Counterfeit coins and currency intrigue me. I found this article interesting. $1.1 Million in Fake Bills, Using a Printer
Sounds so crude. Amazing that he got away with it for so long... Not everyone pays attention to their money (understatement).
How the heck could you get away with passing bills that are made out of two sheets of paper glued together??? That just seems like it would feel so much different than a regular bill.
As a bank teller for barely over a year, I've seen probably 5 counterfeit bills that have come into my drawer (can't say how many bank-wide). Three of them were the same, photocopied $20 bill, and two of the three were pretty great. One of them came out way too dark, but the other two were close enough that I actually had to run them through a mechanical counterfeit detector. The only tells I could really find were the size (a couple millimeters too short), the gold "20"'s on the back weren't shiny, and the strip didn't glow under a blacklight (it was printed, not inserted). They all came in from the same commercial client... I think the reason counterfeiters don't get caught more often is due to how many apathetic fast-food workers don't bother to check the money they take in... Just my 2 cents
I like the end of the article where it says if you have a counterfeit bill it gets confiscated at the bank and not refunded your just stuck......:vanish:
I forget where I was recently, maybe a fast food joint, but I paid with a $10 and the girl ran one of those pens over it. I thought it was kind of ridiculous being it was a $10 not a $100.
After working in a theme park for several years, I had plenty of chances to handle counterfeit currency. I could tell a counterfeit apart in an instant, but you'd be shocked how rarely people look at their money. I once had to deal with a $20 that had the watermark printed on the front, and the girl who had it thought it was real. On an unrelated note, I got a few $50's for Christmas from various relatives, and when I spent or broke them, none of them were checked. One was tested with the pen, but we all know how useless that is.
You should read The Art Of Making Money. Art Williams made incredibly good $100 bills when the new "Big Head" notes with anti-counterfeiting measures were released in the 1990s. And he made them by gluing two pieces (the front and the back) together with a passable security thread and watermark in between the two pieces. It is a true story and a very interesting read. I think a movie is in the works based on the book.
Nice article about North Korean Supernotes and how they source their materials. http://www.globalresearch.ca/north-korea-and-the-supernote-enigma/8919 Many experts claim the North Korean Supernotes are actually superior in quality to the United States'. Pretty crazy. I've heard they sell as high as $85 per $100. This article has some photos after a covert buy: http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk00100&num=1043
