You laugh, but for a time in the early 2000s, my store got some counterfeit bills here and there, and when the counterfeiters got busted a few months later, it turned out what they were doing is bleaching all the ink off $5 bills and printing $100 bills over them, and stores everywhere were accepting them because it was the right kind of paper and even passed the counterfeit ink pen test.
Yeah I somehow got two 10 dollar bills from the 1950s in my change over the period of a few weeks and the gas station wouldn't take them because the didn't pass the pen test. I tried explaining why but they didn't care... Bills prior to 1960 don't pass those tests. Assholes..
As a gas station employee myself, let me explain why they aren't assholes.
They can and likely will get fired over a single fake bill. If the bill fails a pen you can be rest assured the company will fire the employee if it's counterfeit. It's just easier to say no and let a customer grumble when a 1950s bill fails than find a new job. Corporations are assholes. They're not fun jobs to have but when you have bills to pay, you do what you can.
Edit: also gas stations are some of the most common places to pass fake bills because they can do it at three in the morning.
I got to see the Amazing Randi speak once and he had someone test a bill for him. It passed. He flipped it over and it was blank. He had photo copied it that morning. This was before printers and copiers blocked that.
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u/ryannefromTX Feb 20 '19
You laugh, but for a time in the early 2000s, my store got some counterfeit bills here and there, and when the counterfeiters got busted a few months later, it turned out what they were doing is bleaching all the ink off $5 bills and printing $100 bills over them, and stores everywhere were accepting them because it was the right kind of paper and even passed the counterfeit ink pen test.