Why does the BEP even bother???

[jtryka]

So today I was going to lunch, and since I work east coast hours I go early (like 10:30 or 11:00) and all I had was a $100 bill, and I knew it was too early for my lunch choice to be able to break it. So I stopped at the lobby Bank of America branch (my office is in the Bank of America Building) and asked for change. The teller takes the bill and immediately whips out a 99 cent counterfeit detector pen and makes a mark on the bill. And immediately I asked, why she did that with all the anti-counterfeiting features now on the bills? I told her the BEP has spent more than a billion developing these things over the last decade to make it easy to determine if a bill is genuine, and she, a teller who should know better whips out the insufficiently_thoughtful_person pen! There's a thread, a water mark, color shifting ink, and she comes with the pen which only makes sure the paper is good. Well duh, the best counterfeiters don't get their paper at Kinko's they bleach $1 bills and then print the larger denomination over it, so the paper feels right and cannot be detected! AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!! Why does the BEP bother with these things when the people of this country, including the bankers are such blind insufficiently_thoughtful_persons??? Keep the money in the budget and just go back to the old designs, it's what we deserve.

 

[shadroch]

As a former niteclub owner I can tell you there are alot of good fake 100s out there.This is why the new 20s are such a departure from the old style.

My workers had to mark each $50 or $100 they got for a number of reasons. One was that either the floor manager or myself when reviewing the nites tapes could see how many bills they marked. Since no large bills were ever given out in change, it was easy to catch a thief.

Another was that we hoped the sight of them doing it would discourage people from trying to pass them.

still got burned a bit but mostly with some real nice tens.

It's most likely bank policy, and I'm sure you are aware of how policies take on a life of their own.