Don't rely on those counterfeit detecting pens!

From Projo.com Nov. 10, 2010

Newport, RI

Counterfeiting charges dropped against driver.

The state police Thursday dropped charges against a North Smithfield driver who was accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill to pay the toll on the Pell Bridge last week.

Lt. Frank Sullivan confirmed that the case had been dropped. He said a pen test, commonly used by supermarket cashiers, gave a false reading.

A yellow streak means the bill is genuine. But the pen left a black streak on the bill, usually a signal that a bill is a phony.

The problem was, Sullivan said, that the test doesn’t work on bills printed prior to 1996.

The toll booth operator summoned the state police Oct. 27 when the black streak was detected.

Troopers questioned the driver, Steven J. Lambert, of 30 Greenville Rd., who told them he obtained the bill from the Navigant Credit Union branch in Woonsocket.

The police impounded Lambert’s car, released him with a court summons, and contacted the Secret Service, which handles counterfeit cases for the U.S. Treasury.

The story was first reported in the North Kingstown Standard Times.

 

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That's interesting. I've used those pens on bills well before 1996 and they come out yellow.

 

So let me ask you, what happend to this man? It is still common to find early banknotes in circulation. A friend of mine called me to show mw a 1934 banknote she got as a teller. Did the report indicate that the note was determined to be real?
Please tell us the rest of the story.

 

I'd get bills from the 60's and 70's all the time, and I'd have to check them, because they're much easier to counterfeit

 

Secret Service was called in, but not before the man was arrested, arraigned and had his car impounded by the State Police. Secret Service confirmed that the note was, in fact, real. State police then dropped the charge(s). No more information. I hope that they didn't make him pay to get his car out of impound. If it had been me, they'd be looking at quite the lawsuit.

 

Man, do I feel bad for that guy!

 

Interesting.

 

i would call a lawyer so fast and sue big time. thats just ridiculous. even if it was counterfeit if the driver didn't honestly know they cant do anything. when i worked at the bank we got at least one counterfeit a week of all denominations.

 

wow, I would call my attorney immediately. He would know every step of the proceedings of this one!

 

My Counterfeit Pen Horror Story

Back in the fall of 2008 I made a large withdrawal of cash from one of my banks in preparation for going back overseas where I can only use cash and not credit cards. One of the $100 bills had a slightly rougher feel and coarser ink on it than the rest and I then held it up to the light overhead, and sure enough there was Lincoln - not Franklin in the watermark. I handed it back to the teller and told her it was a counterfeit and I wanted it replaced. The first thing she did was start slashing at it with the counterfeit pen, the results of course suggested it was genuine - well duh - and she said it was a good note, it was a bleached $5 that had been printed over with the design of the $100.

I had to explain to her that the watermark in the note was Lincoln and not Franklin like it should have been.

I have to bet she got in trouble over that incident - for taking in the note, then handing it out - while her manager overheard the whole thing.

The moral of the story is those stupid pens are no real indicator of what is fake and not fake.

BTW the pens should work on all Series 1963 and newer notes that are dry printed.

 

The pens work by detecting the starch that is present in "wood based" papers, Bills are printed on "fiber based" papers. The pens will work on any bill printed by the BEP, regardless of the year since they have always used the same paper ( at least on modern notes). The pens will not detect fakes like the one mentioned above that was on a bleached lower value note and will not detect all fakes if the counterfeiters used paper of a high enough quality. In other words the pens only catch the cheaply done counterfeits .

 

The pens are iodine-based? I never knew that! I wonder if the War On Anything That Might Possibly Be A Meth Precursor will lead to them being banned from the market... :rollling:

 

It is my understanding that the pens work on all notes printed since Series 1963 FRNs and Series 1966 USNs. They will not work on Series 1950 FRNs or Series 1957 SCs. Not that I mind since tellers in banks give me "the call" when the old stuff crosses their way just to get rid of it which is how I end up adopting unloved Series 1934 $50 LGS on the Cleveland district - even the tellers know the counterfeit pen will not work on those.

 

That,s some good information

 

Just another false arrest to make lawyers rich and clog the courts.

 

i better check my money, i live like 45 min away from there,

 

Yes, they detect the starch in the paper. The trouble is that the old 18-subject sheets (dated 1953 and earlier) were wet-printed, and there was apparently some starch/sizing in the water that was used to dampen the sheets. That's enough to make them test as fake to these pens.

Likewise, a modern note that has been through a laundry cycle with starch will generally fail the pen test. I even heard of one guy who liked to use spray starch on his currency, precisely to mess with cashiers who used the pens!

When I've personally seen these pens for sale in office supply stores, the packaging said that the pen would work on all currency printed since "Series 1959". Of course, there is no such series, so I'm not sure what they meant by that. Series 1957 was the first to be dry-printed, so at least in theory the pens should work on it.... But I never cared enough about this question to sacrifice any silver certificates to the experiment.

 

I have often thought about getting one of those pens and, after the clerk swipes it on the bill i just gave them, I pull mine out to swipe the bills they give me in change. Just to mess with them:devil:

 

Well, why not? There's no guarantee that the clerk who checked the bills in did the pen check.

 

Do those pens devalue bills in any way? I think I heard the marks fade away after a while.