Counterfeiting With High Resolution Inkjets

Makarand writes "Thanks to the availability of low cost high quality inkjet printers, crooks are now able to produce currency indistinguishable from the real banknotes, at least under dim lighting conditions like that in a bar or a nightclub. The term "digifeiters" is being coined for counterfeiters that use cheap high-resolution printers to produce fake currency. Unlike costly color xerographic copiers that come inbuilt with features to detect security details on banknotes and stop currency copying, no cheap printers come with such feature. An anti-digifeiting system for cheaper printers may consist of printer driver software capable of recognizing data patterns indicating currencies of several countries." I wonder what GimpPrint would think of being forced to print or not print certain documents based on their contents.

Comments

One of the funniest Beavis and Butthead episodes

[Anonymous Coward]

Was when they visited the photocopy place and tried to copy dollars, then tried to pay the copy guy with their printed money. Ahh, I miss that show.

Plastic Notes work well

[vk2tds]

Go for plastic bank notes like australia. They work well... They even have clear patches you can see right through.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[Anonymous Coward]

More info and pictures here. Note the clear patches show up as black bits down in the bottom corner.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[Pentagram]

You're getting mixed up with credit cards. And stop hole-punching them.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[xQx]

Rumor has it Australia has the contract for making IRAQ's new banknotes. Everyone knows america's notes are easy to forge.

It's easy to hand over counterfeit notes in australia because nobody checks, or cares if they're valid... but it's bloody impossible to get a color printer to print a clear window with a watermark onto a plastic note.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[bogado]

The money paper is easily available in lower value currency, the counterfitter can washout the paint and reprint the paper with a higher value (wash out a $1,00 bill print a $10,00). The Euro money uses diferent sizes for different values to make this impossible.

Brasilian money also has a plastic money, currently there is two version of the R$10,00 bill in circulation, one of the is plastic.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[spoco2]

But the plastic money we have allows you to instantly see the difference between notes (Different colours and sizes), instantly tell that it's the real deal or a really expensive counterfeit (the clear plastic window), and it is just like having paper money in the way it handles, except that it's more durable (you can put it through the wash etc)

The problem with US money (and I've lived there for a while), is that all the notes look about the same, all are the same colour, they wear out very quickly, and they're very easy to counterfeit. (At least to the point of using in everyday money transactions... how many checkout chicks carefully look over every note?)

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[cdrudge]

Well, since US currency is basically linen, maybe this might work? They say it removes almost every stain using the air we breath!

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[jeffy124]

how many checkout chicks carefully look over every note?

Well, I'm not a chick, but was once a checkout boy during HS. We were given a detector pen to use on 20s or higher that turns brown on real money, black on most everything else. When the new bills came out in the late 90s, we were specifically instructed to check for that color-shifting ink in addition to that pen. It's also very easy to tell that a bill is suspect based on feel alone (one of the main focuses of my original post), as the US paper currency has a distinctive feel against other forms of paper.

But that only stops people who try to print their own at home, it doesnt stop those who bleach the ink off a $5 and print on a $100. Yeah - that's one of the problems with US money being all green. They have watermarks now (which are added at the mill where the paper is made, and cant be removed), but those are hard to check for at a checkout counter. I personally think that the paper should have some kind of varying color (like that new 20 that's coming soon) that differs between denominations.

How does the plastic money handle? What exactly is in that window - some sort of hologram or other image? I take it each denomination has its own color and size, but I think differing size would make it hard to carry around in your wallet.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[BandwidthHog]

Ask a paper wholesaler, and of course they'll say they can't get it and don't know what it is. Instead, just ask for Crane's Crest Flourescent Opaque White. Obviously it won't have the red and blue fibers, but it'll have the feel you're looking for. Myself, I use it for resumes. Anything printed on that stuff *will* be taken more seriously than similar stuff on similar papers, but nobody will realize why, or even that they do like the feel of it better.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[CuriousGeorge113]

To help assist counterfitters, the Australian Governmebt has equipped this page with pictures of all their currency with a printer friendly version

Nice to see the government goes that extra step to help out the cheaters and counterfitters.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[spoco2]

The AC stated the sizes of the notes only differ in length, there's no issue with having them in the wallet, they're easy to have in there... and so much easier to choose the notes you want without having to take them all out and rifle through them to find the 20 instead of the 1 (We have no 1 dollar notes, we have $1 and $2 coins, much better to use).

As for the clear window, they just have some differing white symbols on them... all the notes also have all the other useful security measures:
Micro printing
Water marks
Some patterns printed on each side, that when you hold to the light they should match up to each other... which helps ensure that they were printed accurately

The first plastic note we had (The old $5) had a hologram on it, but that came off too easily, so was scrapped.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[drmofe]

To help assist counterfitters, the Australian Governmebt has equipped this page with pictures of all their currency with a printer friendly version Nice to see the government goes that extra step to help out the cheaters and counterfitters.

You didn't really get the bit about the plastic see-thru bits in the notes, did you?

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[EverDense]

The best bit is because Australia produces "polymer notes for Papua New Guinea,
Indonesia, Kuwait, Western Samoa, Singapore, Brunei, Sri Lanka and Thailand."
http://www.dfat.gov.au/facts/currency. html

If one of those countries pisses Australia off, they can mass produce the country's
currency, and drop it from aircraft. Making their economy tank in short order ;-)

Oh shit, I think I just revealed Australia's plans for World Denomination[tm].

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[ChadN]

Those fucking pens are the *STUPIDEST* things I've ever heard of. Besides having the effect of destroying the currency (after several pen strokes, the bills need to be destroyed and new ones circulated), they don't do anything other than check for the presence of bleach in the paper. Anyone serious about counterfeiting can easily used bleached paper (or coat it in bleach).

The sad thing is that the new bills are equipped with much better counterfeit prevention/detection methods than afforded by the stupid pen, and by training cash register personnel with the pen, we are discouraging them from using the newer features.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[bogado]

The solution of the euro notes are the diferent sizes, if you wipe out a 1,00 note it will be smaller then the 5,00 so you could not print it into the blanc note.

Also the diferent sizes makes it easier for blind people to recognize the value of the bills.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[vanza]

Brasilian money also has a plastic money, currently there is two version of the R$10,00 bill in circulation, one of the is plastic.

Bills which, by the way, are imported from Australia. If I'm not confusing things, the Brazilian central bank buys the bills with all the security features already in place, and only prints the "face value" on them.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[MillionthMonkey]

We were given a detector pen to use on 20s or higher that turns brown on real money, black on most everything else. When the new bills came out in the late 90s, we were specifically instructed to check for that color-shifting ink in addition to that pen.

If I'm not mistaken that "pen" is a felt tip marker with an iodine solution. The paper used for real money is known to contain no starch, so when you smear the pen across real money all you see is a faint brown smear from the iodine itself.

Counterfeit money, on the other hand, is presumed to contain lots of starch. Starch and iodine undergo a special chemical reaction that's one of those little quirks of nature. The I2 molecules have *just* the right diameter to fit inside the helix of a starch polymer perfectly. They immediately slide in there and the resulting starch-iodine complex has a strong inky black color so powerful that it's easy to see even if trace amounts of starch are present.

