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$5 bill to be redesigned soon due to new scam?

washingtontimes.com — Originally, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing had planned to exempt the $5 bill from the design makeovers introduced in the past three years for the $50, $20 and $10 bills. But officials said changed their minds in part so they can respond to a new scam.

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  • winrules, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13It might work if people actually checked the security things they put on the bills...
    • slimer369, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13agreed.

      If you have or use counterfit money casually for fast food, some groceries, basic things around town it will never be checked.

      Once you go out and start buying xbox's with fake 5's or whatnot then you start to get looked at weird.

      It's not that I condon using fake money but it's too easy to get away with and something more than changing the designs and adding secturity measures needs to be done.
    • FenderGeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10@slimer369

      Actually, a lot of counterfeiters get caught at the local gas stations and party stores. Fake money generally doesn't "feel right" when you run it through your fingers. It's tough to fake the paper because it's not really paper, it's more like linen.
    • saury316, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9US money is printed on cotton not paper
    • durrty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13If you read the article it speaks to both your comments.

      To keep the feel, the counterfeiters are bleaching the ink off of the 5 dollar bills and re-printing them to be $100's. And they can't use the 1's because it doesn't have the security strip that the larger bills have in them.

      And you wouldn't be buying anything a fake 5, you would be buying stuff with fake 100's printed on what used to be a $5 bill.
    • ParadoxControl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Slimer
      I work at a grocery store, and we check every 10, 20, 50 and 100 that comes through the lane.
  • joerod, on 10/12/2007, -0/+27to some degree i admire the counterfeiters, because they get so damn creative.
    • rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21one of these days, someone will counterfeit the one dollar bill and it will be hard to tell the counterfeiters from the strippers.
    • NinjaBoy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Iv had friends that did that. They whould just take ***** looking fake dollar bills into a strip club. But with the lights so dim and the girls so dumb they always got away with it. And some lap dances too!
  • pbaehr, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Pardon my ignorance, but why bleach a $5 bill and reprint it when you could use a $1. Seems to me it's $4 more profitable. Also, they're still not redesigning the $1 bill, so it's not a threat, I guess.

    I'm sure there's a reason. Anyone know what it is?
    • rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14I don't think the one dollar bill has a security strip.
    • TriZz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Because the $1 doesn't have the little strip running through it that says "US TREASURY DEPT." The $5 does...so most of the work is done for them. The strip, the exact paper (which are the hardest parts to replicate) - all they need now is ink.
    • rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -15/+2i beat you, TriZz. ;)
    • masamunecyrus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12I've always said that if you're going to counterfit, counterfit $1s, and if you're going to steal someone's credit card, only pay for food and gas. With the latter, most people won't notice, and will just think they need to cut down on their driving, or such. With the former... Nobody checks $1s. $1s are like the pennies of dollars. There's hardly any security on the things, and nobody checks the security that IS on them.
    • TriZz, on 10/12/2007, -13/+3I typed more!!

      ;p
    • viciousnet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6if only they looked carefully at the strip, it will clearly tell you what type of bill you should be looking at repeatedly.
    • xxCBxx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Counterfeiting one dollar bills is not profitable, that's why scammers usually stick to twenties and larger.
    • mikeon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What about the $2 bills?
  • DanNZN, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Gotta love it when the media points out new and better ways to scam.
  • Powermac, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14Cash is outdated.
    • Elrod, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Tell that to the strippers down at the club.
  • adodaro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I wonder why they don't update the design of the one dollar bill. I know that there are so many in circulation but it's going to be strage when the other bills are very colorful and "new" looking and the $1 bill appears very dated. I'm glad that American dollars are slowly starting to resemble the Euro and other forms of European paper currency.
    • TemplarCrosland, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12I kind of like the fact that our bills are antiquated looking. Living in the "New World" it is nice to have something that at least kind of shows our place in history. Does anyone agree with me?
    • raindog469, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2adodaro, as the article says, Congress actually passed a law prohibiting changes to the design of the $1 bill because of the impact it would have on small businesses.
    • celeronxl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Raindog: That's interesting. What impact would it have exactly?
    • raindog469, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Other than every laundromat and vending machine company in the country needing to replace all their dollar bill acceptors and change machines, I have no idea, but I'm no politician.
  • pseudojd, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2and why couldn't you just do this with a good ole one dollar bill?
  • drlha, on 10/12/2007, -14/+5For the longest time American money was green, not to mention the notes all being the same size. Foreigners laughed. Now the US is introduced color into notes, but the effort has been half assed. Instead of redesigning the notes to be proper color notes, we instead have black and white notes, with odd splashes of color in the background, that look terrible. The $10 is a prime offender, its background is salmon pink for heaven's sake!

