LIVERPOOL — As I ambled home along Tulip Street one night a couple weeks ago a certain piece of paper caught my eye.
It was lying in the grass at the triangle park across the street from Liverpool’s landmark First Presbyterian Church. Its shape and size and its greenish hue all suggested currency. The well-crafted portrait of Ulysses S. Grant confirmed my suspicion.
It was a $50 bill!
Or so I thought. So I hoped. But it was not to be.
Rain had recently soaked the park, the bill included. I stuffed it in my jacket pocket and hurried to my apartment where I could examine it under good light. As I did so, I impulsively tugged on the right edge of the bill and was surprised when it suddenly ripped off a quarter-inch portion.
Appearances ain’t everything
That didn’t seem right. Neither did the feel of the paper. It felt a tad thicker than real money.
But – for cryin’ out loud! – it really looked like real money. The president’s portrait was crisp enough that you could count the number of whiskers in his beard. Ditto the crystalline image of the Capitol Building on the reverse as its iconic dome vividly pierced the District of Columbia’s cumulus clouds.
The Federal Reserve numbers were all in the right place and so were its government seals. Three wavy red watermarks appeared on the front of the bill’s now-ripped right side, just above the signature of the Secretary of the Treasury.
Very realistic!
Film prop fiddy
The sad truth eventually revealed itself a few days later. Upon closer inspection were found the words, “motion picture use” printed above Grant’s head.
Turns out the phony fiddy was a film prop. It was likely used by one of American High’s film crews, on any one of nine movies which director Jeremy Garelick’s company have produced here over the past four years. Maybe I’ll ask Jeremy to autograph the discarded bill. At least then it might be worth something…
Bogus bills business
Come to find out that several companies sell the fake cash.
Prop Movie Money LLC, for instance, claims its bills are designed to look like the real thing on camera. But they say again and again on their website, propmoviemoney.com, that they will not modify the bills to look and feel exactly like the real thing with working holograms and the same feel to the touch as real cash.
“Our prop money is solely designed for TV, film, photography, training and media productions,” the site says. A stack of fake $100 bills costs $25. “It will not pass as real currency,” the site says.
But that doesn’t stop some people from trying.
Last Christmas Day in South Brunswick, New Jersey police arrested a person for paying at a gas station with a counterfeit $100 bill marked “For Motion Picture Use Only.”
And back in 2001 when the producers of “Rush Hour 2” blew up thousands of bogus bills for an exploding casino scene, extras and passersby picked up the funny money and tried to hawk it to Las Vegas business owners, according to Gizmodo. The Secret Service ended up confiscating about $100 million worth of fake cash from the Strip.
For the straight scoop about the security features found in real U.S. Federal Reserve Notes, visit SecretService.gov or uscurrency.gov.
Last word
“The U.S. Secret Service is doing a fine job publicizing the recent surge in fake cash, via ‘movie money,’ flooding retailers, but it shouldn’t be a ‘Mission Impossible’ to prevent these faux funds from being passed off as the real thing in the first place.”
–U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer
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