Reports of ‘purged’ fake accounts crop up across North America
In recent weeks, counterfeit dollar bills have been popping up across North America, from Texas to Hawaii to Canada.
On May 8, police in Brownsville, Texas, arrested a man accused of manufacturing counterfeit dollar bills, according to reports.
The 45-year-old was charged with seven counts following a number of police reports from local businesses, including grocers, hotels, gas stations and restaurants, who complained about people paying with fake bills.
But it seems that these fake currency notes are not limited to one area as they are being circulated far and wide.
Earlier this month, counterfeit money was reportedly used to break into a baseball field in Ohio.
Dodgy dollars have been found as far away as Hawaii, with police reporting that people are taking low-value US dollar bills and turning them into $100 bills.
Local police said the counterfeiters were taking $1 bills, bleaching the color and printing them with real money to make them look like $100.
They then use the fake note to buy something small to get real currency in exchange for change.
Earlier this year, counterfeit $100 bills were reportedly circulating in Ontario, Canada. Meanwhile, on May 12, police in Charlottetown, Canada, warned that fake $100 US dollar bills being used for movie promotions are being passed around by local businesses.
Also circulating is a widely shared TitTalk video of a former Donald Trump staffer bragging about giving “fake Hollywood money” to the homeless.
The U.S. Secret Service reported seizing nearly $22 million in counterfeit cash in 2023, ABC reported in March as “counterfeit crime is on the rise.”
Related: How to identify fake cryptocurrency
However, counterfeiting is not a problem limited to North America.
On May 12, Insider Politics reported on X that a resident of Barcelona, Spain, was caught manufacturing 20 and 50 euro banknotes in her apartment. In April, German investigators reported the seizure of counterfeit dollar bills with a face value of more than $103 million.
Another shot at fiat?
Recent reports of counterfeiting are yet another blow to traditional paper currencies, which have been under the macroeconomic microscope for the past year or so.
Many analysts, especially in the crypto community, have criticized the central bank's policy of printing money and increasing its circulation.
Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk even mocked the U.S. central bank on May 12 with the popular board game Monopoly by X on May 12 for its similarities in manufacturing money and having a bank that can never be broken.
How the Federal Reserve works pic.twitter.com/3rRhbBfcJe
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2024
On the other hand, due to the immutable nature of the blockchain on which crypto-assets like Bitcoin reside, and the network's security of information and work consensus, it is extremely difficult to make a fake or two.
However, that hasn't stopped other types of scams, such as Testnet's BTC sale attempt, which is supposed to be worthless, to trick users into thinking they're receiving the genuine article.
Other scams involve the same or similar tickets being sold as tokens for a real project, such as the fake Etena Labs token that was exploited for $290,000 on the Binance launch pool in March.
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