Holiday season prompts closer look for counterfeit currency

Jace Radke

Monday, Dec. 14, 1998 | 11:24 a.m.

As shoppers continue to make their holiday purchases, cashiers are busy ringing up merchandise -- and making sure that all that green their employers are taking in is the real thing.

Currency usage is highest during November and December, and so is counterfeiting, according to the U.S. Department of Treasury. The holidays are when a counterfeiter may try to take advantage of busy clerks, warns Treasury Under Secretary for Enforcement James Johnson.

"Counterfeiters often strike when stores are at their busiest, when customers are trying to work quickly, and customers are rushed," Johnson said. "So this holiday season it will be especially important to take a closer look at the currency they handle."

Many Las Vegas businesses are doing just that.

Linda Christopher is an employee at Borders Book Shop at 2323 S. Decatur Blvd., and she says checking for counterfeit bills has become second nature.

"We just hold them up to the light and check them," Christopher said. "I haven't got a counterfeit bill here, but at my other job at U-Haul, we got a fake $100 bill about a week ago."

When Christopher holds the bill to the light, she is looking for a watermark portrait in the space to the right of the engraved portrait, and a security thread embedded in the paper. The thread will grow green under an ultraviolet light if the bill is real.

Another way to verify a bill is to tilt it back and forth to see if the lower right numeral changes from green to black. If it does, it's a good bill. Another way to check authenticity is with a special pencil that will leave a yellow mark if the bill is good and a black mark if it is fake.

At Jumbo Sports, at 3071 N. Rainbow Blvd., management requires workers to check both $100 and $50 bills.

The Treasury Department is fighting counterfeiting with the redesigned $100 and $50 bills that debuted in 1996 and 1997, and the new $20 bill that came out this year. In 2000, the redesigned $10 and $5 bills will be issued at the same time.

Computer technology is now playing a part in counterfeiting, with 43 percent of counterfeit notes from the fiscal year 1998, which ended Sept. 30, printed from inkjet printers, Johnson said.

About $40 million in counterfeit currency was passed onto the American public in the fiscal year 1998, and $29.9 million was seized before entering domestic circulation, Johnson said. Outside the U.S., $3.2 million was passed and $78.8 million was seized, to combine with the domestic counterfeiting to total $153 million in funny money.

The $153 million is less than three one-hundredths of 1 percent of the nearly $480 billion in genuine currency and coin in circulation worldwide.