"Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote in message
...
scottishmoney wrote:
This morning I went to the bank and made the weekly withdrawl. One
of
the $100's just didn't quite look right the ink was a bit off. I
looked at it up against the overhead light, and sure enough, it was
Abraham Lincoln's watermark, not Ben Franklin's.

Someone had apparently bleached a $5 and printed the $100 over it.
The crazy thing was handing it back to the teller and telling her
it
was a counterfeit, she did not believe me and used the counterfeit
detector pen on it. Of course it appeared authentic according to
the
detector pen, because the paper was real. I had her look at the
watermark, and sure enough she verified she saw Lincoln too. The
pen
thing would have thrown her, because this was a bleached $5 bill
that
was used, so the paper was good, but not for a $100 bill.

If it had been up to a $20 I would have kept it as a curiousity,
but
a $100 is a bit much to swallow. I subsequently found out that
there
have been a rash of them circulating in our area lately. The teller
had purchased it from another teller earlier whom had taken it in
from a deposit. Somebody was not careful when they took in money
today.
I have always thought counterfeits were something I woudl never
find -
surprise!

When I get a wad of 100s at the bank I often wonder if any of them
might be counterfeit. As good as a teller or cashier might be, they
have only so much time to look at the bills that cross their
counters, and it's inevitable that eventually they'll take a bad one
and even pass it on - maybe to me.

Decades ago a friend of mine who worked at a bank claimed that he
could spot counterfeits not printed on the right paper just by the
feel of it. That can contribute to a false sense of security - a
quick glance and feel as they're handling the bills and that's all the
precautions they have the time or inclination to take.