What to be aware of regarding forged notes?

[Angilion]

Back when I was working at Tesco before uni, some rather suspect character tried buying a chicken with a forged £20 note. It was so bad he was trying to prevent me from looking at it by trying to ask me daft questions like "Is that the price?" whilst shuffling about on his feet. I responded "No, that's the weight conversion. Look, the KG gives it away." and glanced down at the note to see the worst forgery of my life. He might aswell have tried to pay with monopoly money. The Queen's head was literally drawn on in pencil. I just burst out laughing and told him to do one.

We had one at work recently in which the Queen appeared to have an afro in the watermark. What made it funnier was that in every other respect it was a very good fake.

 

[Angilion]

What sort of things should you look for when checking to see if cash is 100% legitimate? Any checks one can do other the holding it up to the light to see if there's a line?

In my experience, the great majority of fakes can be detected by feel. This is especially true if it appears to be a relatively new note. Heavily worn notes or washed and dried notes can also feel wrong, but if it looks new and it feels wrong, that's a good sign that it's a fake. It's down to the right kind of paper, which is extremely hard for forgers to get hold of.

The line should appear broken in normal lighting and continuous when strongly backlit.

Also check the image of the Queen's head that should appear when the note is strongly backlit. This isn't much use unless you've seen enough of them to recognise when one is subtly wrong, unless the forger has done a really bad job of it.

That line is a physical strip woven into the note, so if you try to rip the note across the line, you should find the rip exposes a metallic strip. That's much harder to fake than printed stuff.

You can use a fake note detector pen. They're effective at detecting whether or not the paper is right, and that means they work for almost every fake. They cost about a fiver and are good for thousands of tests.

 

[james.miller]

Slightly off topic, but have you noticed that if you pay for something with say £20 and the person checks the note in an over the top manner and then gives you notes as change that they get really annoyed if you check the security features on the notes they've given you? Why shoudln't we check notes given to us as change?

i can almost understand it. i mean, its their job to check the notes they recieve. if they are doing their job they are hardly going to give out dodgy notes.




anway if anybody wants to know all the security features you can find them on the bank of england website

 

[Angilion]

i can almost understand it. i mean, its their job to check the notes they recieve. if they are doing their job they are hardly going to give out dodgy notes.[..]

That seems reasonable, but a basic cash handling job doesn't generally work that way. You start with a float, which you should count but which you don't check for fakes because of the time it would take. It is presumed, a little casually, that notes are always checked for forgery as they're coming into the business and/or that notes delivered in bulk by another business (e.g. Securicor) are checked by them.

For example: in my workplace, a dozen or so people will be collecting floats from the small cash office at approximately the same time shortly before start of business. This is done to reduce staff costs - the company doesn't want to be paying people to collect a float 15 minutes earlier than necessary, so everyone is collecting them at about the same time. So you have a dozen people signing out about £7500 in varying amounts of various denominations of notes, all of whom need to be where they're working within a few minutes. There isn't time to do more than quickly count the notes to verify the total you're signing for.

 

[james.miller]

That seems reasonable, but a basic cash handling job doesn't generally work that way. You start with a float, which you should count but which you don't check for fakes because of the time it would take. It is presumed, a little casually, that notes are always checked for forgery as they're coming into the business and/or that notes delivered in bulk by another business (e.g. Securicor) are checked by them.

For example: in my workplace, a dozen or so people will be collecting floats from the small cash office at approximately the same time shortly before start of business. This is done to reduce staff costs - the company doesn't want to be paying people to collect a float 15 minutes earlier than necessary, so everyone is collecting them at about the same time. So you have a dozen people signing out about £7500 in varying amounts of various denominations of notes, all of whom need to be where they're working within a few minutes. There isn't time to do more than quickly count the notes to verify the total you're signing for.

where i worked it was common practice to check everything before you sign on

 

[Hedge]

Real money doesnt burn.

Light it

 

[theonebillygunn]

There was a good story regarding this on crimewatch tonight.

 

[andi]

That isn't a perfect solution. I work with various different note validators and even the best ones can be fooled. Not often and not by most fakes, but it does happen. For example, a change machine (which usually have better note validators than quiz machines, AWPs and suchlike), was found to contain £800 in fake twenties. I've tested change machines with the good fakes and they took them. That caused some fuss, as it had been assumed all fakes would be rejected.

Out of interest what was the acceptor and what notes did you test them with?

And who do you work for?

 

[MathewS]

When i was working in tesco, i accepted every note i was given. I don't care not my company. One person once paid for a £300 shop all in £50 notes, didn't check a single one lol.

Just to let you know, if they had been fake you could have been arrested for taking them, as it is classed as money laundering..

 

[Angilion]

Out of interest what was the acceptor and what notes did you test them with?

And who do you work for?

I tested with samples of the fake twenties that had been found in the other change machine. There were two different acceptors (we had 5 change machines of two models at the time) and I don't recall the models. It was a few years ago and I see a lot of different note acceptors.

I work for the bingo division of Gala Coral Group, so it's an entirely cash business. A lot of cash. In just the one medium-sized club I work in, in the region of £100,000 a week in notes passes through note acceptors. A fake that is accepted by a machine is a major worry, because it's essentially a free way to exchange fakes for real money at full value.