Great Moments in Counterfeiting

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Comments

[Luca Brasi]

Damn Lefty, how long have you worked at Food Lion?

[Keith]

Almost as precious as the case where a guy was interrogated for paying for taco bell with a (valid) Jefferson $2.

http://www.snopes.com/humor/business/tacobell.htm

[Russ D]

"the U.S. Mint does not print a $200 bill "

The U.S. Mint doesn't print any $100, $50, $20, $10, $5, $2, or $1 bills. The U.S. Mint produces coins.

[JDM]

Is this actually a crime on the part of the person who hands off the $200 bill? This isn't really counterfeiting. Is it?

[Kevin]

A clueless grocery clerk in the South. What are the odds?

[Citizen]

I wonder if his or her name is Bosephus or Annie Mae Ellen or the like?

[objective dissent]

Whatever their name, dollars to donuts they vote pro-union Democrat (AFSWuwxyz. . or whatever that union is for idiot food service workers).

And police think the two separate cases of $200 bills are related, .. . Gee, ya' think?

One more note, "a fake $200?" As opposed to a real $200 bill.

[Eric]

Officials at the local Food Lion had no comment.

No kidding...

[Jayson Gilligan]

On a different tack, these sound like bets to me...a few guys, messing around with $3-5K of desktop publishing HW & SW.

One guy has a bright idea..."Remember that idiot checkout guy at Food Lion? I bet we could pass this off on him."

[Anonymous]

Next time this guy won't be so lucky. He'll have to use two $75 bills instead.

[Madog]

You know, I bet in Afghanistan and many other parts of the world, merchants would accept the $200 bill with no problem. I've read that a lot of US currency (and Euros) abroad is counterfeit anyway.

[magatha]

Citizen,

'Scuse me, but it's 'Bocephus,' with a 'c.'

Alright now.

[Russ]

So where's the crime? If the store chooses to accept this guys home-made note, that's their business. It's not counterfeiting since there is no such thing as a $200 note.

Why they would want to accept Federal Reserve Notes, I don't know. They're worth exactly the same amount... squat.

[Keith]

Russ -
Let's follow up, since the store owners are a different entity than the person who accepted the bill:

Do you believe the store management has a civil or criminal tort against their employee? Would the store be able to make an insurance claim for this (too small to be advisable, but on principle)?

Should the employee be required to buy the $200 note from the store to make everything OK? If this occured, would the employee have a valid complaint against the guy who passed him the bill, or does the chain of responsibility end in the employee's decision to accept the note; or does it go back one level to the store's decision to approve the given employee handle money?

As a legalistic aside to anyone who may know, in the workflow of retail, does an employee accept cash as an agent of their company, or does he accept it on his own account, and then give it to the store to execute the sale? Would it matter if they were working as a 1099 independent contractor vs a W-4 employee?

Should store managers even presume their minimum wage stiffs to recognize all valid US currency (maybe it's an urban legend, but I hear the US has never demonetized any bill, ever), and other negotiable instruments such as American Express Traveler's "Cheques", etc? Should "cash recognition" necessarily be a skill taught in public schools? Math, Chemistry, Bling-Bling, English.

Logically, would you get behind using RFID marker chips inside currency, if stores wanted to eliminate counterfeits as well as staff incompetence? Probably also be useful to prevent minor embezzlements at the till.

[Gene Berkman]

Everybody thinks the cashier is stupid. But what about the guy who made the @200 bill? He uses it to buy groceries.
He could have made more by selling it on e-bay.

[Stmack]

I prefer to take as distinctly a non cash approach to life as possible - do everything with plastic - debit or credit. Think of the money we could save if we didn't have to deal with money.

[Russ]

The arrangement between this particular store owner and the employee is purely a two-party contract and as such it is next to impossible to speculate as to the specific details, however, since I'm always one to generalize and offer an uneducated opinion... here's my take.

Generally, the cashier is acting as an agent of the store owner. As such, the store owner is liable for the cashier's actions as they pertain to the exercise of his/her duties. This assumes that the cashier performs his/her job with competence and in good faith. For errors in judgment or instances of neglect, the employee is on his/her own.

Should the employee be required to pay the $200 back to the owner? If the owner wanted to file a civil suit over the matter, and I was the judge, I'd agree. In my court, the employee would be held liable for double the damages (plus costs). Since $200 is pretty trivial, it wouldn't be worth the court expenses. Otherwise, the common sense approaches would be 1) a closed-doors talking-to, 2) dismissal for incompetance, 3) some other discretionary punishment like a pay reduction of equivalent value, subject to the terms of employment.

