Counterfeit Cash: Difference between revisions

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* In a case that combined this with [[Did Not Do the Research]], Italian police seized 125 billion in counterfeit $500 million and $1 billion U.S. bearer bonds. No U.S. bearer bonds have been issued over $10,000.
* The adage "Don't take any wooden nickels!" dates from [[The Great Depression]], when counterfeiters would cut out little nickel-sized discs of wood and paint them so that they resembled a nickel if you didn't look too closely. One way to tell the difference was to bite on the coin; the 75% copper 25% nickel alloy of an actual five-cent piece is pretty hard against the teeth, but wood has some give to it and will allow you to leave tooth marks in it.
* And then there's the "$3 bill" or "pink pound", from the expression "as queer as a three dollar bill". With these, the scam isn't counterfeiting (as no physical currency is being issued or passed with these denominations) but pinkwashing and demographic marketing; vendors will attach their pitches to LGBT pride parades or other "queer" community events to use them as a marketing demographic. Once the gay pride parade goes from a small (and daring) political protest to a mass celebration of hundreds of thousands of people, the beer companies and the marketers cash in... often because an event of that size is so expensive as to be impossible to run [[AstroturfingAstroturf|as a legit grass-roots protest]] without being [[Think of the Advertisers!|at the mercy of corporate sponsorship]].
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah_gelt Gelt], a common party favor on Hanukkah; nobody would likely mistake it for actual money, but it's money you can eat!