of the day. 100 Won was about 10 cents then. The Hawaiians never knew what hit them.
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