Florida authorities have sounded the alarm over repeated instances of people trying to pass off blatantly counterfeit money, including movie prop bills, as legitimate currency — and flagging ways to tell which ones are fake.
The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office posted a picture of a crisp $100 bill with founding father Benjamin Franklin adorning the front like usual, but circled bolt markers that don’t appear on your average banknote.
“The $100 bills are marked as fake, stating they are to be used only in making motion pictures, but they may look accurate at a casual glance,” the office explained on Facebook.
While the fonts are similar to the standard used on real greenbacks, the labels very apparently spell out “FOR MOTION PICTURE PURPOSES,” “THIS IS NOT LEGAL TENDER,” and “PROP MOVIE MONEY,” according to the bills shared by the authorities.
Police in Key West, the most populated city in Monroe County, also flagged similar counterfeit $20 bills featuring the notoriously tough Andrew Jackson with a smirk spread across his face in late September.
“Check your twenties! Some movie prop bills have made it into circulation! Though they’re marked ‘for motion picture purposed.’ They can fool you. Oh, and if Andrew Jackson has a smirk, that’s another clear giveaway!” the Key West Police Department wrote on Facebook.
The Key West police added that a local businessman had alerted the department of a fake bill “in his till” and requested that they issue a warning to the masses.
Many Gen Z cashiers have struggled to differentiate between real and fake cash, including one well-meaning employee at a fro-yo shop in Florida who scrawled “FAKE” in Sharpie across a pair of very real bills.
In Missouri, one diner tried to pay for his meal with a novelty $1,000 bill, which isn’t minted in US currency. The bill wound up being a piece of Chinese “ancestor money” typically burned during post-mortem rituals.
In 2019, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer even warned residents of the Big Apple that funny money was becoming a “major problem” for the city’s retailers.
“This problem is definitely rated R, because it’s getting very, very bad,” Schumer said.
“It shouldn’t be ‘Mission Impossible’ to prevent these fake funds from being passed off as the real thing in the first place,” he added.
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