counterfeit money in the news
brought to you by TEI group, inc.
Below you will find various news articles which
have been published relating counterfeit bill detector pens and
counterfeit money. The TEI Group, Inc. provides the
textural content of these news articles for your information and
education only. The TEI Group, Inc. does not guarantee the
accuracy of the articles shown below. The TEI Group, Inc.
makes no claim to copyrights or any other rights related to the
articles shown herein.
That $100 bill might not be worth what you think it is.
Counterfeit C-notes are being passed throughout the area at
retailers and restaurants, service stations and even banks.
Those local police agencies where the bad bills have been passed
are working with the U.S. Secret Service, including Naperville.
Russ Collett, assistant special agent in charge of the U.S.
Secret Service's Chicago office, confirmed Thursday
investigators from his agency are working with police in
Naperville and surrounding communities to end the recent
counterfeit money-making operations. He declined to discuss
specifics of the probe or to say if an arrest or arrests might
be pending.
"Counterfeiting in its totality is not a big issue, but we've
seen a recent up-tick of counterfeiting in the Chicago area,"
Collett said. "We're working with our local law enforcement
(officers) to stop it."
A total of $765 billion in U.S. currency is in circulation
around the globe - about $62 million of it counterfeit, Collett
said.
That makes for a one in 10,000 chance of being on the receiving
end of a phony bill.
The most recent counterfeiting scam passing through the area is
phony $100 bills printed
on washed $5 bills.
A quick swipe of a counterfeit detector pen shows the money as
legitimate, although it's worth $95 less than thought to be -
fooling merchants and the public alike.
Despite scanning technology, even banks have been fooled by the
new counterfeit currency.
Authorities have made "several significant arrests and seizures"
of phony money in the Chicago area since 2004, Collett said. He
added forgery, or counterfeiting of currency, is punishable by a
sentence of up to 20 years in a federal prison on conviction.
Just this week a Bolingbrook man and his four accomplices
pleaded guilty to forgery after passing the fake
C-notes on washed $5
bills at a New Lenox Kmart in June. The longest sentence
received in the bunch was just three years.
Detective Dan Toomey has spent 10 years identifying and locking
up counterfeiters during his tenure with the Bolingbrook Police
Department.
"I can get anywhere from one to three cases a week" of
counterfeit bills turning up at businesses throughout the
village, Toomey said. Most of those bogus bills are in the $50
and $100 denominations, he said.
Toomey recalled one case in which several youths were discovered
"handing out thousands (of counterfeit dollars) in 20s and
hundreds." Despite their best efforts and compiling a great deal
of evidence and testimony, police were unable to prove their
case against the man suspected of masterminding that
counterfeiting scheme, he said.
With the current spate of fake bills in the
Naperville-Bolingbrook area, Toomey said police are looking at a
handful of potential suspects.
"From what I've seen, there's a minimum of three major people
involved in the printing and distribution of counterfeit money"
in the area, Toomey said. "And these primary people are
distributing it to other people to pass out" at local stores,
restaurants and other businesses, he said.
Naperville police could not be reached Thursday.
December 3, 2004
James Randi
YOU'VE SEEN IT
An item that I frequently refer to during my
lectures is that strange black pen that most of us have seen
being pulled out of a cash register drawer when we offer a $50 —
or larger — bill in a store or restaurant. It's called the
"Smart Money Counterfeit
Detector Pen," and it's made by DriMark Products, who
also make legitimate items that really work. It proudly bears a
US patent number. For years now, cashiers across the United
States have used this pen to make a mark on a clear portion of a
bill, after which they will — usually — accept it. It says right
on the pen, that if the mark made on the bill is amber, that
bill "passes the test." If it's black, the bill is "suspect."
With the
imprimatur of the US Patent Office, and coming from a major
manufacturer, we should expect that the thing works — but it
does not. You see, according to the patent papers, the
inventor assumed that counterfeiters would use cheap paper to
print their product — not very likely! Cheap paper contains
starch — as "sizing" so that the paper looks brighter and will
be more easily handled by printing machines — and starch turns
black in contact with iodine, so a pen filled with tincture of
iodine should reveal phony money! Yes, that's what's in the pen
— iodine!
