Counterfeit currency circulating in higher numbers around the holidays
According to the United States Secret Service, counterfeit circulation sees a bump around the holiday season. But worry not, because these bills, sophisticated as they may be, are generally detectable.
“You can just tell,” according to Pocatello Lt. Eric Anderson. And lots of factors stand out to the lieutenant.
“There’s identifying marks that when you hold up identifying US currency. You can just tell. There’s the watermarks and you can just tell. You can tell by the feel of it, that it’s fake,” he said.
It’s a view that’s shared by Idaho Central Credit Union’s Greg Meade.
“As far as looking at the money itself, you can tell, really just going off of your gut. You know that the money feels different it looks different,” Meade explained.
But the money still finds its way out there. And the most commonly counterfeited denomination may surprise you.
“20’s are probably the most passed bill because you’re not going to question them as much,” Meade said. “But that’s typically what you’re going to see more of it a $20 bill.”
Although these bills aren’t showing up daily, “the last one we’ve seen is probably two or three weeks ago,” according to Meade, passing them off can land you in serious trouble.
“It’s a felony so we will look into it. If we can get a suspect and we can prove they knowingly passed counterfeit money we will prosecute them,” Anderson said.
And according to Meade, most people who show up with them don’t even know.
“I think most of the time its people don’t realize what they have. Whether they got it from change at a retail store or another location at that point they usually don’t know that they have them is what we come to find,” he said.
In order to keep yourself and other out of trouble double check any bills in denominations of 20 or higher, and if you suspect something may be off with a bill bring it to your local police department.
People suspect they may have counterfeit bills can check out the signs on the Secret Service’s website.
