Warning ! Check the money your bank hands you.

[ukipa]

Are you aware that if you go to your own bank, withdraw money from your bank and if the bank clerk hands you a fake, counterfeits bill; and you unknowingly pass that bill around; and if the store clerk spots the fake bill and calls the police, it is your problem? The banks do not check the money to make sure the bills are counterfeit !! And you will be tossed in jail for passing fake bills.

You are being caution to check the money, making sure the bills are not counterfeit.

[ukipa]

Aberdeen woman says she received a fake $100 bill from her bank

Authorities in Aberdeen are investigating counterfeit money that has been circulating in the hub city. Three people were arrested last week in connection with fake $100 bills.

One woman says she was a victim, and today she asked us to investigate why she should be held responsible for what happened.

"First of all it makes me very angry because it doesn't just affect the people that did this," Vickie Carlson-Wurtz said. "It affects everybody that it touched. It affects the bank. It affects me. It affects my day care provider. It affected everybody."

Vickie Carlson-Wurtz received one of the counterfeit $100 bills that have been circulating in Aberdeen. She tried to use it to pay her daycare provider and now she is out a hundred bucks.

"I paid her and she took it," Carlson-Wurtz said. "On Monday she went to deposit it into her account and they informed her at her bank that the $100 bill was a counterfeit."

She says she got the counterfeit bill from the bank so she believes they are responsible to pay her back. They don't agree.

"I called down there and he basically told me that there was nothing that he would do for me," Carlson-Wurtz said.

The bank said they would not reimburse Vickie for her $100.

We asked the bank why. The president of First State Bank of Warner would only tell us through a statement:

The actions we took were based on the advice from our legal council.

Aberdeen police say that Vickie should contact them and they will make her case a part of their counterfeit investigation. That would be her best chance at getting her money back.

Vickie says she is frustrated with the bank and wishes something more could be done.

"They call me by name when I walk in," Carlson-Wurtz said. "It's a nice feeling but when something like this happens it makes you feel like just a number."

Vickie says she is planning on going to the police tomorrow.

The owner of the daycare declined to comment on camera. She says she doesn't blame Vickie at all, but she will still be more careful with the money she receives from now on.

[ukipa]

Woman says she got bogus bill from a bank

Reporters - Jason Hibbs
Photojournalist - Mark Owen
Photojournalist - Jeff Pierce


PADUCAH — Local police and the Secret Service are investigating an increase in fake bills circulating our area.

One area woman said she feels cheated. This single mom, who said she lives paycheck to paycheck, found no humor in the "funny money" she received, especially since she alleges the bogus bill came from a bank.

"It's actually shorter than a regular twenty," Demetria Story said of the counterfeit bill. "It's also lighter. There's no strip in it."

She has no doubt the fake $20 bill came from the ATM at the B.B.&T. in Concord, Kentucky.

She needed the money to pay her babysitter.

"I got the money. Gave it to the lady. She took it. The next day, gave it back to me and told me the cash I gave her, one of the bills was counterfeit."

She had to repay her babysitter and then she brought the bogus bill back.

"They laid it out clear and flat, I wasn't going to get a refund," she said.

She said the bank told her the serial number matched other counterfeit bills they'd seen but still, Story was stuck.

A bank spokesperson wouldn't say if it's possible for an ATM to make a mistake but did release this statement:

"B.B. & T. follows the U.S. Secret Service guidelines regarding counterfeit prevention. In addition, B.B.&T. tellers are taught to identify counterfeit bills during an extensive training program, and B.B. &T. uses technologies that helps to identify counterfeit money."

Anthony Copeland with Paducah Police has this advice for shoppers: "Check your currency, even if you're receiving change at a gas station, restaurant or bank. Look at it. Make sure it is correct."

Story said she'll do that from here on out and will take her banking business elsewhere.

Paducah police said they hope more people come forward to report bogus bills.

But they want folks to know that just because you tell police, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll get your cash back. It's the police's job to track down the counterfeit operation and put a stop to this. It's the consumer's job to make sure it doesn't happen to us.

Police said the best way to tell if you have counterfeit money is to get a counterfeit marking pens and hold the bill up to the light to check for watermarks.

[ukipa]

Bank Of America Passes Questionable $100 Bill To Glastonbury Woman

By George Gombossy | Last updated Feb 12, 2011, 12:03 pm

Most of us would gladly accept $100 bills, especially from banks.

Sasha Suto of Glastonbury is not sure after her experience with Bank of America’s West Hartford branch.

Suto went to the nation’s largest – and frequently criticized bank – on Jan. 31 to cash a $900 check that had been made out on a Bank of America account.

She received 9 $100 bills and promptly took them to her credit union, Franklin Trust, also in West Hartford, where she attempted to deposit them.

The clerk checked all 9 bills with a special pencil and found that when she drew a line across one of the bills it turned dark instead of yellow, a sign that its counterfeit.

The clerk refused to deposit the bill and suggested to Suto that she take it back to the Bank of America branch.

At Bank of America a clerk ran her pencil over the bill and also found that it turned dark. The manager told Suto that she would have to confiscate the money and turn it over to the Secret Service – as federal law requires. The clerk who told Suto to take the check to Bank of America was reprimanded.

That was fine, Suto said, “but can I have another $100 bill since I got the bill from there in the first place 15 minutes earlier?”

Absolutely not, Suto was told, since the bank had no way of knowing that Suto didn’t slip another bill in her pile.

That is when Suto contacted me and I contacted Bank of America, which claimed that it thoroughly checks all $100 bills and there is no way Suto could have gotten a counterfeit bill from them.

At that point I didn’t know who to believe. While normally banks don’t pass out fake bills, it does happen, as Chase was caught red handed last year trying to falsely blame a customer for a bad $100 bill.

So I figured I would test Suto and asked her to file a written complaint against Bank of America with the West Hartford police. If she did that I was going to assume that she was either a complete idiot or on the level.

Suto did file a written complaint and West Hartford police – who had not been told about the counterfeit bill from the bank – started their own investigation. At that point I was comfortable that Suto was telling the truth.

West Hartford Police Chief James Strillacci was not sure. He said that his department was investigating a rash of fake $100 bills being passed in West Hartford.

He said that on Jan. 30 a bad check was passed at a gas station and $900 in bogus bills were passed at Price Rite. Another case had also just came in.

The tale does have a happy ending. Suto was called by Bank of America last week and was told that the Secret Service determined that the bill was legitimate, it just had some kind of coating on it.

She went back to the bank, refused a $100 bill and instead walked out with five $20 bills.

Suto says she doesn’t blame Bank of America, but she hopes the bank does not pass the $100 bill off again on someone else who will also have a problem with it.

Bank of America said its policy is not to inform local authorities when a counterfeit bill is received and only contacts the Secret Service, which she assumes contacts local police. I suggested that the policy be changed.

[niseag]

about 7 years ago I took some money out of Fleet Bank a BofA subsidiary at the East Coast, and then used it at BofA in California, they found three fake 100US$ wrote a report and took the money. I was pretty upset but then got the report copy and went back to Fleet and argued with them and since I had so many received from them and I argued that they could have found them themselves and had a record warning from the FBI on these kind of notes as well as proof that I got exactly the fake numbers from them, they refunded me the 3 notes. They have to register the 100$ note numbers when you take out more than 10000$ in cash in 100$ notes.

In the mean time I learned to avoid the better tellers and go to the flakes for cash issues ;-)

[ukipa]

niseag, at least you got your 3 bills back. Most people get thrown in jail for awhile and make them feel like dirt. That's why I only carry "plastic".