The U.S. Secret Service has the awesome
responsibility, among other things, of protecting us from
counterfeit currency. They tell us that there is more bogus
money in circulation now, than at any previous period in
history. This is something we should all be concerned about,
right? I contacted a U.S. Secret Service inspector and asked his
official opinion about this device. "Does it work as
advertised?" I asked him.
"It is not dependable,"
he responded, after referring to a handy manual. "Not
dependable, like, 100 percent not dependable?" I asked.
"You might say that," he said. You see, Federal officials never
use "yes" or "no" to answer any question professionally.
Believe me, counterfeit money was never safer
than when being tested by the "Smart Money" pen. And, bear in
mind, every really phony bill that this device does not detect,
goes right back into circulation! So, what to do? You contact
your local Secret Service office and ask for their pamphlet
"Know Your Money," which will help you decide for yourself about
the authenticity of the currency that passes through your hands.
This phony pen will
never do it....
This is a printer friendly version of an article
from the Fond du Lac Reporter
Des Moines Register
Published July 2, 2007
W.D.M. Police: Pay attention for counterfeit bills
City has had three recent counterfeit reports,
including $100 fakes that are bleached notes with a bill
reprinted onto them.
By MICHOLYN FAJEN
REGISTER CORRESPONDENT
Three reports of counterfeit bills passed
recently at businesses in the southwest section of West Des
Moines have sparked a new awareness and tighter procedures at
cash registers.
The first incident occurred June 9, when three
$100 bills were discovered hours after a purchase at Best Buy,
6825 Mills Civic Parkway. Despite Best Buy’s training to help
employees identify counterfeit bills, the fakes were not
discovered until the cash drawer was counted later in the day,
officials said.
But the incident was a new level of trickery
from criminals, not an oversight by the Best Buy employee,
police said.
Best Buy manager Tony Giudicessi said the store
implements various tests to check for counterfeits, especially
on larger denomination bills.
“What they may have seen was a bleached note,”
said Detective Lloyd Carlson of the West Des Moines Police
Department. “Criminals take the coloring out of it and reprint a
bill onto it. If a store goes through their counterfeit
measures, they may not notice it right away.”
Stores such as Best Buy use watermark, pen and
security strip tests to verify the authenticity of larger bills,
but those discovered at the store passed those tests at first
glance. A closer look showed the marks and security threads were
irregularly matched with the bill’s denomination and police were
contacted.
Nine days later a counterfeit $50 bill was
passed to a cashier at Century Theatres in Jordan Creek Town
Center, but a pen test that uses a special ink to mark the bill
quickly identified it as a fake and authorities were called to
apprehend the suspect. The pens check a bill’s
authenticity by using chemical color indicators to sense trace
chemicals left in the paper from the manufacturing process.
“A woman, identified as one person who passed
the bill at Century Theatres, made arrangements to pay for the
counterfeit purchase,” Carlson said.
Typically the person making a purchase is not
the suspected counterfeiter, he said. A third incident
reported June 24 occurred at McDonald’s, 745 S. 51st St., where
a counterfeit $50 bill was discovered, according to West Des
Moines Police Lt. Jeff Miller.
The U.S. Secret Service is investigating the
counterfeit money, although Carlson said he is convinced the
three incidents are not related.
“Typically you don’t have mixed bills,
denominations or types of counterfeiting,” Carlson said.
Retailers should be extra diligent in checking
bills, he said, giving extra attention to learning the
denominations of the bills and the characteristics associated
with those bills, including watermarks, security thread, and
color-changing ink.
If one is discovered, he urges retailers to
contact the police department immediately.
THERESA — Nine counterfeit $20 bills were passed
over the weekend at a firemen's picnic in Theresa.
The $180 in counterfeit bills was likely passed
at a bar set up on the picnic's grounds in Theresa during a
concert Friday night, said picnic chair Michael Jatczak, a
volunteer firefighter with the Theresa Fire Department.
Jatczak said a local bank notified Fire
Department officials that some of the money collected at the
picnic was counterfeit.
He said funds raised at the annual picnic go
toward buying new equipment for the volunteer fire department.
Fakes flood casinos
By ERICA JACOBSON
Norwich Bulletin
Some casino visitors think slot machines and
table games are less games of chance and more ways to make an
easy buck. Then there are those who come to Connecticut's
casinos already having made an easy buck or gambling chip or
slot machine token.
