Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/28/us-authorities-seize-almost-on.html
…
2 Likes
TIL that counterfeit bills are a now cheap enough to produce to make profit off of ones.
24 Likes
Ditto. I thought that was the thing hindering such things.
OR
Maybe they are state made at a loss, but it is used as an ends to a means somehow.
9 Likes
Maybe they are banking on less scrutiny for singles? Or a massive money laundering racket based entirely on strip clubs?
15 Likes
Interesting that one pallet appears to be missing 9 boxes. 
7 Likes
2 Likes
The news report did say 45 boxes, so that adds up. Unless it was originally 54 boxes before the reporter got there.
One nice thing is that now I have a good idea of just how much space 20,000 crisp new bills take up.
I do wonder who taped that bill to the side of that one box. I kind of hope it was the criminals.
3 Likes
I thought it was because it took too long with ones to make real
money.
If you make a !arge purchase someone might wonder about those hundreds of ones. You can buy packs of gum, one at a time, but it would take forever.
Larger denominations makes it faster. But go too high, and there’ll be suspicions because larger denominations are uncommon.
I Unless recent anti-counterfeiting techniques add to the cost, it costs as much to print a dollar bill as a twenty or fifty.
4 Likes
There’s a Jack Reacher novel where the bad guys get a warehouse full of 1’s and bleach them. Then the paper was good for making 20’s and 100’s.
Of course, the plastic strips and watermarks in the bills now make that trick obsolete.
10 Likes
Or perhaps a logistics test of some sort? I would think a boxful of 1s is weird enough to be spread through news outlets, so that they know it had been caught, something that might not be leaked as quickly during an investigation into a box of 20s.
5 Likes
Or could be just to fuck with the system as posited by @Mister44
From what I understand the biggest source for really good counterfeit money is North Korea. And considering the current status of our relations with them I can see it being done just to be a PITA.
6 Likes
Singles don’t have any advanced counterfeiting measures. They should definitely be cheaper to counterfeit. But not 20 or 100 times cheaper necessarily.
However, the only person who could use these bills would be someone who already has a commercial operation that deals with cash. These are not the kind of counterfeits that you go to a store and buy things with to get real bills as change.
7 Likes
Not sure risking a federal rap is worth strip club money.
Or maybe the thinking is nobody checks $1 bills at all?
4 Likes
Pedantry: I believe they seized $0 in counterfeit bills.
20 Likes
If that’s good linen stock it’s still worth something.
4 Likes
I genuinely wonder what the market rate for 900,000 counterfeit $1 bills is.
5 Likes
I’d just use it to save money at vending machines…
2 Likes
I am baffled by how that can possibly be true. Whoever is paying for these to use obviously isn’t paying 100 cents on the dollar, so that means they’re getting what, .80 or .70 on the dollar? And shipping them across the ocean with the attendant security measures? And using conterfeit money that would have to be spent over thousands of transactions, thus increasing the chance they’ll be discovered? How can that be profitable?
4 Likes
Just don’t use them for tipping. That’s crass.
8 Likes
Apparently counterfeiting was done during WWII. One reason was that when sending agents in, they needed money for that country. It might not have been readiky available during war. But if it undermined the other’s economy, that was good too. I think both the Allies and Germany did this.
3 Likes