Of course, this presumes that counterfeiters are stupid, cheap, pay no attention to detail, and buy low-quality paper containing starch. As a general rule, counterfeiting is a crime that attracts very anal-retentive people. I would imagine that a counterfeiter would pay more attention to his choice of paper than a laid-off dot-com worker printing resumes. It probably isn't too hard to find paper that doesn't contain any starch, and testing for it is a piece of cake because those stupid pens are sold all over the place. I bet every counterfeiter on the planet has one.

Still, the pen is common because people want to believe they can buy a magicical item that detects counterfeit money. If you're a counterfeiter and you can't fool an iodine pen, you should consider going into another line of crime.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[frovingslosh]

(We have no 1 dollar notes, we have $1 and $2 coins, much better to use).

Don't get so smug. Considering the exchange rate for the AU$ and the US$, we in the U.S. have a coin roughly comparable to the AU$ coin, we just call it a half dollar (1 AUD = 0.658961 USD). I have a few in my pocket right now. We have no half dollar notes, so we're about the same there. We also have dollar coins, have for centuries, and although they are not as popular as paper currency, they are reasonably common. Again, have a few in my pocket and a bunch in my car. (And, of course, there are higher denomination coins that are still legal tender, but they are not in general circulation and not as commonly available unless you get them from a collector).

The reason we still have paper $1 currency is that we have resisted people telling us that a heavy pocket full of coins is " much better to use " than paper money. The government has tried to tell us that, but we know they always lie, and experience with several dollar coins over recent years has born that out.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[coolgeek]

Evidently neither did the Aussie gov't webmaster either cuz now the page is 404.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[frovingslosh]

Actually, we have a great anti-counterfitting technology in all US currency that could easily replace the stupid pens with an electronic pen that costs just a few dollars, and would not mark or harm the bill at all. In addition to the color changing ink, the watermark, and the embedded plastic stripe (which the conspiracy theorists amoung us know the gub'mint uses to detect how much money you carry through the airport with remote sensors), all U.S. bills are printed with magnetic ink. Run a small recording head over the portrait of a real bill and you'll get a nice detectable signal from the background of the picture. Move the recording pick-up at a known speed and you can even determine the denomination from the frequency. And the inkjet printers will produce a bill that gives no response at all, no matter what paper it's printed on.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[E-prospero]

How does the plastic money handle?

Pretty much like paper currency. A plastic note feels pretty much like a fresh paper note in terms of properties; a little stiff and textured, but still very pliable. By feel, they are obviously not paper, but they don't feel like you're playing with a cheap plastic wrapper either.

The difference is that these properties don't really change as they get older. The notes get a few more creases in them, but they don't start to feel like tissuepaper like paper notes do.

The creases are about the only problem; it can be a bit of a pain to flatten them out, but on the whole, I gotta say I prefer them.

As a result, they last a lot longer in circulation - about 4 times longer. The down side is that they tend to tear catastophically; once a tear is started, it runs through the note fairly easily. However, it's very hard to start a tear in the first place (contrast with paper notes, which are easy to start a tear, but tend to tear slowly once started).

What exactly is in that window - some sort of hologram or other image?

Its a clear window, with an image in white ink in it. Each note has a different image. For example, the $10 note has a windmill. Its not a complex image - just a basic silhouette. There are some other security measures; microprinting, front/back alignment marks, that sort of thing. No RFID tags yet :-)

I take it each denomination has its own color and size, but I think differing size would make it hard to carry around in your wallet.

Each note is the same height, but each larger denomination is slightly (7mm, IIRC) longer. The longest note ($100) fits easily in an average wallet. A $10 note (all that I have with me at the moment) is about the same height, but about 20mm shorter than standard US currency. That would make a $100 about the same size as a US banknote. (I don't have one with me to compare)

However, the real benefit is the colour. You look into a wallet stuffed with AUD bills, and you can tell if you have a little or a lot of money. See lots of pink, you've got lots of $5. See lots of green, you've got lots of $100. Single colour currency is one of the hardest thing I've had to get used to in the US. (that, plus tipping, and the fact that sales tax is never on the advertised price - but that's another story...)

Russ %-)

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[spoco2]

So instead you have a heavy pocket full of pennies! :)

Man, that was the single thing that pissed me off the most about using money in the states, those damn pennies... get rid of them! Each week I'd accumulate a ridiculous weight in 1c coins... So I'm very happy to be back in Australia where the lowest denomanation we have is the 5c, much less in the way of change.

Also, I found it really hard to come by dollar coins while I was there... I knew you guys had them, but all I seemed to end up with was a wallet fat with dollar notes and pennies... urgh!

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[frovingslosh]

Man, that was the single thing that pissed me off the most about using money in the states, those damn pennies... get rid of them! Each week I'd accumulate a ridiculous weight in 1c coins... So I'm very happy to be back in Australia where the lowest denomanation we have is the 5c, much less in the way of change.

The solution to that "problem" is simple, if you don't want the pennies just don't take them. Many places even have a small dish on the counter for just that reason, if you need a penny (to avoid getting 4 back) and you see one in the dish, just use it. And if you don't want a few pennies you get in change leave them in the dish for some other guy. Or just quit collecting them in your pocket, spend them on your next cash purchase that isn't an even multiple of 5 cents (that's what I do). Getting rid of them would just effectively raise prices on everything by several cents (by as much as 7 or 8 cents AU). We don't need that. If you're too lazy to get out a few cents when you have a pocket full of them and you make another purchase, you deserve to carry them around or leave them for someone who appreciates them.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[miracle69]

The reason we still have paper $1 currency is that we have resisted people telling us that a heavy pocket full of coins is " much better to use " than paper money. The government has tried to tell us that, but we know they always lie, and experience with several dollar coins over recent years has born that out.

I always thought it was because the powerful stripper lobby didn't like being pelted with dollar coins.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but you can't use it for counterfeiting because that damned paper costs more than any US currency denominations you could print on it. I agree though; great for resumes.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[Ralph Wiggam]

That would be horrible. If the economy of a major power like Papua New Guinea were to falter, think of devastation it would cause on the world markets. I'm terrified to think about it.

-B

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[MillionthMonkey]

Pennies are hard to get rid of, both personally and nationally. Every so often the idea of eliminating pennies comes up and all these people come out of the woodwork to defend the penny. You would think they were taking "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance, they get so worked up. There is even a lobbying group devoted to keeping the penny- Americans for Common Cents. Not surprisingly, it is backed by zinc companies.

They aren't easy to get rid of. Vending machines won't take them. In fact there's hardly any coin-operated device that accepts pennies. Spending them is awkward. You can discreetly leave piles of them on a restaurant table as a tip, but that's probably not a good idea if you ever plan on eating there again. A penny in reality is worth a little less than its face value, because of the inconvenience they present in large numbers.

I found a good way to get rid of them. Use them to buy gasoline! You have to count them beforehand. If you have 163 pennies, just pump $11.63 or $16.63 of gas into the car, then go in, put a ten and maybe a five down, and then take all those little pennies out of your pocket and slam them down onto the counter. What's the guy going to say? They're legal tender. And they're just asking for it when they advertise prices that end in 9/10 of a cent. Usually the dude just eyeballs the pile, takes your word for it, and scoops them into the register.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[_Spirit]

If I had a 1 euro note I would sell it to the highest bidder.

