Counterfeit $20

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One of my staff took a phony $20 bill over the weekend.

It's smooth (glossy) to the touch- no texture. The micro-printing is blurred. No braille marks. No hologram on the security strip. No "ghost" image of the Queen. The backside of the two-piece "20" is missing. Slightly mis-cut.

This particular note is interesting not because it is of high quality (it's actually rather poor), but because it was produced on a halftone CMYK printer. This is not a consumer-class machine but rather something on the level that a print shop would have. Large versions of these are used to produce magazines and other glossy full-colour publications.

So far, all of the counterfeits I have seen were produced on consumer-class inkjet or laser printers.

I wish I could get a real good scan of this note so that you can see the detail.

Here's an example of halftoning that should give you an idea as to what this note looks like under magnification.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halftone