As often as once a week, the state police casino
unit nabs someone trying to pass counterfeit currency at
Foxwoods Resort Casino or Mohegan Sun. "Any time that you have
money along those levels, you're going to have very
sophisticated security," Lt. Mike Spellman said, "and you're
going to attract very sophisticated criminals."
Dave Todd, vice president for security at
Mohegan Sun, said the scope of the problem is tough to measure.
He said Mohegan Sun probably sees more than $1 in fake currency
for every $10,000 that passes through the casino. In April, more
than $855 million passed through Mohegan's slot machines alone.
"Even with all of the information and all of the training, some
of them do still slip by," Todd said of counterfeit bills. "I'm
not going to lie to you and say they don't."
Gary Powell is a Las Vegas-based gaming
consultant with Cyrun and has trained casino workers across the
globe to spot fake money. He said counterfeiters have targeted
casinos for years and it's nearly impossible to know just how
much funny money flows through casinos each year. "I'm sure it's
a lot more than what the casinos want to lose," Powell said. "I
call it job security, I've been in the business a long time."
Powell said those looking to launder counterfeit money often
monitor the casino's operations in advance. And the money they
try to pass can be made halfway around the world or just a few
flights up from the casino floor.
"They'll do it out of the country," Powell said.
"They'll do it right in a hotel room where they're staying."
Casinos need to communicate between departments,
work as a team with security and local police departments and be
proactive, he said. It is not enough to start thinking about
counterfeit currency once it shows up in a cashier's drawer.
Powell said the facilities constantly have to learn the newest
tricks of the false money trade. In Connecticut, Spellman
said the state police casino unit works closely with security at
the two facilities, as well as with the local office of the U.S.
Secret Service, the branch of government that deals with
counterfeit money. "There's all different calibers of
counterfeit money," he said. "Some are very high quality and
some are very low quality."
$1 million bill Jackie Mason, director of casino accounting operations at
Foxwoods, said cashiers are trained and retrained as illegal
money-making technologies change and mature. Some of the
attempts, she said, are hardly high-tech, however, including a
homemade $1 million bill slipped into a stack of singles.
"He thought they'd just see George (Washington)
and keep on going," Mason said. When he worked security at a
casino in Atlantic City, N.J., Todd helped uncover a Washington,
D.C,-based ring trying to pass $34,000 worth of counterfeit
money. He said the problem isn't chronic and teams often target
a facility and then move on without lingering too long. "They're
just about washing the counterfeit money and getting real money
from it," Todd said.
Fake $50 bills show up at Salem stores, yard sales
DENNIS THOMPSON Statesman Journal
June 30, 2007
Counterfeit $50 bills are surfacing in Salem,
and police are urging folks to carefully examine their currency.
A number of businesses have reported receiving
the fake bills, including a Taco Time restaurant, Circle K and
7-Eleven convenience stores, and a northeast Salem bakery.
The bills also are being passed at yard sales.
Northeast Salem resident Debbie Funk said her mother received
one of the fake $50s during a yard sale last week. A young woman
bought a $2 item with the $50 bill, essentially robbing her
mother of $48, Funk said.
They discovered the crime when Funk's sister
tried to use the bill to buy gas for her mother's truck. The gas
station attendant refused to accept the bill.
"She was flabbergasted," Funk said of her
mother. "People need to be careful, especially people holding
garage sales."
The bills started showing up in early May, and
Salem police have logged a handful of incidents,
Lt. Bill Kohlmeyer said.
The counterfeiters apparently are washing the
ink off $5 bills, then re-printing them as $50 bills,
Kohlmeyer said. This defeats the ink markers that people use to
check bills.
"If
they're using real $5 or $20 bills and changing them to $50, the
markers won't work because the paper is from legitimate
currency," Kohlmeyer said. "I'm not saying the pen is no
good anymore, but it won't work if it's a real bill."
Kohlmeyer suggested other ways people can
examine $50 bills. Hold the bill to the light and look for the
paper's watermark, which should have the same face that's on the
front of the bill. Or look for the security strip, which would
read "USA 50" on real $50 bills.
Kohlmeyer said the counterfeiters usually wait
until a clerk is harried and not able to spend time looking at
each bill before they pass off fakes.