    The US Mint needs to modernise quickly. Get rid of the $1 bill (only useful in strip clubs), redesign the notes with proper counterfieting measures other countries have had for years (proper color, holograms, transparent windows, plastic notes), and make the different denominations different sizes, and the colors more bold so the blind/hard of sight have some chance of figuring out which notes are which.
    • garbanzo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6The one dollar bill comes in handy when it's time to make change, I think we should keep it.
    • Hulka, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Get rid of the $1 bill? Surely that statement is laced in sacarsm because I know I wouldn't want to get all my sub-five dollar change in coins.
    • oGMo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12"Get rid of the $1 bill (only useful in strip clubs)"

      And most vending machines and convience stores for small items. Dollar bills are a lot lighter than coins. If i spend $1 out of a $5 bill, I don't want 4 $1 coins.
    • ScottJG, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Who cares if it looks pretty or not, as long as I can still spend it...

      We arent in a beauty competition nor in a money coloring competition with other countries.

      And I like my money the same size.
    • drlha, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1I'm serious about getting rid of the $1 bill, its an anachronism. Talk to anyone from anywhere in Europe and ask them if they miss their small denomination notes.

      Also my comments were not about the beauty of notes specifically (although the $10 is ugly) but rather the useability (especially for the hard of sight) and anti-counterfieting measures they have.
    • oGMo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Uh that's nice, but this isn't Europe, and it's possible that things are slightly different here. Do you have any reasonable solution for eliminating the coin problem? I have nothing against Europe, but "we should get rid of $1 bills because Europe doesn't have them" isn't a great argument.

      Personally I rarely carry cash at all and use plastic simply because I don't want to have to deal with loose change or a multitude of bills. I don't want to have to take coins, and I don't want $1 things to be $5, so unless there is a solution here, I'd rather stick with paper.
    • fatdog789, on 10/12/2007, -6/+5Dude, people don't counterfeit European money because it *isn't worth counterfeiting*.
    • brandizzle, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Stuff is priced differently in Europe, it usually costs more. So one dollar is like change since so little can be bought with it. Here, our stuff is "cheaper" (well...we have to use less dollars to pay for the same thing...cheapness is determined by salaries and cost of living and cost to make the product and a bunch of other factors), so we value our dollar because we can buy more with it.

      While I was in Europe I had no problem with the dollar coins because they weren't really worth much and I'd just leave them in a hotel room in a container (like most Americans do with their change) until I wanted to go to a vending machine or until I was coming back to the US for currency exchange.

      Plus there are psychological reasons. Americans think:
      Coins = worthless
      Dollars = coins
      Dollars = worthless?
      (if a=b and b=c then a=c)

      So suddenly that dollar they worked so hard for is WORTHLESS.
    • kherrick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Get a two dollar coin like in Canada. I sure grew fond of it during my two years there.
    • Otto, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I totally agree. When I was in Australia, they had the one and two dollar coins, and the lowest bill was a five. It was damned convienent too, since I could pay for most everything with just a few coins. Not having to deal with paper money is great.
  • genen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6They use different paper for $1... I was on a jury in a Nigerian scam and learned quite a lot from the Secret Service testimony... fun stuff!
  • Kickboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Still rather stupid to redesign a bill when the old version is still perfectly legal. All those counterfeiters are still going to copy the older version. Granted, the old version will be phased out in... 20 years? In which time they'll have figured out how to copy the new bill, and you'd start over again.

    But if they want to waste more tax payers money, I guess we can't stop them.
    • masamunecyrus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The old versions are phased out as soon as the new versions start printing. There's just some lag while the old ones are still in circulation.
    • ekeup, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm just guessing, but those "antique" $5 bills could probably be bought for less than $95 for a LONG time.
    • marix, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3if you find a 10 or 5 from a few years back before the large portrait addition it looks fake.
      its crazy how quick we get used to new things we see every day


      like war for instance

      uh oh!
    • Shaggy6ster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+520 years? Old bills get phased out ALOT faster than that. I remember, as a child, going in to work with my father at a bank. He pointed out a giant packing crate, stocked FULL of old money. Tatterd, dirty, burned, ripped, or unuseable for any other reason, they get sorted, counted, bundled, and packed together. The Feds show up, take all the old money, and replace it with brand new bills, hot off the presses.

