6A / NEWS / MONDAY, MAY 2, 2011 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
LOCAL
Difficult detection of counterfeit bills at bars
BY CHRIS HONG chong@kansan.com
It's a Friday night at the Mass St. Pub, and the bar is in full swing. The room is dark and the people are drunk and loud. The bartenders, trying to keep up with the pace, quickly serve the customers drinks and take their money even quicker.
As the wind nights down, a barback takes $25 out of a tip jar and makes a disappointing realization: the $20 bill in his hand is not real. He alerts manager John Graves, who checks the rest of the cash. Graves said the bar got hit with $280 of counterfeit money that night two months ago.
"It itkes two seconds of looking at it to realize it's fake," he said.
He blamed the bar's vulnerability on the simple nature of nightlife:
quick transactions in a fast-paced and dark environment. He also said bartenders were not expecting to receive fake money.
Chuck Green, an agent with the Secret Service in Kansas City, Mo., said counterfeiters prefer quick and busy transactions where there is not enough time to realize the bill is fake. He also said they will generally make a small purchase to optimize the money they get back.
Although counterfeiters hurt the businesses they target, it does not happen frequently in Lawrence. Green said his office has received 21 bills since February 2011; a "blip on the radar" of the counterfeit spectrum his division covers.
Sergeant Matt Sarna of the Lawrence Police Department also said counterfeiting is not a big problem in Lawrence. Sarna said that
generally, counterfeit money is used by people passing through town and those involved in the drug trade.
Green said a lot of counterfeit money is produced off home printers and scanners. He said the quality of the bills varies, but they usually look and feel funny. These bills only need to pass for a quick moment, and a second look is all that is needed to determine if they're real. A special counterfeit pen will also detect fake money that is not printed on genuine currency paper. However, another method, known as bill washing, will pass the pen test and requires careful scrutiny. Counterfeiters "wash" the ink off lower denomination bills and then print higher values, usually $100, on the paper. The watermark of the original bill will still show up when held against the light, so people should make sure the faces
on the bill always match.
When counterfeit money is detected, the local police and the Secret Service are alerted. The money is sent to the Secret Service office where the money is kept as evidence. Green said his office receives $300,000-$400,000 a year, and 25 percent of that is found during police searches and seizures in the field.
Graves, who has worked in Lawrence bars for six years, said he never saw counterfeit money until his experience in February. He said Mass St. Pub received another fake $20 bill last month, and his staff takes more time to examine cash during transaction.
"We keep an eye on it now; it's pretty much all we can do," he said.
Edited by Emily Soetaert
The dark and fast-paced atmosphere of local bars makes detecting counterfeit bills difficult. Mass St. Pub received $280 in fake money in February.
Photo Illustration by Travis Young
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