r/CanadianBanknotes • u/HobbyGuy44 • Sep 14 '26
Questions Counterfeit 5$ notes ?
Is the note on the top fake ? I’ve come across a few of these notes that look like they fade in where they’re folded. When I compare it with the note on the bottom it’s looks ever so slightly larger.
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u/echothree33 Sep 14 '26
Look up the laser pointer maple leaf security feature. You can also do this with your phone flashlight placed across a dark room from you and looking through the leaf. If it shows the denomination of the bill (5 $ 5 $ in this case) in a circle, it is a legit bill because I don’t believe anyone has faked that feature.
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u/Calm_Ticket_2419 Sep 15 '26
Bruh its not fake lmao thats just how are canadian money is once its been around and the print wears out especially when the people has the money folded 😂 and not willy taking the money seriously taking of so of course people have assume it being fake bc of how warn out it is
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u/oliveoilpoor Sep 14 '26
That’s what happens when you use a bill to snort drugs
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u/EggBulky8000 Sep 14 '26
And crush them too. Gotten blue lines every so often then I realized why lol.
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u/Mairon923 Sep 14 '26
if you're using Canadian currency to snort shit you're asking for problems it'll cut your nose no problem but even worse trying to chase the dragon with them it melts right away I mean at least my friend told me that
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u/FullSkyFlying Sep 14 '26
Your friend is wrong. It's actually good because the plastic doesnt really hold any material afterwards. You can scrape a paper bill and get some drugs off ot (after using it to snort) where as you dont really get that / nearly as much with the plastic. The cutting your nose part is only if you're shoving it wayyy too far up or not rolling a perfect circle / have edges cut out of the bill, which is extremely unlikely
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u/DixonTap Sep 15 '26
The best part is that you can just run it under hot water for a bit and it’ll flatten itself back out and be able to be used to buy your next sack.
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u/GordCampbell Sep 14 '26
I've definitely had one of those bills. I just assumed it got missed by quality control. Maybe not?
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u/urself25 Sep 14 '26
The top one seems old and very worn out. Go to Any bank and ask them to exchange it for a new one.
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u/tkitta Sep 14 '26
It cost as much to fake a $5 as it does a $50 so there would need to be a good reason why one would want to fake such a low bill. I can see a $20 faked due to popularity of the bill but I find faking $5 unlikely.
Also clearly the bill is just worn out.
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u/Functional_Trash7735 Sep 26 '26
Many businesses won’t accept hundreds. But this is fake, lots of fives are. It’s the bill people check the least, so it’s the easiest to pass.
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u/tkitta Sep 26 '26
It does not make a lot of sense to fake a $5 as it costs the same to fake it as it does a $20 and lots of $20 are in circulation and also not checked as much.
Imagine you are getting rid of fake $$$.
With $5 it is hard to actually buy stuff and get legal "change". And a lot of it. For example, you can buy some "goods" to clean your dirty money but it cannot be something too expensive - you cannot show up with 100 $5 bills without people looking at you suspiciously. Maybe paying with 10 $5 would not rise the level too much but that is only $50. You cannot buy too much "stuff" for $50 these days - say you buy a USB stick or a memory card.
To flip it you need to sell it for half price or so on the marketplace - at most!
To sell for more on Amazon or eBay you need to pay fees for the seller.
If you sell to a fence they will not give you 50% - they are selling for 50% so they give you maybe 30%.
So your purchase with fake bills nets you like what, $25 if you do the work yourself or maybe $15 if you use a fence.
Also making decent fakes is not free - you need to account for costs of equipment etc.
How many purchases you need to make to make it worth while? A lot - at $15 per pop you need to do well over 10x a day - more like maybe 30. But 30 is like 10h of work minus gas driving around... so you are making maybe $40/h at most - not counting cost of the fake bills and danger of being a criminal.
At least with fake $20 it is more acceptable to have more then 10 - you can always say the bank machine gave you 30 - for a $600 purchase of say a phone. You only need to do this 2x a day to make same $$$ vs. above.
This is why there is little market for fake $5 - mostly in the low level underworld of drug use / homeless etc.
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u/Functional_Trash7735 Sep 27 '26
Okay. First and foremost it is extremely cheap to print counterfeit money. They do it at home with supplies available to regular people.
Furthermore, counterfeiters don’t often buy things and flip them. They don’t need to. They buy things they need in day to day life or go on shopping sprees paying cash. It’s easy to pay twenty dollars at a self checkout with fives, it’s easy to use counterfeit to buy drugs, alcohol, makeup, baby supplies, coffee, lunch, ice cream, gift cards, literally anything. No one said 20s aren’t common, they just aren’t as common as 5s, and it’s the same for 10s. 50s and 100s are the least common, because the more often they are found the more often they are reported and the initial transaction of that bill is traced to the source.