      When new bills are released, they use this same process to eliminate the old bills. Think, how many old 100's, 50's, or 20's do you still see in circulation? none of those redesigns took place 20 years ago...
    • Otto, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2They phase out old money a *lot* faster than that. It's actually very simple for them to do too, they just send banks a bunch of bills to replace old bills with. Go to a bank, and get some cash. All you will get will be the new bills. Unless you've got a ton of cash hidden in your mattress or something, all your currency is replaced within about 3-5 years, max.
    • jeffreymcmanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Money (particularly small denominations) wears out in about 18 months.
    • pdaz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The old ones may phase out fast and go out of circulation, but any that are, are still legal currency. Hence counterfeiting old money even 20 years later would be lucrative. Changing designs are useless, unless if old currency is made non-legit.
  • Geekazoid, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I think that we're holding on to something that’s so outdated just because of tradition. Although this can be good sometimes, when a situation like this comes up, change is warranted. Keeping everything green and the same size just because it’s a symbol of our economy only make us a better target for those that want to ruin it. I don't care how our money looks like. I just care that it still has its value.
  • masamunecyrus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I hope the $5 isn't as ugly as the $10. The $10 looks like someone spilled coffee on it.

    And in anycase, there are a lot of countries with prettier money than us.

    Canada:
    http://www.craigmarlatt.com/canada/images/images&downloads/currency.jpg
    http://absolutestockphoto.com/albums/userpics/10012/normal_Absolute_12_5208.jpg

    Japan:
    http://z.about.com/d/gojapan/1/0/B/L/newbills.jpg

    China:
    http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/342763/2/istockphoto_342763_chinese_currency.jpg
  • automagically, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14They can start by taking god off the money. It's biased, not all Americans believe in a god, and it shows preference to those that do. How about we trust in our nation, the people, democracy, or reasoning? Something neutral that applies to everyone.
    • tenfingas, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0whether you like it or not the United States was founded by people who believed in a Christian God and it is part of this nations history. I totally believe in separation of State and religion but i also don't mind it in our money and public documents/stamps/etc.. cause i see it as part of history. And i believe there are more important issues to fight for. People who make it such a huge issue and cause, i think are overly sensitive. Also when is money ever showing any preference towards anybody.. religion or race? Money is money and it doesn't care if you believe in God or not just as long as you spend it... lol
    • automagically, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." George H. Bush

      Am I being too sensitive now? I served this country in the military, and it doesn't mean anything to a former president, all because of my religion. I'll be damned (no pun intended), if I let people judge me based on faith, instead of the value of my character. The government, favoring a religion, sure isn't helping.
  • bgii2000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4All of you who have complained about The Color of Money are overlooking one useful feature of the old all-green-scheme. Privacy. In the case of foreign cash, you can tell at a glance how much money someone is holding because of its color. However with US money, the true value is hidden from the casual observer. Admittedly this fact can be exploited for nefarious purposes as well.
  • macromind, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Here in Canada, they have removed the paper version of the 1$ and 2$ bill and replaced them with 1$ and 2$ coins. Much cheaper to make coins than paper!

    macromind
    • DoctaStooge, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1It may be cheaper to make coins over paper bills. But, I like to have small demonations in paper and not coin form. I was in Canada for a few days about 6 years ago and I didn't like the $1 and $2 coins I had to carry around instead of paper. In the US, we already have 4 coins (Penny, Nickel, Dime, Quater), and it can be annoying carrying any number of those around. I don't think adding another 1 or 2 coins ($1 and $5) will make it any easier or convient to carry those coins around.
    • Elrod, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Not to mention that every time the U.S. Treasury Dept. creates yet another dollar coin, they manage to make it approximately the same size as a quarter.
    • kherrick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Actually we still have 50 cent pieces and 1 dollar coins in circulation. No "toonies" to my knowledge though. I actually enjoyed having the large two tone 2 dollar coin while in Canada. The 1 dollar coin is welcome also. Either a change purse, or a jar at home to toss them in, and "cash in" later. :-)
    • eaasness, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@DoctaStooge
      We actually have 6 coins in circulation. Penny, Nickel, Dime, Quarter, Half Dollar, and Dollar.
  • onClipEvent, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4i'm always intrigued with Americans' general hatred for $1 coins, the government tried several times to introduce and hopefully replace the dollar bill, but none of the efforts caught on. i work in retail, and it's a huge pain to sort through all those dollar bills, they're usually dirty, falling apart, and very slow to give change to customers (try picking out four old dollar bills vs 4 coins).....as for the weight factor that some mentioned, of course the coins are heavier, but chances are you probably wouldn't carry the same amount as you would before.....do most people stop using quarters because they're heavy?