This is mainly because the smallest bills we have are 5 euros.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[The_Spud]

In the UK notes have bars which are florescent under UV light. You don't need to take time looking at all the secutity features you just wave it under the note checker to look for the glowing bars which takes seconds.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[mgv]

Well, if you can afford the equipment necessary to counterfeit Australian notes well, you can probably hire an artist to recreate the note for you.. which is basically how the REAL counterfeits work. Though yeah, a lot of small scale counterfeiters will print out a few twenties then go have a night on the town. That's basically who these anti-counterfeit measures are designed to stop. The big guys will always be able to fake anything. All it takes is money, and christ, they're printing the stuff anyway, so who cares?


Actually, we have never moved to the next phase in anticounterfitting in Australia (Mainly because the current system has virtually eliminated fraud - the stuff that gets done is mostly clearly different from the real thing and very ameturish).

The next stage is self validating notes which incorporate specific filters in the clear parts of the note - so you look through the clear part of the note to see a mark on the opaque bit that you cant see without it. While this has not had to be done as yet, the Australian technology has this built in as an option.

The technology has been licenced to 19 other countries, mainly because its the best one available. (Does my patriotic pride show just a little?)

Michael

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[Chess Cardigan]

Actually, the way it works in Australia, the prices are still given to cents, but they're rounded to the nearest five cents when you pay. i.e if you buy some milk for 2.49 and a can of baked beans for 98 cents, 3.57 is rounded to 3.55.

Yes, if you have too much time you can scam. There was once a story of an unemployed guy who would "buy" one bean at a time, which came to 2 cents which meant he didn't have to pay anything.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[liquidsin]

You can get 500 sheets for just over $100 which puts it at about $0.20 per sheet. You should be able to get at least 4 bills out of one 8.5" x 11" sheet (I can't find a ruler right now to measure a bill...) so even if you print singles (lower risk of getting caught) you could make $2000 off of an investment of $100 in paper plus your ink cartridges. That's all assuming that the 24 lb. paper is the right feel for bills.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[NickFitz]

Obviously it won't have the red and blue fibers

In his memoirs, the compulsorily-retired British counterfeiter Charles Black gives a neat method of imitating this.

He took a load of electric wire insulation (red and blue separately IIRC), cut it into several centimeter lengths, and scattered those on a sheet of white paper in about the right density. He then photographed the resulting random arrangement, and photographically reduced it so it looked just like the pattern characteristic of US Treaury bills. Make offset litho plates, and he could run his paper (which he sourced from Australia as having the right feel, composition, etc.) through his press.

Bingo! blank notes, virtually indistinguishable from the real thing, ready to have the rest of the design printed.

At his trial in 1979, a US Treaury official testified that his notes were so good that they rendeerd obsolete a new note-checking machine that had taken millions of dollars of development.

FWIW, out of millions of dollars he produced before his first prison sentence, only $8,200 was recovered worldwide. The second time, he was caught before more than a few thousand dollars had hit the streets.

And he never got rich, because wholesale prices for counterfeit cash are so low.

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[Ryan Amos]

Oh I don't disagree really :) The US money system is a fossil from 40 years ago. In 20 years though, hard currency will probably be gone. We already have the technology, we just have to wait for society (and with an increased reliance on credit and debit cards, society is catching up quickly.) Then we can tell our grandkids, "When I was your age, we had this thing called money. And it was heavy! Man I had to carry 4 rolls of quarters uphill in the snow each way! You kids have it easy!"

Re:Plastic Notes work well

[bgspence]

The Crain's Crest watermark in the paper might be a bit of a problem.

Wonka Dollars

[Hayzeus]

You heard me -- chocolate banknotes, with nougat and sprinkles.

Try counterfeiting those.

Re:Wonka Dollars

[breon.halling]

Here you go:

Willy Wonka Bars Candy Recipe

1/2 cup margarine, softened
1 cup peanut butter
1/2 box powdered sugar
1 1/2 packages graham crackers
1 package chocolate chips
2 tablespoons margarine or 1/4 cup milk

Combine margarine, peanut butter, powdered sugar and graham crackers. Press mixture in pan. Melt chips and 2 tablespoons of margarine or milk. Spread over graham cracker crust. Refrigerate. Cut when cool.

Re:Wonka Dollars

[scrod]

Counterfeiting has never sounded so delicious!

Where can you get that type of paper?

[TD_3G]

I'm not sure about you... but I'd certainly notice if the texture or "feel" of a dollar was off. Aren't they printed on an almost clothlike paper or something? I notice the difference between that and normal printing paper easily. So where are these people getting that style of paper, and does it change the quaility or ability to print... or are bar tenders and the such just stupid and don't realize?

Re:Where can you get that type of paper?

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

Other recent articles about counterfeiting have mentioned a proprietary chemical mixture that removes a vast majority of the ink from printed currency, yet leaves the security strip, watermark and colored fibres intact. Bills treated in this manner will fool those colored markers that most places uses for confirmation. You get a stack of $5s, 'bleach' them and reprint them as $10s and you've doubled your money, print them as $20s and you're up to 4x, print them as $100s and you're at 20x. If you take bills as part of your job, double check that the watermark image is the same as the face printed on the bill, and that the value in the security strip matches as well.

Re:Where can you get that type of paper?

[IO ERROR]

I notice the difference between that and normal printing paper easily. So where are these people getting that style of paper, and does it change the quaility or ability to print... or are bar tenders and the such just stupid and don't realize?

Not after you set the bills down on a bar that's wet due to drink spillage, etc. The other thing is that bartending is VERY fast paced, it would be easy to not notice.

Re:Where can you get that type of paper?

[GC]

which is why, here in the UK, we make higher denomination notes larger in size than those of a lesser denomination... I guess they didn't think of that in the USA.

Apparently 90% of US currency is outside of the US at any given time.

Re:Where can you get that type of paper?

[Marillion]

The process is called "leaching."

The idea is to use a lower value note, say a one, then bleach the old ink off of it. Use your handy-dandy inkjet to print a twenty note on the paper that used to be a one. The one is well suited to false promotion because it doesn't have a florescent nylon strip that a bartender could positively verify the paper isn't a twenty.

Since all US notes are the same size, feel the same, and mostly look the same it's easy to fake. I know the French franc, prior to the Euro, used different sized paper for different values.

As a side note, if you've never seen the movie The Grifters there's a scene where John Cusack flashes a twenty at a bartender, asks for a beer, then pulls a slight-of-hand leaving a ten on the counter expecting the bartender to remember the twenty and give change as such.

I know folks in the US complain about the Monopoly-esque look of other currency, but it's a hell-of-a-lot tougher to copy, easier for the blind to judge denomination from size, and easier for visitors to manager. Put a dime in front of a visitor and ask him the worth of it. He can't. Nowhere does it say "ten cents" or "10 cents." It just say "One Dime."

Sorry for ranting.

Re:Where can you get that type of paper?

