Spending A $10 Bill While Black

[blutoski]

The pen is about $3.00

Which is expensive to a small business, is what I'm saying.

I managed our call center for small business customers, they would happily spend an hour on the phone disputing a 7c long distance charge.

As the above poster, there's usually a cost effectiveness threshold for mandatory swiping (here in Canada it's typically $50s and $100s)

Otherwise, you're going through three of these a day, about $3k/yr to catch the one counterfeit $5 in the same timeframe. It's not cost effective unless you concentrate on the $50s and $100s, for two reasons: firstly these are the denominations that get counterfeitted. Hardly any counterfeitters fab smaller bills. This is the low hanging fruit. And then secondly, it's the cost/benefit analysis of finding *any* counterfeits at all. Small bills, sheesh, just absorb them, the cost of coming up short on the daily deposit from a fake $5 is cheaper than penning all bills.

And even then, 99 times out of 100 it's an old lady who is passing it in good faith, some businesses just socialize it: ma'am, this came up counterfeit, do you have another we can use instead? Why get the cops involved.



ETA: incidentally, I had an experience in Alberta, when I was a teenager. A cashier freaked out when I tried to pay with a $2. Alberta is Texas North, and they try to be as American as possible, the banks don't issue $2 bills much b/c the public consider it too Canadian. So this cashier had literally never seen a $2 bill and just assumed it was counterfeit. I straightened it out with the manager, we phoned his bank, they confirmed the bills were real and would be accepted.

 

[dann]

I think Randi used to spray a good bill with starch and watch the reactions.

He did!

 

[LTC8K6]

You can get the pens for $1 each if you buy in bulk.

Also, 4 way detecting devices are under $100.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_...&sprefix=countefeti,aps,825&crid=6UB5BMTZNK1O

 

[LTC8K6]

If you did not know the bill was counterfeit, and had no intent to deceive, then you haven't committed a crime.

Merely possessing or even passing a bad bill is not a crime unless the prosecutor can show intent.

 

[tyr_13]

We had to use those pens back where I worked. There are actually a couple of things going for them.

First, not all counterfeiters are good. Most are probably pretty bad. So, you'll get false positives and you'll not find the well made counterfeits, but you will get the bad fakes. Secondly, it can serve as a 'scarecrow', as anecdotally when a lot of fakes were going around locally they didn't hit our store even though we had very high volume of sales because, as the one investigator told me, they thought our pens would get them. (How that came up in conversations with the criminals I have no idea but the investigator found it pretty damn funny.)

But to use that as a basis for arrest? No, you have to know their VAST limitations. To hold a man for months because of it? That's crazy. At best it should start a preliminary investigation.

 

[blutoski]

You can get the pens for $1 each if you buy in bulk.

Please see my above examples... the issue is cost per caught bill. There's a cost threshold the owner will calculate below which the pens cost more than the bills they detect over their lifespan. This may involve some trial and error (do the $1 pens have 1/3 as much ink as the $3 pens? how long do they last in real-life when the cashiers have a habit of leaving the lids off? &c)

Secondly, this doesn't address the police failure, these pens are unreliable. The correct response would be customer education, not an arrest.

Note: I'm saying all this under the assumption that a pen was involved.

Also, 4 way detecting devices are under $100.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_...&sprefix=countefeti,aps,825&crid=6UB5BMTZNK1O

This is a better approach, IMO. The lifespan is probably very long, so the cost can be amortized over more bills, making the cost per counterfeit bill caught ratio more attractive than pens, assuming reliability is identical.

Reliability is probably better for the 4-way, precisely because they use multiple tests. Granted, they all have a false positive rate (so there's a higher chance of false positive) but they have a lower aggregate false positive rate compared to pens.

If a bill failed in one of these, I can see why police would have a reason to suspect forgery.


ETA: assuming bill failed a UV or 4 way, that still doesn't explain a police call (most businesses I've worked for just give customer benefit of the doubt and ask if they have another method of payment ready), and doesn't explain why the police left a guy to rot for a quarter of a year on this type of suspicion.

 

[Giordano]

I'm a white guy and I've had bills wiped hundreds of times with those pens. Though they seem less common these days. I've been in stores where they do it for all $20 bills, but never seen it done on a $10.

Sure- but I don't think the question is if these pens are only used on bills presented by black guys (although I suspect they might be used more often on bills presented by people of darker hues. Personally I've never had a $10 bill swiped- only $20s and above). In any case I would think that even a white homeless guy would be more likely to have a bill swiped than a white guy in a three-piece suit. The question is what happened to this guy after a very weak indication that his bill was a forgery. Whether it happened because he was black, or homeless, or even because he was on probation, it was still outrageous.

 

[Giordano]

If you did not know the bill was counterfeit, and had no intent to deceive, then you haven't committed a crime.

Merely possessing or even passing a bad bill is not a crime unless the prosecutor can show intent.

That is my understanding too. In most cases the counterfeit is confiscated but no further action is taken against the possessor.

 

[ahhell]

That's what I think would have happened. Unless the law is written so that even a false arrest is considered a parole violation. I wonder what it was about the bill that made the cashier AND the police believe it was counterfeit and why didn't any of those people have a counterfeit detection pen on hand?

