5/30/2006: One way to check a counterfeit

A reader who I can't map to a username points to this wire shot of one approach to checking for counterfeit bills - they blow 'em up real big and compare section to section. It's a cool picture in any case.

It actually amazes me that someone would go to the trouble of developing a counterfeit bill and not be able to make a perfect copy wrt where the various bits go.

It's kind of weird that everyone is wearing the exact same shirt. Maybe they're replicants or counterfits themselves.

It takes 4 people to do this?

What I don't get is why they blow the suspect bill up bigger than the exemplars. Wouldn't it make more sense to blow everything up to the same size, otherwise the inspectors could be ruling on artifacts of the zoom rather than problems with the bill?

[quote=Undertoad]

A reader who I can't map to a username points to this wire shot of one approach to checking for counterfeit bills - they blow 'em up real big and compare section to section. It's a cool picture in any case.




It was me, UnderToad. I don't post very often but I spend lots of time browsing & enjoy every image.


Sorry I don't know how to post to make the quote appear in a little blue box
Sandra

Thanks for a great image pointer!

now all the couterfeiters will have a new technique....... Blow a bill up real big (so they can copy details more thoroughly), print it and shrink it back down.

You can see where they had the blowup folded, so I'm assuming it is made out of fabric of some sort. Cool pic... I'm just not so sure how good the idea is. With all the micro-technology they have now, why not just use a microscope?

Our tax dollars at work. Yada Yada.

It looks like it's made up of a bunch of 8X10s.

Our government makes the big money

That's a real bill blown up to 400 times actual size. The four people are employees of Matsumura Technology, the leading supplier of counterfeit detectors in the world.

They're checking blown up sections of counterfeit bills against the real deal to make their machines better. Their machines are the worlds best defense against the excellent quality counterfeits coming from North Korea & Russia.

They can check US notes, with 99.5% accuracy, at 0.7 seconds per bill. Other currency, including Euros, take 0.6 seconds per bill.

Does somebody get to take the big bill after they're done with it? Big Ben would be just the right thing to have for a trip to the beach.

Or to run up the flagpole.