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TheBuzz Erika Engle |
Never mind the buyer,
let the merchant bewareBogus bills are making their way around Honolulu and mere markers mighn't make plain the mock mintage.
Masu's Massive Plate Lunch, at 1808 Liliha St., was recently notified by its bank that its receipts included two fraudulent $20 bills over the past two weekends. That means money owner Paul Masuoka thought he had in the bank won't count toward his bottom line.
Owner Paul Masuoka also heard a horror story about a bar owner whose receipts included $300 in faux funds.
This is his first brush with bum bread in more than 30 years of business.
"We don't endorse any machine or pen in order to determine whether a bill is counterfeit," said Sam Tong, assistant special agent in charge of the Secret Service, Honolulu office.
Spray starch or hair spray applied to deceptive dinero can confound a counterfeit-seeking marker pen, according to Tong. Genuine currency that is very old may also register a false positive with the marker ink, he said.
"The banks are very good here in screening their currency before they put it into circulation," Tong said. "Tellers are probably the best people that are able to detect (counterfeit bills)."
Employees handling money are a business' first line of defense.
Masuoka has been training employees, sharing his knowledge with neighboring businesses and his customers, including an attorney who never thought to screen the contents of his own wallet for make-believe moolah.
"It's a wise decision for employers to train employees on how to quickly determine whether a bill is counterfeit," Tong said.
Newer money has security features "so that any lay person would be able to quickly determine whether or not they have a counterfeit," he said.
"If you look at any bill, with the exception of the $1 bill, you'll notice straight-on it's green, but tilt it away from you just a little and the color turns black in the bottom right-hand-corner," Tong said.
A watermark in the bill is very similar to the portrait and there's an "embedded security strip in the paper. Under ultraviolet light it glows, actually different colors for different denominations."
The other side of the bill is often overlooked; both sides should be checked.
While $100 bills are counterfeited by some criminals, a recipient would be more likely to scrutinize a $100. "The $20 are the most counterfeited," said Tong.
It has not been cost-effective to implement the security features for $1 bills, Tong said.
Some counterfeiters will bleach out a $1 bill and re-create a higher denomination on the genuine paper, Tong said. Those bills would not bear the embedded strip that real $5, $10, $20 or other bills would contain.
The end point of the training is what an employee should do if someone tries to pay with concocted kala.
The Secret Service's recommendation is that a business call police with as detailed a description as possible, including a license number, should the person take off in a vehicle.
One of Masuoka's employees on Friday declined to accept a $20 bill from a customer because there was no watermark.
The bill was determined to be satisfactory -- older bills do not have watermarks -- and the customer completed her purchase. But Masuoka is glad his staff is learning from the training.
"There was a strip, so that was the older $20, but I was glad the girl refused it," Masuoka said.
He appreciates a quote from "The New Color of Money" brochure he received from the Secret Service, "The Federal Reserve System and the Department of the Treasury are committed to continued improvements in currency design in order to protect the economy and your hard-earned money."
Masu's special plate on Friday came with baked baby lobster tail, charcoal-broiled sirloin steak with teriyaki sauce, fried chicken, fried shrimp tempura, baked Spam and shoyu hot dog for $6.85 plus tax.
"At those prices, that $40, that's my profits," Masuoka said.
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Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin. Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210, Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached at: eengle@starbulletin.com