Most of the issue would hinge on how good this employee was before the incident.

[Russ D]

I happen to agree with Russ on this. (And I'm not agreeing with myself here!) When a cashier sells liquor to a minor, it's generally the cashier's reponsiblity and not the store's. OF course. I think business owners kind of greased the skids with lawmakers on that one, but that's beside the point. In the one case where it happened to a co-worker, the store never had to cough up the money taken in the sale.

I wonder how many people know of fractional currency? Were those notes considered legal tender or were they just the equivalent of stamps?

[Che]

Russ,

It depends on the state. In PA, both individual seller and owner of the establishement are able to be fined in the case of a sale of alcohol to a minor.

[Ray]

IMO, only the employee should be responsible as long as it is something simple like checking IDs and such.

As long as there's a simple test for counterfeit bills, supplied by the employer, the employee should be responsible.

As a bouncer, we used to get paid bonus money for taking fake IDs. I liked that approach.

[Ray]

That's the second post in a row where I've mentioned a previous job as some kind of qualifier.

I'm like one of those dunces on talk radio who claims to be an foreign intelligence expert because they were a private in the army 50 years ago.

Excuse me while I go punish myself.

[Mudflap]

Ray-

You mentioned a previous job, however you didn't indicate that it gave you any particular insight. You merely mentioned it. If you had implied that you had particular insight into spotting fake ID you would need to punish yourself. You didn't, so lighten up. I used to work for a guy in critical thinking about 90 years ago so I'm really good at spotting this kind of error.

[Ray]

Mudflap,

Oh, I know, but one of my pet peeves with talk radio is the caller who is an "expert" and I do try to stay away from self-proclaimed expertdom.

It is silly at it's base and it opens the conversation up to ad hominem if not properly checked.

[arjay]

Back in 1966, when I first went to work for a major road builder, we had a case where an employee in northern Ontario had cashed his paycheck and then taken the pay stub to a gas station and the attendant had given him change over his gas fillup. Needless to say the oil co was out of luck. The employee disappeared like many in that region did in those days after payday but it was a memory that has stuck with me since. I wonder if things have changed since.

Must be nice to get paid twice.

[Mo]

The bill didn't even say it was legal tender. He never claimed it was legal, therefore it wasn't conterfeiting. You'd think they could at least check for that much on a large bill. If I handed a gold bar to someone, also not legal tender, to buy a can of Coke and got no change, I doubt 7-11 would call the cops.

[dragoon]

Mo: What are you, a lawyer? It's fraud. He intended it to be treated as legitimate currency, it's not, it's fraud. Get some common sense. Alternatively, consider your self-interest - do you really want to wait in line while the checker inspects every single bill?

How many of you have heard this joke?
A counterfeiter is working with a new apprentice, and the idiot made an stack of $18 bills. The counterfeiter's pissed, but doesn't throw them out, figuring they might be useful some day. So one day he's driving through the boonies, and he figures the slack-jawed locals might fall for the bills. He goes into a gas station, and asks for change. The attendant looks at it, and asks "So, you want that change in threes or sixes?"

[Mo]

It's not like this was a small bill, it was a $200 bill. When I hand over a $50 I get grumbles and they examine it thoroughly. But a joke $200 bill gets through? Give me a break, they're idiots. There's even a policy not to accept bills over $100, which is wise since all such bills were discontinued in 1969.

I just think the fact that someone fell for what was obviously play money is hillarious.

[J. Goard]

Couldn't the customer just argue that he thought it was genuine too? At least one other person exists as evidence that it's possible.

[nm156]

How is it that stores can arbitrarily decide not to accept $100's or $50's? They are legal tender right? Just because the retailer is too cheap to purchase one of thos detector scanners, why should I have to suffer for it?

[Anonymous]

Myabe he was just trying to get a laugh. You know, give the guy a $200 bill and have a humorous conversation. Instead, the cashier was a complete idiot and gave him change for it.

Whenever I get more change back than I should, I keep my mouth shut and put it in my pocket. If you want to decide my moral obligation on that, go ahead.

[Russ]

Legal Tender Laws don't require retailers or any participant in a transaction to accept and specific denominations.

What the law does require is that the currency be accepted as settlement of outstanding debts. So if I owe you a sum of money, and try to pay you in coconuts or empty beer bottles, you can tell me to get lost. I can't then claim that I offered to pay and you rejected the payment. If I offer dollars (and thereby make a "legal tender" offer), you can't reject them as unsatisfactory payment and claim that I am still indebted to you.