Forged Fives

For the summer and over the past few of years I have been working at a grocery store as a cashier. That is the only reason why I am able to write this, and assure readers that everything in this article is true.

About three shifts ago I noticed a five-dollar bill without the shiny strip on it. When I compared it to the other bills in the register I began to notice some other changes as well. They are the following:

On the Front:

• The number “5” is a solid blue rather than patterned with Canadian flags.



• When held up to the light there is no face seen (of Sir Wilfred Laurier Prime Minister from 1896-1911).



• There is no shiny, silver band down one end of it, and the crest in the bottom left hand corner is different.



• The paragraph above the large number 5 has larger writing in it, but the pargraph itself is smaller.

On the Back:

• Small paragraph moved (the paragraph containing a poem by Roch Carrier printed in both French and English).



• The pattern behind the paragraph is different.



• There is no vertical silver bands down the left side of it.



• There is a missing bold symbol below the area where the paragrah should be.

Other Differences:

• The paper quality is significantly lower than the original and sounds and feels different (after closer examination).

All of these differences are how I could tell that the bill was forged. The main problem with our store is that it is equipped with money checkers that don’t work. Over the past three shifts at work, I have found three forged $5 bills which look exactly the same.

Of course, many people would question the effectiveness of forging $5 bills and circulating them, however the very concept is so unexpected that it is becoming more and more of a problem at our store. Not only do our money checkers fail miserably, the idea of checking every single paper bill that comes through the cash is unreasonable.

In fact, a few months ago we had a major problem with forged bills. It was such a problem that the manager of the cash department decided to make every cashier check bills through the money checkers; most of which were working at the time. This resulted in uproar from customers and many apologetic explanations from cashiers. The customers where right to complain of course. Using cash to pay for groceries may be virtually obsolete, but on the rare occasion where someone is paying with cash, if the cashier has to scan every single bill to ensure that it is real the extra time causes everyone aggravation.

I do not have any mathematical statistics to prove that that there has been an increase in the number of forges bills as the recession worsens. But it would make perfect sense if that was the case. It is difficult to tell whether or not there has actually been an increase in forged bills, or if people are just not saying anything when they come across them. After all, unless you have a lot of time on your hands to actually look at your money, then how would you notice a forged bill?

Not only that, but what kind of reward do you get for handing in a forged bill to the police? Mostly what happens is that once you turn in a forged bill, police will question you about where you got it, and maybe do a little investigating, but that’s about it. Not only that, but you are out of the money! The police will not compensate you for the money you lost by handing in a forged bill. Life’s not fair and no one expects it to be, but if the police were at all interested in catching forgeries then they would offer some kind of reward for members of the public who hand in forged bills. I am not suggesting giving cash, but perhaps something else would be more fitting then nothing at all. Until then, people will just keep circulating them which will make it all the more difficult to find the source of the problem.