[puppet10]

Also useful (particularly for the clubs mentioned in the lead-in) the strips also fluoresce under UV in different colors. From the Bureau of Engraving and Printing:

A security thread is a thin thread or ribbon running through a bank note substrate. All 1990 series and later notes, except the $1, include this feature. The note's denomination is printed on the thread. In addition, the threads of the new $5, $10, $20 and $50 notes have graphics in addition to the printed denomination. The denomination number appears in the star field of the flag printed on the thread. The thread in the new notes glows when held under a long-wave ultraviolet light. In the new $5 it glows blue, in the new $10 it glows orange, in the new $20 note it glows green, in the new $50 note it glows yellow, and in the new $100 note it glows red. Since it is visible in transmitted light, but not in reflected light, the thread is difficult to copy with a color copier which uses reflected light to generate an image. Using a unique thread position for each denomination guards against certain counterfeit techniques, such as bleaching ink off a lower denomination and using the paper to "reprint" the bill as a higher value note.

Re:Where can you get that type of paper?

[weave]

Put a dime in front of a visitor and ask him the worth of it. He can't. Nowhere does it say "ten cents" or "10 cents." It just say "One Dime."

It's also the smallest coin. Worked wonders with my little sister when I was a kid. I'd trade her my larger nickels for her small little dimes. Worked wonders!

Re:Where can you get that type of paper?

[telstar]

"Worked wonders with my little sister when I was a kid. I'd trade her my larger nickels for her small little dimes."

• My sister and I used to trade our silver dollars. I'd trade her my older ones for her newer ones 'cause the newer ones had eagles on them and was into animals. What a stupid kid I was.

Re:Where can you get that type of paper?

[innocent_white_lamb]

Also useful (particularly for the clubs mentioned in the lead-in) the strips also fluoresce under UV in different colors.

"Particularly for the clubs"??

How so? The waitress comes by with a tray of drinks for a bunch of half-drunk guys sitting at a table in the dark, most of whom throw a bill or two at her and get on with their conversation. What is the waitress to do at that point? Pull her handy black light out and start scanning each bill? The guys at the next table are yelling for service, one of the guys at this table is trying to grab her skirt, and the bartender is loading another round of drinks on a tray for her to carry off.

In real life, I run a movie theatre. When I'm selling tickets and it gets close to showtime, I have people walking in, literally throwing a wadded-up bill at me, and continuing right on into the theatre without ever stopping. And the next twenty or thirty or fifty guys behind them do exactly the same thing. Stop and check each bill for anything?? Heck, I'm lucky if I can just smooth them fast enough to get them into the drawer (and sometimes I can't; they end up in a little pile until things slow down a bit.) I don't think this is really unusual in many businesses. There simply isn't time or opportunity to do a thorough "investigation" when someone hands you money. All of the security features in the world are really of no value in these situations; that's just the way that it is.

Re:Where can you get that type of paper?

[ShadowDrake]

I was in the video rental today, and all I had was a USD 100 note to rent a single game (FF Origins FWIW-- pretty good, though the FF2 is not the FF2 I remember). The clerk held it up to light to check watermark and thread....

then took the pen to it.

Sigh.

Surprised it's profitable

[aonifer]

I'm surprised they can turn a profit, what with having to spend $80 to replace jammed ink cartridges every three minutes.

Re:Surprised it's profitable

[discogravy]

dude, check your email, you can get PRINTER REPLACEMENTS FREE 908ASDFO

Something to consider

[Sheetrock]

One of the 'anticounterfeiting' features placed in color copiers that was only acknowledged recently was a code unique to the copier that was added to each copy in such a way that it didn't noticably affect the print quality but would allow copies to be traced back to their point of origin.

I mention this because this could be the next step for inkjets (if it hasn't been done already!) with all the privacy concerns that entails.

Re:Something to consider

[Jade E. 2]

only acknowledged recently

My first real job in 95 was at a Kwik Kopy. From about 6 months after I started, we (well, a couple of us) were aware that the color copier tagged it's serial number on every copy it made.

When I first discovered it I was working with the head typesetter. We couldn't figure out what this strange very light interference pattern on every printout from the color copier (which had it's own RIP) was. It was the same regardless of whether we were printing or copying, and regardless of the content, and it was an identical pattern on every sheet. That particular copier (as far as we could tell) didn't have any moving parts that synced with the page ends well enough for it to be a physical problem. And if we put the machine into black and white mode it went away.

It took several weeks of me badgering the service guy, and 3 service calls for 'Image Quality', before he finally admitted what it was.

We weren't really surprised, the copier had other more noticeable anti-counterfitting measures as well. While we never had a problems with copying, occasionally if you printed a file from the network with a complex enough swirled pattern on it (which one of our typesetters was unfortunately fond of), any green on the page would get shifted towards blue. We solved the problem by firing the typesetter. (For unrelated reasons, of course.)

The smaller black and white self-serve copiers also apparently had currency detectors (of an informational, not active type), which we found out about when one of the machines had a service call for a broken belt and the tech qustioned us because he said the currency detection register had been set. Since none of us had seen anybody trying to copy money, and it was a black and white machine, he said it was likely a mistake and he didn't even have to report it, but asked us to keep an eye out.

Re:No problem

[Lord_Slepnir]

Just be on the lookout for crisp bills.

Actually, it's a common practice for a counterfreiting operation to 'launder' its money before putting it out into circulation. They will literally put it in a washer / dryer to give it that 'worn down' look and feel.

I've always been an advocate off

[Frederique Coq-Bloqu]

Currencies that have hologram components to them. They're [the holograms] are incredibly difficult to counterfeit(you won't be manufacturing a good facsimile on your home printer), plus they look really cool. On that note, Singapore easily has the coolest banknotes that I have ever seen.

There are other issues

[thinmac]

At least with U.S. currency, there are more issues than just he appearence of the bill. A big one, for example, is the material. If you printed out a set of nice new bills on standard copier paper, nobody would believe for a second that it was a real bill, low lights or no. There have been counterfiters who have bleached out low value bills, such as ones, and printed higher values onto them, like twenties, but I'm not sure how well your average inkjet printer would feed the cottony paper used for bills.

I'm no currency expert, but I would imagine there are a lot of issues like this that aren't effected by the gross appearence of the bill for both U.S. and other bills.

$200 George W Bush Bill

[AtariAmarok]

Last year, someone went into a convenience store in rural Michigan, and bought a candy bar. They paid for it with a $200 bill with George W Bush's face on it. The clerk gave the customer about $199.30 in change without a problem.

I think it was the manager who first raised the question about the validity of this bill later.

Re:$200 George W Bush Bill

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's more info on JSG Boggs and a website about him.

All in One stop crime

[Whigh]

Of course, with printer manufacturers producing beauties like this, it's no wonder people can get away with things like this.

You can't get that type of paper

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sold only to the US Treasury.

And from the Treasury: Currency FAQ

The paper that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) uses to produce our currency is "distinctive." A paper manufacturer produces it according to BEP specifications. It is composed of 75 percent cotton and 25 percent linen. The paper also contains red and blue fibers of various lengths that are evenly distributed throughout the paper.

From PBS: Anatomy of a Bill: The Currency Paper.

Currency paper has a unique feel and is extremely durable. Is it really 'paper' in the traditional sense? There are no wood fibers or starch in currency paper. Instead, like high quality stationery, currency paper is composed of a special blend of cotton and linen fibers. The strength comes from raw materials continuously refined until the special feel of the currency is achieved. People who handle money on a regular basis, such as bank tellers, can easily determine if a bill is counterfeit by this distinctive feel.

