Counterfeit on polymer?

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A friend of mine runs a small store in Toronto, and one of her staff received a $100 bill yesterday. Today the ink is falling off like dust. She promised me she will mail it to me in the next week or so, so I can examine it. I can only assume it's been exposed to chemicals, or primed then printed with a printer. Thoughts?

A friend of mine runs a small store in Toronto, and one of her staff received a $100 bill yesterday. Today the ink is falling off like dust. She promised me she will mail it to me in the next week or so, so I can examine it. I can only assume it's been exposed to chemicals, or primed then printed with a printer. Thoughts?

Definitely a counterfeit. In the hologram, there are no small numbers below the portrait, and the top of the tower is wrong. I guess the ink does not stick to the plastic.

Good eye! I didn't notice they were missing.

Definitely a counterfeit. In the hologram, there are no small numbers below the portrait, and the top of the tower is wrong. I guess the ink does not stick to the plastic.

In addition to the things pointed out by AZ:

The embossed denomination and Bank of Canada around hologram is missing.

Also there are problems with the middle portion of the hologram showing the denomination. One of the is that it is showing it cut out of hologram. That denomination printing is part of the hologram and cannot extend beyond.

The real sad part about increasing counterfeiting is that the BoC seems to think that these notes are lasting a long time. In many of the circulated notes the hologram is very hard to make out. So people are not paying attention to the hologram as much.

Also many of these counterfeits may easily go unnoticed when they are included as one of many in a transaction and which are typically counted on the counting machine. The sad part is that a few bank front line staff I have talked to in the past seemed to think that some of these counting machines also detect
counterfeit notes.

I hope it does not reach a point where merchants begin to again being cautious about accepting $100 bills.

Wonder if they are here now.


A wave of counterfeit bills in the Central Okanagan has prompted a warning from the RCMP.

The 'funny money' has been passed to businesses in both Kelowna and West Kelowna.

Cpl. Jesse O'Donaghey says several cases have been documented where both $50 and $100 Canadian notes have been circulated, and seized by police.

The fake bills have been used for purchases in various retail stores, gas stations, pharmacies, coffee shops and gift stores.

“In most cases the customer has been provided with change, after making a small purchase using a counterfeit bill,” said O’Donaghey.

“In other cases, the customer purchases a more expensive item at one store with the phony money, then immediately returns that item for real cash at another store location of the same franchise.”

O'Donaghey says police in West Kelowna recently seized a $100 counterfeit bank note, which was described as not symmetrical, cut poorly so that it was narrow at one end and taped together using what appeared to be a hologram from a $10 bill.

RCMP are releasing a surveillance image of a man they believe may be connected with at least one of the incidents.

The hologram does have color changing and looks pretty good from a sharp angle only. Looking at it straight on it just looks like a silver strip.

It looks like they have used a real (but counterfeited) hologram stripe. What do you see when you look at the hologram from the back of the note? Are you able to share an image showing the hologram from the back?