Counterfeit dollar bills have been popping up in greater numbers across North America in recent weeks, from Texas to Hawaii to Canada.
On May 8, a report revealed that police in Brownsville, Texas, arrested a man accused of manufacturing counterfeit dollar bills.
The 45-year-old was charged with seven counts of forgery after numerous police reports from local businesses including grocery stores, hotels, gas stations and restaurants complaining about people paying with fake bills.
However, it appears that these counterfeit banknotes were not limited to just one region, but were circulated farther afield.
Earlier this month, it was reported that counterfeit money was used to enter an Ohio State baseball stadium.
Elusive dollars have been found as far away as Hawaii, where police report people are taking low-value US dollar bills and turning them into $100 bills.
Local police said the counterfeiters would take $1 bills, remove the ink from them, and print the original bill to make it look like a $100 bill.
They will then use the fake note to buy something small to get real currency in exchange for change.
Earlier this year, counterfeit $100 bills were reported in circulation in Ontario, Canada. Meanwhile, on May 12, police in Charlottetown, Canada, to caution That counterfeit US $100 bills used as movie props were passed out at local businesses.
It also comes amid widespread trading subscriber A TikTok video of a former Donald Trump employee shows him bragging that he is distributing “fake Hollywood money” to the homeless.
The US Secret Service reported that it seized nearly $22 million in counterfeit money in 2023, while ABC reported that “counterfeiting crime is making a comeback” in March.
Related: How to identify fake cryptocurrency
However, counterfeit banknotes are not a problem limited to North America.
On May 12, Domestic Policy mentioned On X day, a resident of Barcelona, Spain, was arrested on charges of producing counterfeit €20 and €50 banknotes in her apartment. In April, German investigators reported the seizure of counterfeit dollar bills with a nominal value of more than $103 million.
Another hit on fiat currencies?
The recent wave of fake fiat reports represents another blow to traditional fiat currencies that have been under the macroeconomic microscope for the past year or so.
Many commentators, especially in the cryptocurrency community, have criticized the central bank’s policy of printing money and inflating trading.
Even tech entrepreneur Elon Musk comparison The US central bank referred to the popular board game Monopoly on
How does the Federal Reserve work? pic.twitter.com/3rRhbBfcJe
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2024
On the other hand, crypto assets like Bitcoin are very difficult to counterfeit or double spend due to the immutable nature of the block chain they exist on and the security of the network through proof-of-work consensus.
However, this has not prevented other types of scams, such as trying to sell testnet BTC, which is supposedly worthless, to trick users into thinking they are receiving the original article.
Other scams include fake tokens with the same or similar indices being sold as real project tokens, such as the fake Ethena Labs token that was exploited for $290,000 at the Binance launch pool in March.
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