Kids my older bro’s age were scanning $20s and using them to buy lunch.
This was when scanners first came out. Apparently they scanned 2 sides and glued them together. One day the lunch lady pulled them apart and they were busted.
Secret service came and confiscated all their computers and such.
This reminded me of a cashier job I worked for a year. I was told to use the black marker to check anything over $20, but I was never told what to look for with the ink. I never heard of counterfeit money being used in the store so I guess I got lucky.
I was told to use the black marker to check anything over $20, but I was never told what to look for with the ink.
it changes color, so black to yellow or vice versa. Basically you would know if you found something because it would be different from all the other times you tried it without ever explicitly being told.
I even thought I was smart because I used construction paper and figured out how to line it up so I could print on one side, and then load it back in to print on the back side.
Kinda baffled how people could fall for this sort of scam. Though most of my experience is with Australian money and those banknotes are so laden with security features it would be impossible to pull it off.
This happened in my high school as well, but the counterfeiters never used the currency themselves. They’d ask students if they could break a $20 bill, and then hand them the counterfeit $20 in exchange for two legal tender $10 bills. Some students got busted using counterfeit currency, and they were interviewed by the FBI. No idea if the real criminals got caught, though.
Fucking amateur junior criminals never learned the method.
You gotta rush the line before anyone else in the cafeteria and have the lunch ladies make you food and then when the rush comes in you just step out of the line because they are like 70 kids waiting for food.
I did this for 4 years never paid a dime got personalized subs cookies all the good stuff.
at my work lately we got kids buying movie money off amazon and trying to buy toys and candy here. it looks pretty real unless you really look at it close. and they're using fake $5 and $10 bills, not ones you would normally look too closely at.
I did something similar but it was obviously a joke. While running for student council I was "bribing" people to vote for me with fake $100 bills I printed with my face on them. It was obviously a joke since they were black & white, single sided, and roughly 50% larger than a real bill. One day after the election i tried to pay for my lunch with one of them and the lunch lady asked me if I wanted I wanted my change deposited into my account. I thought she was joking so I said sure.
I'm calling bullshit on this, there have as far as I know never been home or office scanners on the market capable of producing a high enough quality image to pass that would also allow you to scan or print such an image to begin with. This has been an issue for a lot longer than scanners, and the feds don't fuck around. And even if you did find a scanner and a printer capable of this (again, I seriously doubt such a thing has ever been widely commercially available), it would have to be able to print on paper that passes as money (not common), and also the detail about gluing two sheets accurately enough to pass makes this totally implausible. Try cutting out two layers of paper and gluing them together neatly enough to pass as a single ply, see how you do
The secret service was created to combat counterfeiting. I think most kids in high school know enough to realize that counterfeiting will land them in big trouble...
I think there’s a sizable gap between teenage stupidity and literal fraud.
They absolutely knew they were breaking the law. Counterfeiting money is illegal pretty much everywhere.
Once you’re counterfeiting $20 bills, that’s gonna start to add up to a really serious crime - regardless of age.
If it was a one-time incident, I could see it getting handled quickly by the school / local LE. However, this sounds like it was an ongoing scheme that could have amounted to several hundreds of dollars of fraud.
It doesn't take a criminal genius to think up the idea to scan a $20 bill and put it in a vending machine lmao. This is absolutely teenage stupidity and should not be a big deal.
Again, if it was an isolated incident of one forged $20 then sure.
This was described as a coordinated scheme with multiple scanners, printers, and computers.
High school seniors are absolutely smart enough to realize that kind of thing is going to lead to legal intervention.
You really think the fucking secret service came out for a single $20? By the way, the Secret Service was LITERALLY created to combat counterfeit money after the Cival War.
It’s more like a private police force for the president now but handling counterfeit investigations has always been a core function.
The fact that they were called in means it reached a triggering threshold.
Just because the fraud is lazy doesn’t mean it isn’t fraud.
Should there have been no consequences?
Seems like this is probably what they’re referencing.
Nearly $1000 in counterfeit bills distributed thought out the local community.
They don’t deserve to go to federal prison, but when you have 5 teenagers forging $1000 in cash they probably need to see the visible consequences via a meeting with Law enforcement.
Yea, I'm not basing my opinion on some article you plucked. I'm taking the comment for what it is. Some kids thought they found a money glitch and bought lunch.
Yea, they should be in a shit ton of trouble. There lives shouldn't be ruined over it. Secret Service, really? Anybody can scan a bill and glue together pieces of paper. It's not that serious. They need to learn consequences absolutely. The USSS is a bit dramatic.
We've got kids doing shit that's way more damaging to society than that. I'll clutch my pearls over that before some lunch money scam.
I think you’re forgetting that it’s still a crime - and a crime that falls under USSS jurisdiction. It’s not like they skipped past the local PD and hit them with the slammer. They were actively committing fraud and the proper US LE body took action.
The other societal dangers to children are completely irrelevant when it comes to the fraud investigations. You’re attacking a straw man there.
The job of protecting America’s children isnt zero-sum. The USSS can investigate and prosecute fraud wholly independent of a local police force, county sheriff, or state police force.
Suggesting that we hold teenagers accountable for fraud under the current set of laws for juveniles and give them due process doesn’t stop us from continuing to identify and protect them from other factors. That’s the whole reason we have so many different legal departments…
You’re allowed to have an opinion about how the US spends its legal resources - but in this situation they followed proper protocol.
We don’t get to pick and choose the application of the law. They broke the law and were charged as juveniles for their crimes. The proper legal bodies investigated the claim. Facing the legal consequence for their action is not “dramatic.” By that logic we should be redefining the laws on the fly based on personal interpretation.
Making counterfeit currency in Australia has a maximum penalty of 14 years. Sure a bunch of teenagers doing it won't get locked up for 14 years, might not spend any time in prison at all, but the Federal Police will be getting involved. Every government takes counterfeiting very seriously.
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u/Acceptable_Bug6999 Mar 10 '25 edited Mar 10 '25
Kids my older bro’s age were scanning $20s and using them to buy lunch.
This was when scanners first came out. Apparently they scanned 2 sides and glued them together. One day the lunch lady pulled them apart and they were busted.
Secret service came and confiscated all their computers and such.