Trinidad: Counterfeits of new $100 bill already surfacing

(Trinidad Guardian) Less than one week af­ter com­mer­cial banks start­ed ex­chang­ing the ex­ist­ing $100 cot­ton bills for the new $100 poly­mer notes, crim­i­nals have be­gun to pro­duce coun­ter­feit $100 pa­per bills.

A video be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, ad­vis­ing the pub­lic to be on alert and cau­tious when re­ceiv­ing the new mon­ey, as fake copies of the new $100 bill have al­ready been dis­cov­ered and in cir­cu­la­tion.

The pub­lic has un­til De­cem­ber 31 to swap their old $100 cot­ton bills for the new $100 poly­mer notes.

The per­son in the video was able to iden­ti­fy the bo­gus bill by its non-poly­mer feel and the fact that when he held it to the light he did not see the num­ber 100 ap­pear in blue print in the clear win­dow.

But up­on ex­am­i­na­tion, both bills looked sim­i­lar in de­sign and had the same shade of blue.

The video was wide­ly shared on Face­book.

In re­sponse to the video, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young in a What­sapp mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia con­firmed that coun­ter­feit bills of the new $100 bills were picked up.

“The sur­fac­ing of a video on so­cial me­dia is not sur­pris­ing but the coun­ter­feit at­tempt is eas­i­ly iden­ti­fi­able. The coun­ter­feit would not be on poly­mer which is eas­i­ly iden­ti­fi­able by touch and it al­so doesn’t in­clude the var­i­ous se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures of our new $100 note, for ex­am­ple, the trans­par­ent win­dow.”

He said crim­i­nals at­tempt to coun­ter­feit “every ma­jor cur­ren­cy in the world,” in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States bills.

“The new $100 poly­mer note has much-im­proved se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures and is a great im­prove­ment on our old cot­ton notes,” Young in­sist­ed.

Pres­i­dent of the Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Reval Chat­ter­goon said while he has re­ceived no re­ports from mem­bers of his as­so­ci­a­tion re­ceiv­ing bo­gus $100 bills, he said he saw the video which left him “shocked, con­fused and wor­ried.”

Chat­ter­goon said less than one week af­ter banks be­gan is­su­ing the new $100 poly­mer bills, crim­i­nals were able to du­pli­cate the bill us­ing pa­per.

“I am not sure if the crim­i­nals have been try­ing to stir more chaos than what we are al­ready ex­pe­ri­enc­ing.”

He said this showed that crim­i­nals have been mas­ter­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

“They would try to pen­e­trate every bar­ri­er.”

Chat­ter­goon said he wants to be­lieve that peo­ple who may not know the dif­fer­ence be­tween the fake and new bills may have al­ready been fooled “in ac­cept­ing coun­ter­feit.”

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chant As­so­ci­a­tion Gre­go­ry Aboud said no one from his as­so­ci­a­tion had com­plained of re­ceiv­ing the coun­ter­feit $100 bills.

He said it was some­what alarm­ing that our coun­try was so prone to run­ning from one cri­sis to an­oth­er and mak­ing “every mole­hill in­to a moun­tain with every sin­gle is­sue that aris­es.”

Aboud said world­wide, the poly­mer note is im­pos­si­ble to repli­cate.

“We hard­ly think that any­one has been born yet who knows how to coun­ter­feit a true poly­mer note,” Aboud said.

Se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures

The front of the new poly­mer bill has a much larg­er im­age of the

“Coat of Arms” with 100 em­bla­zoned on the top left and cen­tre-right of the bill.

The back has shim­mer­ing gold ink on the top right cor­ner, as well as an im­age of the Cen­tral Bank Twin Tow­ers on the left side.

Poly­mer feels smoother than pa­per.

If you run your fin­gers over the bot­tom cor­ner of the note you will feel the X braille which helps the vi­su­al­ly im­paired.