Fakin' It

One unexpected souvenir from the recent family vacation was a counterfeit to dollar bill. We think we got it in Nassau, Bahamas as change from a $20 when we bought an actual souvenir. With 20/20 hindsight, it seems like we got three legitimate ones and the fake ten as change.

On the first Monday back at work, I stopped into the store I've stopped into almost every weekday for the 7 or 8 years. And I tried to pay with fake money. I didn't know it was fake money at the time, but it was definitely fake money. Josh (I've been a customer long enough to know just about everybody's name there) knew it was fake immediately. As soon as he touched it. Then he used that special highlighter cashiers have one it and the marker lines turned brown.

Josh pointed out the feel of the paper was all wrong. Apparently there is a lot of fake money going around. I swapped the fake $10 for an actual $20.  I felt lucky that this happened in a place that I was a regular and was completely able to avoid being accused of intentionally trying pass off counterfeit money. If there is a silver lining to being out the ten bucks, it's that.
 
With the change, I was able to compare the fake $10 to a real $10. The fake was slightly smaller and the feel was definitely off. If someone was handing me just this fake $10, I might catch the imposter based on feel. It is definitely the wrong paper. I doubt I would have noticed it coming back mixed in with some actual money.

Compared side to side, the color on the back of the counterfeit is slightly off too. The fake is on top.

Lesson learned. Time to start paying more attention during cash transactions. I went back the next day and Benny was the cashier. As I handed him a five, I said "Here's a real five." He laughed and said, "Yeah, Josh told me about that."

So now I've got a fake ten dollar bill. What the hell am I supposed to do with it?