Merchants like Ikram Haq have begun drawing next to Alexander Hamilton’s visage to avoid getting burned amid a counterfeiting wave. Can you tell which of the pictured twenty-dollar bills is real?
It’s a trick question. Both of these bills, which look so real to the untrained eye, recently succeeded in filling customers’ tanks at Best Gas on Whalley Avenue near Sherman Avenue. Both were fake.
The top bill in this picture, also passed at Best Gas, was real. Manager Harry Patel couldn’t tell the difference — until he drew on the bills with a DriMark Counterfeit Detector Pen. The line he drew came out black on the counterfeit bills, yellow-green on the real one.
He and other mid-Whalley merchants started using that pen over the past week. The week before that, customers started passing genuine-looking bills, most of them twenties and tens, and getting away with it. When the merchants went to the bank, they learned the bills were fake.
They reported the losses to Edgewood’s top cop, Lt. Leo Bombalicki, and the department launched an investigation. Meanwhile, merchants have boned up on detection techniques to combat what they say is a continuing wave.
Boubacar Diallo (pictured) said he started using the marker three days ago after getting the news from Citizens Bank. He said he’s catching about two phony bills a day.
Jay Shah, manager of H&S 24-Hour Food Mart, said he got burned on $160 worth of $20 bills before he caught on. He’s using two techniques: Rubbing the twenties. (The real ones have a rough patch; the fake ones are smooth.) And using the marker.
Click on the play arrow at the top of the story to watch him and a neighbor, Mobil Mart shift manager Ikram Haq, demonstrate their techniques.
Haq (pictured) said he’s also getting counterfeit hundreds and fifties. He and his staff now tear the tops of the hundred-dollar bills. The real ones reveal a thread near the top; the fake ones don’t.
Lt. Bombalicki said the cops have no suspects at this point. In addition the merchants, Bombalicki said, some pedestrians have been fooled by strangers asking them to change $20 bills that turned out to be among the counterfeits. Assistant Chief Pete Reichard said Friday that he hadn’t heard reports yet about the counterfeiting.