Why use such easy-to-copy notes?

[quoll]

Is this the incentive for the US to change it's currency? Most countries change their notes eventually anyway, so maybe America should consider doing it sooner rather than later.

The UK has that fancy bit of shiny foil woven into the paper that is easy to spot, and Australia uses polymer notes with transparent windows in them (these last longer than paper too). There are lots of alternatives available that a simple printer could not copy.

OTOH, as Bruce Schneier pointed out in Secrets and Lies, sometimes the cost of addressing the problem is more than the cost that the problem causes you. :-)

I don't think so ...

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

"An anti-digifeiting system for cheaper printers may consist of printer driver software capable of recognizing data patterns indicating currencies of several countries." I wonder what GimpPrint would think of being forced to print or not print certain documents based on their contents.

I don't think it'd make any difference for printing software. The only software that would be likely to sport anti-counterfeiting is the firmware in the printer itself.

Anyhow, good luck to make a piece of software that detects fake banknotes, and even if it did detect fake dollars with 100% accuracy (fat chance), I'll just print fake Irakian dinars and off I'll be to the currency exchange counter. No wait ...

Make really fine banknotes

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

print it on glossy photo paper, not on cheapo recycled office paper.

Even funnier

[AtariAmarok]

"Was when they visited the photocopy place and tried to copy dollars, then tried to pay the copy guy with their printed money. Ahh, I miss that show."They were using a xerox machine inside the 7-11 (or whatever), right in front of the clerk.

They were xeroxing nickels.

The spent 25 cents for each xeroxed nickel.

After they got a bunch, they raggedly tore the extra paper from around their fake paper "nickels" and tried to buy candy from the clerk.

That may already be happening

[phr2]

There were some rumors a while back that HP printer drivers inserted the printer serial number or some other identifier (like a Windows GUID) into color prints in a way that could be read back later by scanning with the right software, but wasn't visible just from looking at the print. Experiments and queries to HP were inconclusive. It doesn't seem to affect black and white printers.

Sort of related: HP now offers invisible ink for inkjet printers viewable only under UV or IR light, intended to print stuff like tracking barcode on financial documents without customers noticing them (so shred all your junk mail, not just stuff with visible account numbers, since you don't know what might be printed invisibly on it). Maybe that's another way they can surreptitiously tag the output of color printers. Your printer specs say the inkjet print head has 48 dots? Have you ever actually counted them? Maybe they'll add an unannounced 49th dot that squirts invisible ink on the paper, and a tiny amount of invisible ink in a secret chamber of every cartridge. Yeah! That's the real reason the govt wants to extend the DMCA ban third-party inkjet refills, so they can keep tracing printer output back to its source! Tinfoil hat time... :)

Re:That may already be happening

[croddy]

ah. good thing I stopped buying printers. I get them all out of the trash. usually it's a lot of deskjets that get that horizontal smearing - 8 q-tips and a spoon of water fixes that. ah, those crazy emory kids, they throw away their expensive electronics at the end of the semester, I spend 5 minutes fixing it, and then sell it back to them! most of my apartment is furnished from the trash.

Correction on the story

[AtariAmarok]

From Anna's News Clippings

"A woman was charged $2.12 at a Diary Queen drive-through in Danville, Kentucky, and she was given $197.88 in change for her $200 bill. In case a clerk might not know that a $200 bill isn't legal tender, this taped-together bill was clearly marked as a 'moral reserve note' and featured George W. Bush's portrait. The White House picture on the bill's back has yard signs reading 'We like broccoli'and 'Rooms not for rent'. Police were notified as to the woman's presence shortly after she left. They do not consider the bill to be a counterfeit one."

Re:Correction on the story

[woodchip]

Danville DQ Gag 'Talk Of Town'
Restaurant, Residents React

UPDATED: 6:42 p.m. EST January 30, 2001

DANVILLE, Ky. -- It started out with a blizzard and now a Dairy Queen in Danville is getting an avalanche of attention.

A woman who paid for her food with a fake $200 bill Sunday left with plenty of change. The bill had a picture of George W. Bush on the front and oil rigs on the back. "That's the talk of the town," Danville resident Joseph Bourne said. "It's got to be one of those dumb blonde stories."

Added fellow resident Drew Hammond: "It's the kind of news I like to hear out of my own hometown. Usually things don't happen of great significance here. It gets a lot of attention."

The 18-year-old employee has offered to refund the store. Her manager, Mike Tracy, tried to be supportive, and said that she probably was just too busy to notice the mistake.

"We try to do things as quick as possible here," Tracy said.

At least he's being a good sport about it. The restaurant is now distributing coupons on the backs of fake $200 bills.

"We're going to play off this advertising a little bit and try to think of it as something positive," Tracy said.

Local law enforcement said that the joke became a crime when the woman took off with all that change.

"When the woman received the money and left with it, the joke ceased," Danville police officer Bob Williamson said.

Still, because there's no such thing as a $200 bill, the woman, if caught, couldn't even face federal counterfeit charges. From here

Re:Correction on the story

[Jardine]

So she doesn't actually have to pay the money? When I worked in fast food, if our till was short by $1 or more, we had to pay the difference or have it take out of our paycheque.

Most of the time we would count our own register but at closing time, the manager would do it. Considering some of the managers who would count the money were mathematically challenged, I found that two or three recounts were usually a good idea.

If you were given a $50 or $100 bill, you had to get a manager to approve it (we stopped taking $100 bills after $10 and $20 counterfit bills were circulating). If you were given a $200 bill, I believe you were allowed to punch the customer in the head. If you accepted the $200 bill, I believe the manager was allowed to punch you in the head and then take it out of your paycheque.

Re:Correction on the story

[sharkey]

...at a Diary Queen drive-through...

Is there really that much of a market for those who need to buy a diary without getting out of the car?

Re:But in the US...

[TMLink]

From the a report about the new $20 bill:

Dennis Forgue, a rare currency dealer and anti-counterfeiting expert, said in an earlier interview with CNN/Money that many international counterfeiters bleach the surface of small American bills and digitally print the face of a larger bill over them, even though the watermark and security strip remain the same.

"Unless there's some sort of penetrating ink, the new bills won't fix that problem," he said.

The Future of Australian Money

[Anonymous Coward]

"Go for plastic bank notes like australia. They work well... They even have clear patches you can see right through."

This is a great idea that has future flexibility. As the Ozbuck becomes worth less and less, and it costs more and more to make them due to usual inflationary issues, they can just make the holes larger and larger to save money (sort of like with the economics of swiss cheese).

Eventually, sometime around 2030 or so, the bills will resemble rectagular rings.

Re:The Future of Australian Money

[Pulzar]

It's just the US dollar that has been going down, and the others seem to be going up compared to US dollar.

Here, try comparing AU$ to CDN$. Neither is growing compared to the other.

Or, here's EURO compared to AU$.

Re:The Future of Australian Money

[Wild Wizard]

where i work if the tranparent window part is missing we can not accept the note

New American currency, this year.

[blanks]

To slow down counterfeit bills (about 1 in every 10,000 bills is a counterfeit). The US treasury will be releasing new bills this year. And every 7 years.

