[grecy]

I lived in Ecuador for 5 months, which uses the US Dollar.

A couple of local guys that worked for me had a lot of fun testing my abilities to detect fake bills, which are plentiful in Ecuador. Even when they gave me two bills and told me one was real and one was fake, I couldn't discern any difference after 5 months of them showing me all the tricks of the trade.

The copies are extremely good, and I suspect not many people in the US are going to spend the time to check if a $10 or $20 is fake.

[justin66]

> The copies are extremely good, and I suspect not many people in the US are going to spend the time to check if a $10 or $20 is fake.

Many places will at least use the marker test on a $20.

[crazypyro]

From the article, the seller claims that the bills will pass the pen test, so that wouldn't help.

[Crito]

The pens are worthless in general. Real bills can "fail", fake bills easily pass if they care to. The Secret Service will tell you to not rely on them if you call them up and ask about them.

A friend of mine had a $10 bill checked and confiscated at a corner store a few years ago. The bill was genuine, but a few decades old and over those past decades it accumulated enough starch on it to trip the pen. He had to call the local SS field office and get them to talk the corner store into giving him back his bill (the SS looked up the serial number, said that it wasn't a serial number known to be used on counterfeits, told them that the pens were shit, and told them to give the bill back).

I say the pens are worthless because, although they can detect counterfeits that somebody ran through their ink-jet at home, those sort of counterfeits won't fool a standard "look and feel" check anyway. In fact, they may give you a false sense of confidence and distract you from the more robust "look and feel" check.

[ghshephard]

"over those past decades it accumulated enough starch on it to trip the pen"

I can't believe that's a very common case. The pens are there to deter people from playing games with their color printers, and do a pretty good job of that.

Well, at least they do a good job of making people buy starch free paper.

[dragonwriter]

> The pens are there to deter people from playing games with their color printers, and do a pretty good job of that.

The circuitry in color printers and copiers that specifically prevents reproducing certain patterns used in bills probably does a better job of that.

[justin66]

I was responding to a specific point grecy made. People will check a $20. I imagine they might even change their method of checking if a different type of counterfeit becomes popular. I've only ever seen the marker or a UV light used in public, but criminals aren't the only ones capable of adapting to new circumstances.

Hopefully it's obvious that the seller mentioned in the article is probably not making or selling a darn thing. What authority are you going to go to when you find out the counterfeit currency you bought online anonymously with bitcoins was just a scam? His scam is, on a small scale, more profitable than actually manufacturing counterfeit bills and selling them.

Which doesn't mean the seller won't get a visit from the US secret service if he's crazy enough to be running this scam outside of Russia or Nigeria or something...

[cm2012]

In NYC, at least, in 100s of places, I've literally never seen someone check a $20 in any way other than putting it up to the light, and that is 5% of the time. I'm sure it happens though.

[justin66]

I never noticed it in San Francisco or the East Bay, but I lived there a fairly long time ago. In the midwest, I see it often. Not sure what that's about.

[mpyne]

When I was a cashier way back in the day (around the turn of the century) we checked $20s and higher with the marker pen thingy.