Counterfeit cash spreads nationwide
The bogus blue notes first surfaced in San Ignacio and by tonight police report that counterfeit hundreds are circulating as far afield as Orange Walk in the north and Placencia in the south. While the common denominator for most of the recently discovered phoney currency is serial number AC613475, the use of high quality photocopiers and paper means that the public can never let down its guard. Today News 5 visited the Central Bank to find out just what we need to look for to separate the good bills from the bad.
Marilyn Gardiner, Manager, Banking and Currency Department
“What we are trying to do at the Central Bank is incorporate security features in our notes so that you, the members of the public can have something to use as a tool to verify that you’re not accepting counterfeit notes. We have the security thread and the watermark in all the notes, old issue and new issue. But in the hundreds, right down to the twos of the old issue, the watermark is the same, the sleeping giant. In the new issue, we have the jaguar in the hundreds and fifties and from the twenties down, we keep the sleeping giant as the watermark.
The security thread also is a bit different in the new issue. It has the windowed security thread. If you notice, they look like little pieces of foil, but they are not really, they are actually incorporated in the note, and when you hold them up to the light you can see it’s a complete thread going through and through. You can also see if you look carefully, the jaguar, the watermark. If those features are missing, it’s already a flag; do not accept that note.
Other obvious features on the new issue, is the multi-coloured hologram, and that flickers to show you an image of the toucan and also the fish on the fifty dollar note. These features…I’ve noticed that although these new issues are very seldom targeted, the full reproductions that I have seen, people have tried to stick foil here, but it just doesn’t look genuine. Because it is so difficult, it is easy for the counterfeiters to make an error when trying to reproduce it. It’s those errors that you have to look for and compare your counterfeit against a genuine note. Always, if you’re not certain, compare the counterfeit against a genuine note, a note you know to be genuine. If you are in anyway uncertain, it is easy to check with the Central Bank or report that incident to the police.”
Gardiner added that the security features on our currency are among the most advanced in the world.