Having caught people using counterfeit bills from working in nightclubs and restaurants, it is starting to become a problem.

Here is a link:
new $20 dollar bills.

Re:New American currency, this year.

[localghost]

More information: Press release
Picture of the actual bill: Front Back

UV light is the bane of home printers

[AsmordeanX]

My store went from no counterfeits to getting 4 fake $20 in as many weeks. Then I got a UV lamp that beeps if something reacts too much under the light. It can be defeated, but that requires more effort than clicking print and lining up both sides of the page.

Since we started using that, we have stopped almost $150 in counterfeits. Not bad for a $40 lamp. In the two years that it has been in place, the bank has not found anymore counterfeits in our deposits.

One would think that a nice dim area where these bills are easier to pass, that a UV lamp would be even more useful since you could see things like the UV emblem that is on canadian money or the red fibers.

Re:How would they detect features?

[phillymjs]

Do they actually recognize that currency is being copied and prohibit the operation, or add watermark stuff like "void".

They copy the bills, but some do stuff to make the copied bills unusable, like make a perfect copy of a bill but make the entire page hot pink. The Ricoh printers we had at my last job did that. Other copiers make the copy, but insert a code number somewhere on the bill unbeknownst to the counterfeiter. When the bill makes its way to the Secret Service, they find the code, contact the company, and find out where that copier is located, which speeds up the investigation quite a bit. IIRC, a few years back they nailed some idiot Cornell students this way. Unfortunately I can't find the story on Google, and I don't quite remember where I heard it-- possibly from one of the Discovery Channel or History Channel documentaries concerning the U.S. Mint or the Secret Service or counterfeiting.

~Philly

How do you think the $ keeps it's value?

[BoomerSooner]

Why did Saddam have dollars instead of euros?

Our money is used to control the world economy. Monitary supply is watched extremely closely by the fed. By keeping our money consistant it makes all those illicit activities good to do because the money never "expires".

Could you imagine a columbian drug czar or saddam going to the bank to exchange their 1/2 a billion dollars?

This is how we tople governments. Money.

Greed is good. -Gordon Gekko

Re:How do you think the $ keeps it's value?

[egoff]

OPEC is considering trading oil in Euros rather than Dollars. This would reduce the need for many firms and countries to hold dollars, and instead increase their need to hold euros. Combine that with the rapidly dropping value of the dollar and you'll realize that the dollar isn't keeping its value, and very well might plummet in value in the near future. There are even rumors and signs that the current American administration is willing to accept a lower valued dollar compared to other currencies.

Try it with New Zealand money

[nzyank]

NZ bills have see-through embossed plastic windows and last time I checked my Lexmark I didn't see a cartridge that would replace paper with clear embossed plastic. Maybe the US should just make the face bigger. Yeah...that should do it.

Well, thats less of a problem with secure bills...

[WegianWarrior]

..like, for instance, Norwegian ones (see http://www.norgesbank.no/english/notes_and_coins/n otes.html for more on those) which has real securitymeasures like holograms and 'mother of pearl'-effect on it. Good luck trying to copy or scan that, 'cuz it plain can't be done without very, very specialised equipment. In fact, a while back I wrote up a short piece on Norwgian money for one of my american friends who were comming over to visit, and since he wondered how they have apperantly managed to scan it at http://www.norgesbank.no/english/notes_and_coins/c ounterfeit200kr.html , I gave them a call and asked - and was told that that picture was made out of a "number of scans at various angles blended together". For some reason they didn't want to give me any more details on how to achive that efect...

Sorry for not giving proper links, but I seem to have misplaced my little 'cheat-note' on how to write that bit of code...

Re:Bleach a lower value note.

[blowhole]

1) Bleach 20 dollar bill.
2) Make $5 disappear.
2) ???
3) Profit $75!

Yeah, yeah... I know where you were going with it. =P

Small time counterfiting profitable?

[zakezuke]

I think a wide spread issue of this ability to reproduce bills would be a problem if they were good enough to fool change machines.

I know the local gas station accepts bills in their outdoor machines, let alone do it your self carwashes that provide coins for change to use in the machines, though some are switching to tokens rather then quarters. I've never tried something I knew was counterfit, but i'd imagine that, given that these vending machines use scanners to identify a bill, i'd think they'd be easier to fool.

Further more, small time counterfitting is less likely to raise an eyebrow. A $20, $50, $100 will be looked at most carefuly... where a $5, or a $10 isn't going to be considered as much of a threat.

While I wouldn't want to buy, let's say a car, with quarters, they are indeed legal tender, and no human is going to argue about a quarter being counterfit, and quarters don't have any serial numbers to boot.

This is what i'd be concerned about, a flood of sub $20 counterfit currency.

Re:Small time counterfiting profitable?

[ONU CS Geek]

Yes, but something that isn't said is that when things like this happen at carwashes/laundromats, the first place that the police go to look are at the banks. The banks sometimes are the first people to know, and the tellers have a good memory about people coming in and dumping large amounts of change for them to cash over.

This actually happened to me once--I went to visit the significant other at work, and brought in my 'tub of change' to cash in. Well, there had been a lot of vandalism at a local car wash, and the next day I had a call from the local police department questioning the change. The police department was small enough that they knew that we were together, however, they have to question everyone as procedure.

My next goal: A coinstar machine, only without them coming to pick the change up...me keeping it. Any ideas? I'd like to have one in my place.

Got a fake $20 from an ATM once

[ishmalius]

A few months ago I got a bogus $20 from an automatic teller machine. It was one-sided, and made on regular paper. It looked like it had been moistened and pressed to give it a more realistic texture. However, it was so obviously fake that I find it hard to believe that it passed visual inspection twice:

1. From the bank employee who received it
2. From another employee who stocked the ATM

How is this possible? Anyway, I called the bank; they said they would take it back and do the paperwork. But they would -not- reimburse me the $20! Cheap bastards! (kidding) ;-)

Try printing a hologram

[brunes69]

In Canada we have holograms embedded into all bills 20 dollars and up. While some crooks have indeed gotten away with glueing on fake holograms, anyone with half a clue could tell simply by touch that the bills were fakes. Then again, from my experience people arent checking bills too throughly at busy nightclubs.. I am sure in a single night at the ones around here you could pass at least 1G in fake 20s without a problem at all.

Re:How would they detect features?

[letxa2000]

IIRC, a few years back they nailed some idiot Cornell students this way. Unfortunately I can't find the story on Google

Which raises the question: If something happens and it isn't on Google, did it really happen? :)

Re:Paranoia mode on....

[Dr Reducto]

Yeah, it's called Palladium/TCPA.(More Tinfoil hat time)

Re:No problem

[Ko5mo]

Guide to be a money lauderer:
Step 1: Print bills with inkjet.
Step 2: Put them inside washing machines to give them that old feel.
Step 3: Profit!

I am pretty sure you are going to have to think up a different step 2 for those inkjet printed bills.

the penalties from counterfitting

[luzrek]

I hate to say it, but only an idiot would counterfit any currency. Wired magazine had an article on this a couple of years ago. The pennalties for counterfitting in the USA is $250,000 AND 25 years in prision per offence. An offence is making, or trying to pass a counterfit note. It is also pretty easy to get caught, since most clerks have pens which can detect fake notes.