I have read that those are not really reliable. Sort of like a dowsing stick. I don't know what the science of those things is like.

I'm a white guy and I've had bills wiped hundreds of times with those pens. Though they seem less common these days. I've been in stores where they do it for all $20 bills, but never seen it done on a $10.

The pens are unreliable, they detect starch, so they'll only detect really bad counterfeit bills. There are numerous anti-counterfeit features built into real bills that are far more reliable. A cop should have been able to tell on the spot that it wasn't. I wonder if this guy got belligerent or something. Not uncommon for homeless folks and makes more sense than he was actually arrested for having a possibly counterfeit $10 bill.

I used to frequent a krispy creme that routinely checked my $5 bills with those pens that don't work. As a middle aged white guy*, I found it infuriating and complained to the store and wrote an email to krispy kreme. They clearly didn't care and I stopped going. Seriously, who's counterfeiting fives?

For a $10, the most the should have done is not take it, this seems pretty stupid.


*Not really why I found it infuriating, just pointing out that some folks do this for even white dudes with tiny bills. Seriously, a 5?

 

[LTC8K6]

I've seen the pens a lot, but I've never seen anyone check a bill smaller than a $20 bill.

If the BK cashier used a pen or machine that determined the bill was fake, then Ellis is going to lose his lawsuit, I think.

If the BK cashier called the police to have the police determine if the bill was fake, and it was the police who made the determination, then Ellis is going to lose his case, I think.

If the BK cashier just decided the bill was fake, then Ellis has a case.

 

[fuelair]

Ungrateful homeless man given a home for three months, complains about it.

No surprise on this view. What I must expect.

 

[William Parcher]

That is my understanding too. In most cases the counterfeit is confiscated but no further action is taken against the possessor.

He was told to just leave. If he had been a counterfeiter then he would have gotten away without punishment.

 

[LTC8K6]

He was told to just leave. If he had been a counterfeiter then he would have gotten away without punishment.

And if the bill is real, he's not leaving without getting it back, neither would I.

 

[William Parcher]

I wonder if they thought it was fake based on its appearance rather than anything a pen revealed. Maybe no pen was used at all.

 

[LTC8K6]

I wonder if they thought it was fake based on its appearance rather than anything a pen revealed. Maybe no pen was used at all.

I think their only out is if they can say they had a good reason to think the bill was counterfeit, like a pen test.

They could possibly have called the police because Ellis would not leave, and when the police got there, Ellis wanted his $10 bill back, and the cashier said he thought it was counterfeit, and the police took it from there.

If we could hear the call to the police, we might get a clue.

 

[blutoski]

I wonder if they thought it was fake based on its appearance rather than anything a pen revealed. Maybe no pen was used at all.

Good question, and another possibility we can throw into the decision tree.

If the bill flat out *looked* fake, and not because it's "unfamiliar" (*), and if it seemed to pass all the counterfeit tests (meaning did not flag as counterfeit) but still looked suspicious for some other reason, then I can understand why Treasury would get involved: is this a new type of undetectable counterfeit?

Still doesn't explain why buddy was in the stockade for a quarter of a year.





(*) see my $2 bill example above, and another recent example was when Canada changed our bills from paper to some sort of nylon with a holographic image, lots of calls to police about 'fake' bills that were merely a new batch.

Interesting story... when I was in the London Museum a few years ago, the 'currency' displays had a hands-on demo with a docent, and there was about half a dozen examples of how currency has changed over time. Shells, stones, metal coins, bills, and the modern example was a Canadian $20. She had been challenging patrons to try to tear the $20 because it's nigh indestructible. However, some circus performer was able to rip it halfway, which was undermining her aspersions that these were a technological advancement in currency. As luck would have it, I had a $20 on me and did a swap, which seems to have made her day. Always happy to assist a Canadian colony in need.

 

[William Parcher]

What would happen if a bill was submerged in bleach for a period of time? Could it then appear counterfeit to just about anyone but still be real?

 

[blutoski]

What would happen if a bill was submerged in bleach for a period of time? Could it then appear counterfeit to just about anyone but still be real?

the colour would fade, for sure, so it would look like a terrible counterfeit upon visual inspection

depending on the rinsing, it may come up acidic, which would fail a pen test (the blue iodine reaction is not just triggered by starch, but also by low pH)

 

[William Parcher]

depending on the rinsing, it may come up acidic, which would fail a pen test (the blue iodine reaction is not just triggered by starch, but also by low pH)

I think that bleach is high pH, not low.

 

[blutoski]

I think that bleach is high pH, not low.

Good point, I was conflating HCl solution with chlorine bleach NaClO. chlorine bleach is caustic, not acidic, as you say.


ETA: another thought about bleaching. Bleaching is part of some counterfeiting processes. The counterfeiter bleaches genuine $1, $5, and $10s to remove the ink. Then runs ink for larger denominations of $50, $100.

This is part of the reason you don't need to test bills less than a $50.


This all assumes that the bill was suspicious, but not obviously fake, not a lasercopy or hand drawn, for example.