Partially a heads up for people. Just had a shop give out a counterfeit $50 to a colleague in Melbourne Central. Luckily upon discovery and return to the shop, the owner was kind enough to exchange it (although, in fairness he didn't have to).
It was waxed paper with a plastic window, so not too fancy, but enough to slip by if you're careless.
Anyone else seen much of this?
Posted Feb 6, 2012, 4:56 AM UTC
(although, in fairness he didn't have to)
Actually yes he did. It is both illegal to issue and receive counterfeit money
We'd left the store first, though. So for for all he knew we were actually trying to palm off counterfeit $50's.
AFP take this stuff very seriously, so maybe should report it?
The owner was going to call the police, but that's probably a good idea.
I've seen a few. Had no trouble using them though.
I'd be careful about that (ps. link contains a pic of one of the fake $50s - they look pretty convincing to me)
Nightclubs cop a lot of these(dark, chaotic service) - they are nothing unusual.
Huh. I came here prepared to get all skeptical up in your post, but for once this sounds legit.
For what it's worth, there is an awful lot of misinformation floating around about how to identify counterfeit Australian notes. Looking for things like certain signatures and off colours are the usual ones that pop up.
If you suspect something is off, the RBA provides a very detailed guide here.
This has been a PSA from a guy who knows more about currency than most people would care to know.
I work in retail - whenever I get a $50 note I always try to rip it softly. Genuine notes are obviously made of plastic so are difficult to rip, however counterfeit ones are just paper and will rip easily. Only ever seen one fake one in my time though.
Seen 3-4 counterfeit 50's come through my work in Frankston in the last 3 or so months, refused 2 from customers and recognised the other when giving change. Also have the standard miscellaneous bunch of foreign coins floating around.
Working at Coles many years ago we had to check the serial numbers on all of the 50s we were handed. One specific number was counterfeit so I assume they were copies but more advanced than wax and paper
No idea why you'd fake a $50 note. Passing off lower values would be a lot easier, and there'd be a lot more places to do it.
Those self service machines probably don't do much verification either.
We had quite an extensive foreign coin collection at the woolworths I used to work at.
Nothing quite as severe, but I got stuck at the train station because it turns out I had $4 in Vietnamese dong, not four $1 coins, and the ticket machines wouldn't take it. Now I'm trying to work out how the self-serve at woolies had gold dong to give me (as that is where I broke the note) if I can't use my dong in the machine... that sounded less rude in my head.
i smirked
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using the odd foreign coin is somewhat common in my opinion. I do it myself. Most recently when I was back from Singapore, a Singporean $1 coin unknowingly got mixed in with my Aussie change. When I went to pay for fuel the cashier noticed it and refused the coin. I kept the coin because I'm lazy and couldn't be arsed putting it with the rest of my Singaporean cash, I just passed it off as an Aussie $1 the next day at Coles.
A Singaporean and Aussie $1 coin look almost the same at a glance. A part from the design on the faces the only other real difference is a Singaporean $1 coin is about 1-2mm smaller in diameter
I was planning to be kind and get the coins exchanged, But that would only give me 20c, and I am entitled to my $4, I will probably leave it in my wallet and forget about it.
At least it's not as bad as the time a cashier refused to take my 20c piece because "It wasn't Australian". It had Donald Bradman on the tail, but the cashier wouldn't accept that, or the text on the face reading "australia" as proof that is was an Aussie coin.
I ended up selling it to the old lady behind me in the queue because she collected them, then threw the boring platypus coin at the cashier.