Funny Denominations

Monday, April 27, 2009

I learned something today:  You can't counterfeit something that has not existed yet.  It's not illegal too, unless you start to try and use it for illegal purposes.  It makes sense.


How did I come about this ?

Well my dad gave me some old monetary bills from an old collection of his which he never got to display.  It was just in an envelope and contained several small bills from different countries, Portugal, Chile, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam , Peru and the United States.   

Excited to find out if any of these old bills had any value, I turned to the internet to find out.  And since the US Dollar bill is the most popular of them all, I checked that first.

I then found out that some fake denominations were released at one point in time by different individuals either as novelty items.  Some people though intended it to attempt fraud.

Some weird denominations that never existed were $22, $200, 1 million dollars, $1,329,063 and 1 billion dollars.

The 1 million dollar tales of failed attempts to use it were hilarious and at the same time a dumb move on the part of the suspect.  Here's a few:

In March 2004, Alice Regina Pike attempted to use a $1,000,000 bill with a picture of the Statue of Liberty on the front to purchase $1671.55 in goods from a Wal-Mart in Covington, Georgia, for which she was arrested.

In November 2007, Alexander D. Smith tried to open a bank account in Aiken County, South Carolina, by depositing a $1,000,000 bill. The bank employee refused to deposit the bill and called the police. Smith was immediately arrested on a charge of forgery.

Do they really think people are stupid enough to fall for this ?   Or are they stupid enough to think that they're a genius ?



You Might Also Like

0 comments