As for the technical aspects. Take a look at the "big head" notes. Their is microprinting on the lower left side of the portrait. This microprinting is so fine, that light reflecting off of them scatters making it impossible to make a clear copy. In addition, there is multi-colored ink on one of the 5/10/20/50/100 numbers in the corners. And there is that pesky watermark. Oh, and ink from inkjets runs like there is no tommorow. A sweatty person couldn't pass those notes.

All in all, the penalties for counterfitting and the risk of getting caught are too high.

modern technology solving the wrong problem, again

[dmszero]

oh look, the money can be counterfeit, lets force printer drivers to not print out things that look like money!

fucking hell, do it right, make the money more secure, its not hard, we did it 10 years ago.. and im sure they make plastic in that lovely green colour you americans seem to love so much

its like making the bike seat my comfy by wearing silly damn pants instead of fixing the damn seat. (thanks mr adams).

DRM, the stupid answer to any sufficiently simple question

dms0

What ever happened to the good ole days?

[PoiznDrt]

WHatever happened to the good ole days and the fun and exciting world of off-set Litho or even a silkscreen?
Sure not everyone has the facilities, but you can carry off a more "heist" for less than the cost of the average high quality printer...
Not to mention the extra snazzy-ness of custom ink, knowledge of paper with cloth content, and OIL based perm. inks which won't run through your fingers while trying to pass the stuff off...
Printmaking..It's an art!

hmph

[dh003i]

Not the printing forged money is ok, but I don't want my printer "deciding" what to and not to print. What's next, printers "deciding" not to print documents they deem as anti-government? Or not printing images they deem as pornography?

Never mind, Syria has it cornered

[Markus Registrada]

It doesn't much matter what you can do with an inkjet printer. You won't get anywhere close to what is being done professionally, in mass production. Syria has been printing an estimated $20 billion/year, year after year, for a decade. How much is that? You can fit $2M in a briefcase. That's 10,000 briefcases full of bundles of cash, each year. They have to launder 30 briefcases full every day.

The fakes are indistinguishable from the real thing, even by experts. (No surprise, they're made by experts.) Maybe Syria has a harder time, now, disposing of them, with its smuggling routes through Iraq interfered with. (Closed? You must be kidding.) Who knows how much is being printed in Russia? Dollars are very popular there.

It didn't take long at all to start copying the new bills, which is why the U.S. is going to another design already. You probably have some Syrian bills in your pocket right now. Take a look and see if you can spot them.

Meanwhile the Treasury is harrassing an artist, J.S.Boggs, for drawing funny money by hand and exchanging it for face value. Your tax "dollars" at work.

Re:No problem

[PurpleFloyd]

Color lasers run $2K-4K US for a fairly basic model. They can give you a very high-quality print (lasers are still better than inkjets), which just happens to be waterproof. Although the initial bite is quite steep, I would imagine being able to print your own money would defray the costs somewhat.

Although it wouldn't pass a rigorous inspection, spending the printed money at a grocery store or similar location would probably be really easy (nobody would check it for the special security features, and previous posters have mentioned brands of paper that have that "money feel" to them).

Better banknotes?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Brazil's new 20 Reais note has a plastic insert. Very hard to counterfit. This would defeat the "too dark to see decent though not perfect copies" copies.

A lot of people don't like it though, feels different, doesn't fold the same.

Easier even still

[sparkie]

If 100 dollar bills are physically larger than 50's, and 50's larger than 20's and 20's larger than 10's and 10's larger than 5's and 1's smallest, it'll be kinda tough to bleach the bill and print a larger bill on it. Come on China has been doing it for years. But the US wouldn't wanna be like china would they?

So what?

[syzme]

An anti-digifeiting system for cheaper printers may consist of printer driver software capable of recognizing data patterns indicating currencies of several countries.

Who cares, the buisness is in printing fake IDs for high school students.

Alternate title

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on the cover, the book could be titled: "Goatse - the Novel"

Tales From a Bank Cash Vault

[LaCosaNostradamus]

For several months, I worked in a bank cash vault (Fifth Third Bank, Toledo OH USA) and noted some things.

Firstly, silver coinage is very much out there, even to the point that a handful of silver Kennedy half dollars can be found in a single deposit from a department store (there was even a Franklin half in one batch). Perhaps people just don't notice silver coinage even in high-volume retail ... but then again, in handling coin, I soon learned to listen to the distinctive sound of silver tinging against the cupro-nickel normal coinage in the sealed bags. (There was one false alarm that turned out to be Eisenhower dollars.)

Secondly, fake twenty dollar (US$20) bills are being easily passed along in bars ... I can only conclude that this is because that these are generally places where the lighting is more dim, lots of small transactions take place, and frankly, where the environment is busy and loud. Counterfeit 20s (and some 10s) showed time and time again in their deposits. (It was particularly amusing to contact the customer about the debit, since it seems some of them expect the bank to simply replace the bill with a real one.)

It could also be that the criminal element that does the counterfeiting is native to the bar-going crowd.

I have inspected these fake 20s in some detail. I noted right off the bat the "obvious" difference: the overall hue of the bill is off just enough to be suspicious. It is a little darker, and either slightly more yellow, brown and even a tiny bit purple. So it is easy for me to believe that these bills can be passed off in a darker environment.

The texture of the bills was OK, surprisingly. It could be that the paper was run through a washing and/or brushing mechanism to more simulate the cloth-y feel of a real bill. As for the microprinting ... of course, it was a washed out line and that more than anything told me it was counterfeit.

P.S. A final note about hue ... bills go through a lot, and you can't just go by the hue. I've seen bills that have been dyed ... light green, dark purple, things like that. It happens.

Re:Paranoia mode on....

[jrockway]

Nobody's forcing you to buy a new printer. Just use the one you have now to print illegal material. It's good enough.

Same with these future can-only-run-signed-code computers. Don't buy them; your current computer is probably pretty good and can run ANY code you tell it to.

the ink runs when wet

[wadiwood]

At least the ink off my bubblejet thing does. Renders it useless for printing meeting minutes and agendas because we nearly always have at least a glass of water each and the printouts get used as coasters. That lovely wet washed out watercolour effect. So you wouldn't need a special pen to test, just a water sprayer or a wet finger.

I wonder if you could make fake aussie notes using transperancy film. Someone did get into trouble once for trying to pass off a friend's copy of a note out of pencil and paper as money. That was when we still had paper $2. I think the person who made the copy, even though it was only one sided, got into as much trouble as the idiot who tried to spend it. Not entirely rational law enforcement.

Get the money paper from the source

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

The paper is manufactured by Crane & Co. of Dalton, Massachusetts (I grew up in the neighboring town of Pittsfield, and it was a source of local pride that the money paper was made in our area). Though it does not appear that you can buy, say, blank sheets of $20 bill paper via their web site. Seems like that would be a moneymaker to me. As long as they got paid in real bills, of course.

I think that would make a great plot for a caper movie -- pulling off a big heist of real currency paper from Crane & Co.

Currency Rarely Checked

[suwain_2]

I've recently started working in a restaurant, and as such handle a fair deal of cash. I have to say, I've never bothered to check currency to see if it's real. I know in some department stores it's required for the clerks to use a counterfeit-detecting pen on anything over $20, but this is certainly not the norm.

