Counterfeit money causes concerns at Club Day
On a typical club day, each organization is given a standard package with items it’ll need to sell merchandise. The package includes gloves, bracelets and a paper bag to collect money. However, this year, after recent problems with counter- feit money on campus, clubs were provided with a new addition to the classic kit — pens that could detect the authenticity of currency.After learning about previous usage of fake currency on campus, ASB Adviser Bryn Boyd decided to purchase these pens as a pre- cautionary measure against further scamming.“I was informed that we had a counterfeit ring going [around] campus,” Boyd said. “Because we use cash at club day, in order for any clubs not to lose money, and for the ASB general account not to lose money, I went out and purchased the counterfeit-detecting pens and put one in every bag so advisers could mark the bills. This wasn’t an effort to catch the kids because to my knowledge they’ve already been caught. But we had no counterfeit bills at club day, which is huge.”While real currency is printed on a type of fine cloth, counterfeit currency is made of wood-based
paper. The pens, which contain a simple iodine solution, change col- or after contact with inauthentic wood-based paper, revealing the le- gitimacy of the bill. The pens have become commonplace at Samo ever since Samo cafeteria workers — who also use the pens — discovered that some students had been buying food with counterfeit money during first semester.According to an administrator familiar with the subject, students weren’t just using counterfeit bills to buy food. Students would buy an item in the cafeteria or lunch cart for $1 and pay with a fake $20. Be- cause the students had apparently paid with a $20, cafeteria workers were issuing up to $19 worth of change. This means that students who were using fake bills were no longer just in possession of counter- feit funds; they were using the fake bills to steal from Samo.“Obviously, we take this mat- ter very seriously,” SMMUSD Food Services Director Orlando Griego said. “Passing a counterfeit bill is a law enforcement issue for my department and the district. Each time we’ve discovered a counterfeit bill, we’ve informed the school ad- ministration, who can then alert lo- cal law enforcement agencies.”According to the United States
Secret Service, only about $260 mil- lion worth of counterfeit bills were seized in 2011 (out of $303 billion in domestic circulation). Global es- timates for counterfeit in 2015 ex- ceed one trillion dollars.The United States Federal Re- serve reported that as of 2002, Fed- eral Reserve banks in the U.S. only have about a 36 percent chance of catching counterfeit money. Al- though the pens used at Samo may be effective on some fake notes, counterfeiters will also “wash” real bills and reprint them at higher de- nominations so that the paper and thread counts of the bills are able to pass the pen test. This means that some of the fake money being passed at the lunch stands could go undetected.Despite the potential loss of revenue for the district, sources didn’t disclose what kind of mon- ey they confiscated, or how many bills had been discovered. The use of counterfeit bills at school, how- ever, is not unique to Samo. Just last week, CBS local news reported that three students at a New York high school had been arrested for handing out fake $20 bills to other students for the purpose of buying food.In 2014, CBS local news also reported that teens at a New Jersey
high school had been arrested after the counterfeit 20 dollar bills they had made were discovered at local businesses and subsequently report- ed the U.S. Secret Service. In both cases of high schoolers using coun- terfeit bills, the students who had made them printed the bills at home (in New Jersey the teens had printed it on resume paper for a more au- thentic feel) on their color printers from their computers.According to the U.S. Secret Service website, the use of counter- feit money is an incredibly serious matter.“Manufacturing counterfeit United States currency or altering genuine currency to increase its val- ue is a violation of Title 18, Section 471 of the United States Code and is punishable by a fine or imprison- ment for up to 15 years, or both.”Markus Wieshofer (’15) thinks the use of counterfeit bills at the lunch stands is a detriment to hon- est paying students, as well as steal- ing from the school.“Using counterfeit money at the food stands is not only cheating the school,” Wieshofer said. “It’s also cheating the hard working workers who labor day in and day out just so people can have a lunch.”