Temper tantrum

[pzychobitch]

that'll do it then. cos the stripes are all labeled with the denomination, and they're in different locations.

oh and don't forget the watermarks - they can't take those off either. even with bleaching. but again you have to actually pay attention to what's ON the watermark, not just that it has one.

example of a forgery

and the stripes for each amount:



actually that might be worth printing up for quick checks.
and the colors mentioned - that's what they're suppose to show up as under UV light. So that's another way to tell too.

This is exactly what I look for when I am at work at the petrol station.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Sadly I've seen almost every bill faked except 1's.

One of the most difficult counterfeiters to catch was a guy that made fake $1 bills, and they weren't very good fakes either.

New York Sun article - Little Old Moneymaker

Movie about him on Hulu - Mister 880

[XCashier]

Sounds to me like she was a typical SC -- I think if she'd been pushing a fake bill she'd have tried harder to get it accepted.

Counterfeiters and other crooks know when the jig is up. If you get a short-change artist and offer to count down the till, they'll pitch a fit and stomp out; a legit customer would stay and let you count down the till. That's why I'm thinking this was a counterfeiter. Just the way she acted, snarling at the cashier and driving off rather than trying to pay another way or waiting around to see if the note checks out.

[wolfie]

Just curious, but when they re-positioned the UV thread in the new $10 and $50, was it to put them in easier-to-distinguish locations in case someone just did a quick look for the presence of a thread, rather than check the printing on it? In other words, make it easier to identify a fake $50 printed on a bleached-out $10? If so, why did they move both threads in the same direction, rather than moving one to the left and one to the right?

If they'd kept the thread in the same place on the $10 when they updated it (on the principle that in an ambiguous case, the higher-denomination note should be changed, since it's unlikely someone would print a fake $10 on a bleached-out $50), the positions of the threads would be easier to distinguish between a $10 and a new $50 than what they actually did.

[workerbee222]

In St Louis, depending on the neighborhood, you are lucky if they take cash. Its just easier to have a debit card.

The sandwich store closest to my workplace has started adding a ..35 surcharge to debit card transactions

[pzychobitch]

The sandwich store closest to my workplace has started adding a ..35 surcharge to debit card transactions

Some privately owned gas stations tack on a charge like that if you are under X amount of dollars.

[EricKei]

Yeah - I've seen many gas stations, especially smaller, independent ones, that refuse to accept plastic for any transaction under $5. This is usually due to the fees they get charged for running the cards. IIRC, the low end for something like that in the US is around $0.35 + 2.5% of the transaction total and it goes up from there, sometimes steeply.

[Mytical]

I would assume that when you bleach, you bleach older money (before the strips) and make sure the date was pre-strip on the new bill. That way the strip couldn't give it away . Would make the most logical sense.