The problem is that you can do a fairly lousy job, especially if you're giving me a wad of various bills to pay for your dinner. (ie, if you give me a bunch of $5's and $1's, I'd just throw them all in the register, most likely not even looking at them one-by-one.)

Machines exist for 'counting' money (at extremely high rates) that automatically check various security features. Suppose cash registers started having an interface to this -- you'd stick the money in, and it would automatically undergo security checks.

By the way, am I the only one who isn't too convinced that the new bill styles will be effective? The old ones will still be accepted, and if they're easier to forge, why wouldn't I just forge one of those? Frequently changing their design won't really counter counterfeiting (heh, no pun intended there).

Re:Currency Rarely Checked

[gerardrj]

You hit the nail on the head.
The U.S. Treasury has never ended the lifespan of any of the bill styles it's printed. If the U.S. Treasury authorized a note's printing, then it is legal tender no matter how old it is or what its denomination.
If you wanted, you could counterfeit $2 bills. They rarely get back to the banks. people tend to horde them. But they are legal tender even though they where retired from new printing runs years ago.

Unless and until the Treasury recalls and eliminates all the "old" bills, the new bill formats will do nothing to stop counterfeiters. Copiers will simply choose to copy the older and less secure bills.

Multi Layered printing?

[NanoGator]

Just curious if the anti-currency measures could be defeated by printing elements of the currency at different times. Just print a little bit of it, rewind the paper, print a different part of it, etc. Break it up into small enough chunks, and how would the printer know the difference?

Re:Speaking of GNU ...

[Jeremy Erwin]

The official explanation was that the printer (the Xerox Dover) jammed frequently, and RMS wanted to hack the drivers so that some sort of alert would display on his terminal if the printer jammed. This was in 1979, long before anti-counterfeiting features were incorportated into copiers.

Forex primer

[nelsonal]

1. Forex is short for foreign exchange.
2. There are three major global currancies now that the Euro group got behind the Euro. The Dollar, Euro and Yen. The British Pound is a smaller but still important global currency. The dollar is still has the largest foreign holdings, mostly thanks to oil trade being dollar denominated, asian currency holders, things like Euro-dollar accounts, and criminal activity (which still usually takes place in dollars. For a currency to be weakening it should depreciate against all three, however, most of the smaller currencies are directly or inderectly linked to one of those three currencies (mostly the Dollar or Euro).
3. Following the removal of the gold standard worldwide, most currencies trade on a floating market, meaing that unless the government takes careful action to prevent swings in the currency, its value is determined by market transations. While it used to be that speculators drove trading (George Soros made his early billions by breaking the London central bank) today the vast majority of transactions is related to either foreign investment or imports and exports. Complete speculation: The increase of the Euro is likely the result of large foreign investment portfolios moving into Europe and out of the US. Some of this is Saudi Arabian, and driven partly by politics, and some of the trading is driven by Eropeans who are chasing yields. Our large trade deficits are typically made up with foreign investments in the US, which was one of the main reasons the dollar remained so strong throughout the 1990s while trade deficits remained at very hight levels. Now that foreign investors are realizing that they might not get outsised returns from their US investments, they are beginning to look for investments in other regions. Economics is pretty self regulating, the weaker dollar will make imports more expensive, and exports cheaper which should reduce the trade deficit, assuming the investment change is not temporary.
4. A falling currency benefits people who borrow from foreigners (if the fall is unexpected) and exporters. A rising currency benefits those who loan to foreigners (if the rise is unexpected) and importers or tourists, who travel to the foreign country, but are effectivly importers. Exporters benefit from falling currency in the following way: Lets use Ford and Nissan as the example companies, when the dollar falls relative to the yen, Ford, who still pays most of its employees in dollars, can now sell a car in Japan for the same Yen price and reap more dollars after the currency transactions. However, when the dollar is rising, Ford's dollar value of a Japanese sale, is lower and they still have to pay their employees in dollars.

Re:Plastic Notes work well-"petty" crime.

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you're a counterfeiter and you can't fool an iodine pen, you should consider going into another line of crime."

I would recommned congressman.

Re:No problem

[muzzmac]

No doubt it would be trivial. In my 2 months in the US not one bloody shopkeeper bothered to even look at my signature against my credit card.

Get's at least looked at about 30% of times in Australia.

Scanner Drivers too?

[supz]

I remember I once tried to scan in some money (no, not to counterfeit it -- didn't have a magnifying glass, and I wanted to check out the owl on the dollar bill, up close), and some of it came out really "wavey" to describe it best. The blank space that has the pattern printed, looked like a bunch of sin/cos curves next to each other. Is this because of the scanner driver or could it be because of built in counterfeit protection, into the dollar bill?

True Canadian Story

[B5_geek]

My cousin is currently in jail for this crime.
He was spend over $10,000 per month on ink cartridges. The `special` paper was very easy to get ahold of, so don't let that fool you. This was not a `small-time` operation either. There were 4+ print-houses setup in 2 cities. Each warehouse had more then 40 printers.
He made $10, $20, and $100 notes. Canadian currency has a little psudo-holographic square in the corner. He just used a simple little green/gold foil glued onto the paper to overcome this level of protection. The cops finally caught him after he owned the following: 2 Ford Mustangs 1 20' boat 4 Jet-ski's 1 Lincoln Navigator SUV 4 Houses (and he bought them all with cash)
To say he made millions would be an understatement.

Magicians and Money

[Aidtopia]

Magicians that do tricks with money work right on the edge of legality. Defacing currency is illegal if you attempt to pass it off.

If you get a batch of new notes, it's likely that the serial numbers will be consecutive. On US currency, the green ink used for the serial numbers can be erased quite cleanly with a regular pencil eraser. So you take two consecutively numbered bills and erase the last digit of each. Now it appears you have two bills with the same serial number. Spectators generally don't know how many digits are in a serial number and thus won't notice that it's short. You can burn a bill right in front of their eyes then produce the substitute for a startling illusion.

There are lots of gaffed coins out there, too. Craftsmen start with real coins and modify them, so they're not counterfitting. Inexpensive ones look good. Expensive ones are uncanny. The trick is not to spend them accidentally. :-)

Steganography

[Jetson]

There were some rumors a while back that HP printer drivers inserted the printer serial number or some other identifier (like a Windows GUID) into color prints in a way that could be read back later by scanning with the right software, but wasn't visible just from looking at the print.

You can do that sort of thing yourself, too. The simplest form of steganography is to diddle the LSB of one of the colours. Since the human eye doesn't focus well in the blue wavelengths, you would filter the host image to create a 23-bit RGB (887) image and OR it with your one-bit RGB (001) data image. Extracting the data is a matter of scanning the original (if not already in electronic form) and filtering out everything but the blue LSB. The real challenge is determining the best patterns to use to encode your data so that it can be recovered if the image is damaged enroute (as would quickly happen with currency). Like a barcode image, you would want the embedded data to have a large surface area, delimiters, CRCs and have redundant copies distributed throughout the host image.

Re:Feeding the Trolls

[BenTels0]

Errrr.... The value of a currency is what you pay for a unit of it in another currency. So what could possibly be the difference between the AUD or the Euro going up and the $ going down? It's the same thing....