wow all you bill collectors beware this is good to dang good. it fooled banks.. you need to get with the scouts http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/counterfeit-investigation-can-you-spot-the-fake-20/
Those banks need to give their workers some remedial training. I'm not a bill collector, but I wouldn't have been fooled for a minute. As it turned out, I looked at the image of the fake before I looked at the image of the good bill. I immediately thought that the font on the serial numbers looked wrong. Comparing it to a good bill, it stood out like a sore thumb. I can imagine that someone who wasn't paying attention would accept such a bill, especially if the paper feels right and the colors are generally good. But, really, you don't have to look very hard at all to spot it.
It wasn't the banks that were fooled it was the tellers. Bank tellers are so poorly trained that they are the worst at detecting counterfeits. Wage-wise, bank tellers are at, or near, the bottom of the food chain. They just don't care enough to be bothered with learning how to spot counterfeits and their employers don't want to invest the time and money to properly train them.
Even without looking at blown-up images, I could easily tell the fake from the real one. The fake just looks washed out, the colors are wrong, and it doesn't have the level of detail the real one has. I don't collect bills either...
I can't imagine that the fake has the right "feel" to it. But even *I*, in my newbie-status, could see the obvious difference between the two.
This story and the counterfeiter are a joke. The counterfeiter describes himself as "the world's best counterfeiter" when he doesn't even use valid serial numbers. The made up blocks of YF-Q, RJ-A and LS-U are an immediate giveaway that they're fake. Granted, I suspect the general population doesn't know anything about block letters and wouldn't think twice about them but the portraits look very bad and would likely stand out. Basically, these notes are of very poor quality coming from a so-called "master counterfeiter".
I agree the guy is completely full of himself. There ARE high quality fakes, but his notes are crap. I saw immediately just from the portrait his is comical, let alone other things. I still bet, though, that 90% of Americans would accept his notes. Unfortunately most Americnas simply do not pay attention. I saw a story once about fake notes at Walmart. One of those tellers took a black and white photocopy of a $20 bill. Yeah, plain paper, black and white photocopy they accepted because the customer told them, "it went through the washing machine and lost the color".
The eagle on the front gave it away, the fake has a faded eagle, were as leagle currency has a sharp eagle. super easy.
Not to mention Andrews face is faded and has no details on the fake, the fake is HORRIBLE! why did this make the news? is it because he turned himself in?
AND just found this out, the real note says D4 (d is the 4th letter of the alphabet) and the fake says s7, (s is NOT the seventh letter in the alphabet!) So many problems!
