Today's community service announcement. You don't hear about it often in the press; but counterfeit notes are becoming an increasingly prevalent problem. As technology advances it is now all to easy to scan and print hi definition copies of the real thing. We get these on an annoyingly regular basis now. The Police can't do anything about it as they regularly receive rather a lot of them from other businesses in town. In a busy environment it's easy to miss the clues. Must be impossible in a dark night club. 1) It's a very good colour photocopy 2) The paper is coated in some sort of waxy solution to give it a kind of plastic feel; but it doesn't feel quite "right" 3) The note is hand cut and the clear plastic window is glued on by hand. 4) The plastic window is the right material and thickness but doesn't have the embossed "50" in the plastic. You can see and feel the boundary between the paper and the glued on window. 5) The stars on the window are hand painted or sometimes screen printed or airbrushed using a stencil. 6) The size of the note can be slightly off as they are hand cut. Be careful, there are a sh*tload of these things out in the community. It's mostly the $50 and $20 notes; but I have seen $100's. Presumably people are more likely to closely examine the $100's so they focus on the lower denominations. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Looking at that reminds me of doing spot the difference with my boys. Interesting they don't do it with $100's as 360C said. I was amazed while overseas recently (in Switzerland) where they have $200, $500 and $1,000 notes (which are pretty much on par with the aussie$). I bought a coffee one day with a $200 note (thats all I had) and they changed it no questions asked (oh the coffe was like $4). Apparently normal.
Yes, see the points 1 to 6 in the post itself. These things are very hard to pick when you are flat out. One of my staff owns a shop in St Albans and they also get hit on a very regular basis. You never hear about it on the news; but these things are everywhere. The Police reaction is pretty much "oh not another one".
That would have been one of the fake twenty dollar notes. They don't get too many $50 and $100 notes on the pension so they are a bit tough to copy.
My father told me that years ago shopkeepers would flick the note between thumb and second finger, he said they could tell by the sound if it was a real note or not.
True with the old paper notes; but not the new ones. The trick with the old paper notes was to look for the embedded steel thread in the middle. The main give away with this note is the feel and the irregular size. If you run your fingers along a genuine note you can easily feel changes in texture. This waxed paper fake has the same texture all the way along and you can feel the raised glued in window.
Reminds me that my father wrote to me after hearing that they had found a cure for dyslexicia " That is music to my arse" he wrote, he suffered all his life, but we had a few laughs along the way!
My main point in posting the thread is to make people aware as you won't hear about it in the news. This is the 3rd one I have seen in the last few months and I am not Robinson Caruso with them so scale that up nationally and you get an idea of the problem.
never worried me ,i just got on with it,let the pen pushers earn shjt money while I got into and made a nice buck along the way. i found in the last 15 years I've made more money out of holding good property then actual income from work.
Could be a good move for a low cost reader at point of sale. Hard for staff to feel every note and make the call. Is the problem that bad? written before your last reply
