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It's incredible to me that as of the previous version of the $100 bill, that anyone would take the fake bills. I worked at a bank for about 2 years and the qua

It's incredible to me that as of the previous version of the $100 bill, that anyone would take the fake bills. I worked at a bank for about 2 years and the quality of fake $100's I came across was NEVER any good to fool the bank, however, local businesses did not scrutinize it beyond the counterfeit marker (which is rarely indicative of the legitimacy of a bill). Edit: I should note that every single fake, or suspected fake, would be sent out to the secret service. In the case where several bills would show up in a short period from local businesses, local police would be contacted as well (and of course demand to see the bills, which they never did).

ethanbond 12y ago
> the quality of fake $100's I came across was NEVER any good seems like a tautology! I'm surprised it's not required for people to forward to the Secret Service so they can be aware of the trends in forgery.
shanemhansen 12y ago
Respectfully, it's no surprise that all the fake bills you saw looked fake to you. This is similar to the attitude I frequently see from law enforcement about how all criminals eventually get caught. Ultimately, it's impossible to know how good your test is for determining X if you have no ability to cross-check yourself.
- georgemcbay 12y ago
  This idea is often called the "Toupée fallacy", the idea being people often think all hair toupées look fake because they can always spot them, implicitly ignoring that they are not accounting for the fact that some could be good enough that they are unable to spot them.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    Except that this effect mysteriously didn't happen with fake 20 dollar bills! Perhaps we have a fallacy fallacy on our hands.
  - TheHypnotist 12y ago
    Well, not entirely, because we also had very expensive machines that ID fakes. We used this when one was suspicious but weren't sure. I dont know how it worked, but it had more sensors and a process of ID'ing bills that I still don't really understand. This is more often then not how we found 20's since usually they were too numerous to scrutinize manually. So you could try and walk in with a great toupee but I'm gonna suck it off with my expensive vacuum anyway.
    - skj 12y ago
      This is only a counterargument if you actually put all of the bills through this machine, eventually. Did you do that, perhaps as a final sorting measure? Otherwise, the ones that were too good to arouse your suspicion were swept through.
      - TheHypnotist 12y ago
        Well, eventually all of our money would be sold to this machine. So, yes. Our drawers were only allowed to have some small sum, and usually no large bills.
- TheHypnotist 12y ago
  Well we did. I explained it below if you want to read. But we had a very expensive machine that sorted, scanned, ID'd and stored bills for us. This was our cross-check. I could spot it with our blacklights, back lights, touch - just to double check, I would stick it through the machine and it would spit the bill back to me.

ethanbond 12y ago

> the quality of fake $100's I came across was NEVER any good seems like a tautology! I'm surprised it's not required for people to forward to the Secret Service so they can be aware of the trends in forgery.

shanemhansen 12y ago

Respectfully, it's no surprise that all the fake bills you saw looked fake to you. This is similar to the attitude I frequently see from law enforcement about how all criminals eventually get caught. Ultimately, it's impossible to know how good your test is for determining X if you have no ability to cross-check yourself.

georgemcbay 12y ago
This idea is often called the "Toupée fallacy", the idea being people often think all hair toupées look fake because they can always spot them, implicitly ignoring that they are not accounting for the fact that some could be good enough that they are unable to spot them.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  Except that this effect mysteriously didn't happen with fake 20 dollar bills! Perhaps we have a fallacy fallacy on our hands.
- TheHypnotist 12y ago
  Well, not entirely, because we also had very expensive machines that ID fakes. We used this when one was suspicious but weren't sure. I dont know how it worked, but it had more sensors and a process of ID'ing bills that I still don't really understand. This is more often then not how we found 20's since usually they were too numerous to scrutinize manually. So you could try and walk in with a great toupee but I'm gonna suck it off with my expensive vacuum anyway.
  - skj 12y ago
    This is only a counterargument if you actually put all of the bills through this machine, eventually. Did you do that, perhaps as a final sorting measure? Otherwise, the ones that were too good to arouse your suspicion were swept through.
    - TheHypnotist 12y ago
      Well, eventually all of our money would be sold to this machine. So, yes. Our drawers were only allowed to have some small sum, and usually no large bills.
TheHypnotist 12y ago
Well we did. I explained it below if you want to read. But we had a very expensive machine that sorted, scanned, ID'd and stored bills for us. This was our cross-check. I could spot it with our blacklights, back lights, touch - just to double check, I would stick it through the machine and it would spit the bill back to me.