Stoops+deviance+page

=**__Counterfeit Money__**= As soon as the concept of money was created, counterfeit money immediately followed. Ancient coins from Greece and Rome were counterfeit by "clipping" pure gold and silver from the original coins and mixing them with lesser base metals. Counterfeitting paper money in England and the United States was once punishable by death, and Benjamin Franklin often wrote the phrase "to counterfeit is death" on the currency he printed. Both Great Britain during the Revolutionary War and the United States during the Civil War have printed enemy counterfeit money to lessen the value of the opposition's real money by filling the banks with the fake currency.

Counterfeiting money does serious damage to a nation's economy. Not only does it reduce the value of real money, but it also increases inflation and causes companies to raise prices since they are not reimbursed for counterfeits. If there is well known counterfeiting, people may be less likely to accept paper money and may instead require electronic money transfers. A nation's confidence in their currency is greatly reduced and their economy suffers.

Anti-counterfeiting originally consisted of adding //milled// or //reeded// edges (parallel grooves) to coins to detect clipping and including detailed raised ink to bills. Impressions of leaves were added to bills in Colonial North America because the patterns were almost impossible to reproduce. New computer technology has allowed more people to have the means to copy and produce counterfeit money, so national currency bureaus have designed bills with security strips (such as the one on US $20 bills that glows under a black light), holograms, and multiple colors. Authentic money usually has much finer detail and sharper images than counterfeit money.



In the pictures above, the ones on the left are authentic while the ones on the right are counterfeit.

The Reserve Bank of Australia was the first to procuce counterfeit resistant polymer (plastic) currency. Note Printing Australia Limited now prints polymer notes for 18 countries, and the technology is being used in 26.


 * The percentage of U.S. counterfeit currency in circulation is less than 3%
 * A typical standard for the amount of counterfeit money in circulation is about 100 counterfeits per 1,000,000 banknotes
 * Approximately 75% of counterfeit money is located and destroyed before it ever makes it to the public
 * //Superdollars// are now claimed to be the finest counterfeit dollars today; these are high quality counterfeit U.S. dollars that are extremely difficult to detect; it's suspected that they are mostly produced in North Korea