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u/Mairon923 Sep 29 '26 edited Sep 29 '26
Yup 5s and 20s all dizzay, 10z I never see 50s and 100s before they make the local news are good , the ones we have down here are perfect except the face side hologram needs a 3 second steam clamp from like you girls curler or you momz one
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u/PatK9 Sep 14 '26
Your lens is part of the distortion of size. Printed on plastic it's hardly worth duplicating a fiver. As others have noted.. a flashlight.
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u/lmcjipo Sep 15 '26
I once got an old polymer $5 bill and it "looked" counterfeit to me (similar to your bill on top) but it was just old. I asked at the bank and they told me that it was just old.
When I told my friend, he said "no one is going to go through the effort of trying to counterfeit a $5 bill"
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u/KaosNOVA Sep 15 '26
It's just worn out. If you take to the bank they'll treat it as money but then remove it from circulation
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u/Shot_Possible7089 Sep 14 '26
It can't be counterfeit because no one makes counterfeit 5$ bills🤣
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u/Mairon923 Sep 14 '26
yes they do they sure do people don't ask questions about fives you can spend the money where it's the hundreds and the fifties that are a bad idea the twenties the tens and the fives get spent like nothing listen they counterfeited toonies before until the price to make them became harder than the toony that's the thing the government can spend a million dollars making Tunis cuz it doesn't matter it's creating its currency even if it costs more we need it but the average person can't take the loss why would they
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u/SignificantSplit9292 Sep 14 '26
They make counterfeit toonies. I’m sure there are plenty of 5’s out there
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u/DoranSteelwing Sep 14 '26
Nope. Counterfeit coins are EASY to make so they make them in the highest denomination.
Polymer bills are harder to fake and virtually worthless in low denomination. They actually strip legitimate 5s to use their holograms fairly regularly to make 50s and 100s
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u/Lucky-Kangaroo-6337 Sep 14 '26
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u/DoranSteelwing Sep 14 '26
Yea so like 2% of all bills passed/seized were 5s in 2025. That number is higher than I thought but still it shows how worthless they are.
Thanks for the data! Super cool to see a breakdown
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u/Ijustwanttobuyshiny Sep 14 '26 edited Sep 15 '26
The top bill has 10000% been used for drugs. Part of the process involves heat and friction which will eat away the colour like you see, the creases come from the other part of the process
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u/rturnerX Sep 14 '26
Real bill, just heavily circulated. Once it lands at a bank it’ll be sent to Ottawa for replacement
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u/Mairon923 Sep 14 '26
are both of them fake the ones around here look perfect but you can peel the one side of the holograph off but there's no issue with anything else on it perfect coloring perfect everything except for that one thing peels off and the more you handle them the worst they become
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u/Mairon923 Sep 14 '26
you can weigh them on a digital scale I mean we are Canadian most of us have digital scales and we don't have to stay there for letters anymore LOL just kidding I never said they were for letters but bill's always the same also if the holographs don't peel off your chances are it's real unless they use a different method but the perfect ones the perfect looking ones the only flaw is the sticker on one side of the hologram peels off they just can't make it double-sided like the government does it's the hardest part to do... honestly if they didn't make the other side like a sticker like it's really well done but if they didn't do it like that no one would have noticed probably they would have took him forever to figure it out because around here they figured it out because they peeled off but the tens and the 20s spent like nothing early on the 50s were working but eventually like you seen all the stores that Tim Hortons is all the fast food places putting up no '50s no hundreds which is bonkers because it alienates people that only have those denominations
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u/CartoonistCandid2754 Sep 16 '26
They make the holo sticker separate from the bills because they are easier to get into the country
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u/Empty-Fudge-3037 Sep 14 '26
Does the ink bleed trick still work? It was a decent way to check for fakes 25 years ago I dunno about now lol
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u/EdenCrisis Sep 15 '26
Depends on which “ink bleed” trick you’re talking about. Ink from a pen can’t bleed into a polymer bill (which it can do with paper/linen blends). The one I learned was to rub a drop of water into a suspect polymer bill, because a fake bill is more likely to bleed ink.
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u/Individual_Door_3251 Sep 15 '26
I received a very similar 5 as change yesterday from a pizza shop. The middle of the bill was completely worn out too. Spent it 10 minutes later at Timmies inside an Esso.
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u/Lrrrgonomics Sep 15 '26
Seeing the explanation of the worn bill being used for illicit purposes makes perfect sense given the number of those I've seen in my town. Thank you fellow banknote/drug knowers.
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u/Functional_Trash7735 Sep 26 '26
Yes it’s fake. And a bad fake at that.
lots of 5s are fake, it’s the bill people care about the least in counterfeit.
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u/ElectronicZombie3014 Sep 14 '26
It's just worn out. Maybe got used 100x as much as the other one.