    anyway, i just find the monetary system in the US surprisingly archaic compared to other developed countries, Canada, and many European countries are pushing towards a cashless society already, it's generally much safer, faster (for both consumer and institutions), and more convenient......people are stuck in their old ways. btw, check writing in grocery stores in Canada is pretty much non-existent, but not in the states, tho it's changing in many places. perhaps a push for a cashless society will dilute the need/importance of having bills, especially $1 bills.
    • pseudojd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I used to work on ATM's that money is Filthy Filthy Filthy. One time a Dead Mouse was the cause of a jam I was called to clear! I'm SO glad I kicked diebold to the curb.
    • kherrick, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1A different form of cashless in Canada. Here in Michigan I am using a credit card for nearly everything... including McDonalds and Burger King. While in Canada there was no way that was going to happen... and lots of places wouldn't take a credit or debit card.

      On the other hand many people and places did use Debit card in Ontario at least, even where credit cards weren't available.
    • eaasness, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I for one do not want to live in a cashless society. There are certain things I do not want people ie the government, to know I am purchasing(goods or services). I also fear having all my money "in a computer" that can be wiped out with a virus or some other attack. I use my credit card for 90% of the things I do, but I feel there will always be a need for cash.
    • Lazybones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"While in Canada there was no way that was going to happen... and lots of places wouldn't take a credit or debit card."

      When was this?

      Much like the US, things like this vary from between provinces. I haven't seen a single Mc Donalds that didn't take debit in years. The one near my office also takes credit, but I don't like paying interest on Fast Food.

      Took a vacation between Alberta and British Columbia earlier in the month.. 2000 + KM and the only place that was cash only was a camp ground because the main office wasn't open yet for the season, everywhere else took debit, even the road side fruit stands!
    • onClipEvent, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0kherrick, i know first hand that McDonalds and Dairy Queens in Vancouver take Debit and Credit cards....they don't advertise that tho, i'm sure it's because of the service fee the card company charge them....it starts to eat in your profits if you lose a few percent per transaction, esp for little things.

      i guess i'm leaning more towards a "cash-reduced" society, than a "cashLESS" society.
    • jhuynh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"I also fear having all my money "in a computer" that can be wiped out with a virus or some other attack."

      Do you really think when you put your money in the bank they just keep your money in the vault? All they do is keep a record of what you put in your account and they invest most of the rest of the money. They keep enough cash on hand for people that need to withdraw some cash. Right now your balance is just in some database that tells the tellers how much money you can withdraw if you wanted to. Unless you don't have a bank account and keep all your money under your bed I don't see what the problem is with having computers keep track of your money considering they already do...
  • jholland, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Using $1 coins is nice because they are cheaper in the long run. A $1 bill has a short life span, but a coin can go on for a very long time. It is smart and makes sense. Plus you can save more when you stash your coins in a jar :)
  • danc4498, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Silly Question, Why don't they just redesign the $100 since that's the one being counterfeited?
    • uptown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Because a retailer is still obligated to accept currency using the old design which they could continue to print on old $5 bills. By printing new $5 bills, and removing the old $5 bills out of circulation they remove the media on which the phonies can be printed.
  • ndogg138, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1You can easily bleach a $1 dollar bill and reprint anything to it.
  • doodlebumm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Until all these old style $5 and $1 (and I guess any other denomination) bills are out of circulation, it is possible for the counterfeiters to bleach a smaller bill and reprint it into a higher denomination. What kind of a plan do they have to do that?
  • drmike, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0See, this is what I don't under stand about counterfeiters. Not that I am one of course. Clerks are going to look more closely at twenties and fifties. No one looks at a five or a ten.
  • Cine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I always thought US bills were pretty ridiculous. Not only are they all green, but they're all the same size. But that has apparently been changed since last time I visited the country, so that's good - the fact that I had to pick up the bill and read the value to tell how much it was always bugged me.

    Personally, I like the the $1 bills. In Norway, we have 10kr coins, which is about $1.50. After getting too much change, you end up with a really really heavy wallet filled with worthless coins. I work as a cashier, and it's extremely annoying whenever someone pays with zillions of coins instead of just bills.
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