Zoë and Dave have found a bag of $20 bills in an abandoned alleyway. Dave wants to spend it, but Zoë thinks there is something suspicious about the bank notes. She is right; the bills are counterfeit, and they go to the police.
“You did the right thing,” the police officer tells them as he sends the counterfeiters to jail.
Zoë and Dave are characters in an exhibit at the Bank of Canada’s Currency Museum, which opened Jan. 6. The exhibit, called The Good, The Bad, and The Fake, is unique to the museum, says exhibition and program planner Caroline Roberts.
It uses a comic book-style approach to make younger visitors aware of the security features on Canadian bank notes, as well as how to spot counterfeit bills.
“Often teenagers are getting their first jobs in retail, working in fast food outlets, and handling cash,” she says. “If we get youth trained before they go for that first job interview in a fun way, it will make their job a lot easier.”
According to Roberts, there was a decrease in reports of counterfeiting in 2004, when the Bank of Canada released the latest series of bank notes that includes a host of new security features. These features, many of which are identified in the exhibit, include a holographic metallic stripe and a ‘ghost image’ that appears when the bill is held up to the light.
Despite these new features, Roberts urges consumers to learn as much about their money as possible because, as a recent Bank of Canada report suggests, counterfeiting has been on the rise this past year.
“After a note has been circulating for a while, counterfeiters get better at replicating those features,” she says. “It’s no longer enough just to see the metallic stripe on the bank note.”
The internal report, obtained in early January by the Canadian Press, states that at least $5 million in counterfeit bills had been tendered by the end of September 2008, which was already 50 per cent more than was tendered in 2007.
In recent months, Ottawa has also seen a spike in the circulation of counterfeit money. In his four years at the Organized Fraud Unit at the Ottawa Police, detective George Mendoza only remembers two incidents of counterfeiting, both of which happened in late 2008.
The Ottawa Police reported three instances of fake $100 bills being circulated in late December in Vanier, and three people were arrested for printing fake $20 and $50 bills in the Overbrook area in October.
“They used tools that anybody can buy over the counter, like printers, inks, and foils, and they made counterfeit money,” says Mendoza. He says consumers can be easily fooled by counterfeit bills.
“In a lot of circumstances, people just aren’t aware that it’s counterfeit money,” he says. “They’ll get it with a pile of other money and they’ll use it right away without even looking at it.”
The adventures of Zoë and Dave highlight that shoppers shouldn’t be offended when the cashier at the drugstore holds their $20 bill up to the light.
“We used to find that older Canadians were somewhat insulted when their notes were checked,” says Roberts.
This is one of the reasons that the Currency Museum has taken such a youth-oriented approach, she says.
Mendoza compares getting your bank notes checked at the store to hiding your PIN at the bank machine. “It’s protecting yourself,” he says.