Is There A Counterfeiting Epidemic?

By Michael K. Brantley

A version of this post first appeared as a column in The Nashville Graphic

Like most of America these days, I continually stay vigilant for things that might offend me.

There are a growing number of stores these days that insult me when I attempt to pay cash (which is still king, by the way). The clerk takes my bill, marks it with a pen, hesitates, and then proceeds on. Sometimes, a particularly aggressive worker will hold my bill up to the light.

Year ago when this started, I was fascinated.

Was there a ring of counterfeiters loose in North Carolina?

Had counterfeit money become a huge problem?

Was it what I was buying? Were there statistics showing that people buying large amounts of Coca-Cola and cheese are the ones pushing fake money?

Did I look like a counterfeiter?

What does a counterfeiter look like?

In this new day and age, I’ve decided that this is insulting. After all, if I was a counterfeiting kingpin, I wouldn’t be trying to slip by a bag of bacon jerky. I’d go after the big stuff, like those cookie cakes with all the icing.

I don’t like the idea that because I’m not paying with a plastic card, someone assumes I might be a crook.

I even went to the Internet — that place of all things truthful — to see if this problem was bigger than I realized.

It’s gotten so bad, I’ve halfway come to expect someone to try to mark my credit card or my mobile phone when I try to pay with an app. After all, we know fake links are emailed out every day to trick people into revealing their personal account info.

As best I could determine, less than .086 percent of currency in circulation is counterfeit. The biggest bills copied are $20 and $100 bills.

I have found these special pens online for $5 and plan to purchase one. From now on, when I get change back from a store that checks my bills, I will pull out my own pen, and mark each bill. I will mark all of the bills, down to $1.

But I’m not going to stop there. I also plan to mark the coins.

After thinking about this for a bit, I realized I’ve never seen anyone fail the counterfeit pen test, so perhaps I could just use a yellow bright liner.

Honestly, I see so little use of cash on a daily basis, I don’t know why anyone bothers, unless it is the characters on “Ozark.” I’ve watched just enough episodes to expect that all of my friends are laundering money for a mysterious person in another country who is above the law.

There are plenty of other scary ways for people to steal from people beyond counterfeit cash. The proliferation of skimmers at the gas pump is scary, and a local case made headlines recently. There are also handheld scanners that can intercept your info in a store — a new industry of hack-resistant wallets and purses has popped up in recent years.

I’ve always wondered what would happen if someone got caught with funny money at the register. Would they run? Are we bystanders supposed to make a citizens’ arrest? Does the clerk get to snatch the offender up by the collar? Does the offender get to try again? Would a store let a person passing fake money then pay with a credit card?

It seems like there would be complications. Just because I have counterfeit money, doesn’t mean I made it. It could have come from a friend, the bank, or another store — yet another reason for me to get my own pen and check bills.

I’m surprised stores are doing this. Think of all the hours of training it must take for an employee at a big box store to learn to swipe a felt tip haphazardly across a piece of money, remember to put the cap back on so it doesn’t dry out, and still manage to avoid eye contact with the customer.

Think of the time it wastes, in an era when stores time transaction completions to stay on top of employees, while building 25 registers knowing that they will never, including and up to the coming of the zombie apocalypse, open more than two. Maybe if stores took down those extra registers, they’d have more floor space for more products, creating more money to pay workers and less need for counterfeit money.

Nevermind.

This is just a heads up if you see me in a checkout line waving an orange pen around, it could take awhile if you’re behind me.