Possible $20 Birds fake

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Hi all. I had a $20 Birds note, Knight-Dodge cross my till today and I strongly suspect that it is a countefeit.

My clues?

The BPN is missing
The back of the note is a very unusual color and some detail seems to be missing
Not all of the planchettes light up under UV

What do you think? Here is a link to the photos as the forum attachment seems to acting oddly again...

http://picasaweb.google.com/victoria.brian/Fake

Regards,

Fenian

Interesting. Nothing terribly obvious besides the colour on the back. Do the planchettes glow in the same manner as an authentic note, or do they have a "fuzzy" glow? Can you feel any raised ink? What about the OSD shifting from green to gold?

Only two of the planchets glow... the rest are just there. The OSD is green and stays green, and the font of the 20 in the OSD is wrong when compared to a standard 20...

Regards,

Fenian

The knight signature is fuzzy, and the lower right "20" on the back has some dark green missing along a paper crease- give away for an ink jet printer. This is not a all star fake, the serial numbers are correct, but will also be fuzzy, and if you hold it up to the light, you will see NO indentation from the serial numbers on either side.   I bet you any money the paper inside is really white if you were to rip it along the side.

IMO: Fake.

How does the micro-printing look under a magnifying glass?  It's hard to tell from the scan, but the microprinted "20"'s and "Bank of Canada 20"'s look pretty good.  However the Queen's eyes look rather dull and lifeless on this note.  Can you feel any of the intaglio printing?

Is there any odd smell coming from this note?  Maybe it's a genuine note that went through the wash... :-/

I think it's a real note, just heavily bleached.

Fenian, what became of this note?  Did your bank accept it as genuine or was it confiscated as a counterfeit?

I once presented a Birds $20 to my BMO branch and I was told the planchettes didn't light up.  I told them (truthfully) that I had gotten it through a CIBC ATM.  The BMO teller gave it back to me and said I should return it to the CIBC branch for another note.  Everything else appeared fine with the note, so I just spent it!  The intaglio printing was there, the OSD patch changed colours and the engraving of the concentric circles forming the Queen's eyes was fine, so I concluded that either the teller had a wonky counterfeit detector or the note had been subjected to some substance that caused the planchettes to stop glowing under UV light.