Mysterious $100 ‘Supernote’ Counterfeit Bills Appear Across World
January 13th, 2008I’ve seen vague stories in the media about these “supernotes” for years, but this article goes much further than anything I’ve read before. Highly recommended.
Via: Kansas City Star:
Whatever the origin of the bills, “it’s by far the most sophisticated counterfeiting operation in the world,” said James Kolbe, a former congressman from Arizona who oversaw funding for the Secret Service. “We are not certain as to how this is being done or how it’s happening.”
—The paper appears to be made from the same cotton and linen mix that distinguishes U.S. currency from others. It includes the watermarks visible from the other side of the bill, colored microfibers woven into the substrate of the banknote and an embedded strip, barely visible, that reads USA 100 and glows red under ultraviolet light.
—The bills include tiny microprint that appears as a line to the naked eye, but under magnification is actually lettering around the coat of Benjamin Franklin or hidden in the number 100 that reads either USA 100 or The United States of America.
—The same optically variable ink, or OVI, is used on the number 100 on the bottom right side of the bill. Exclusively made for, and sold to, the United States, this OVI ink gives the appearance of changing color when a banknote is viewed from different angles.
—At least 19 different versions have been printed, each corresponding to a tiny change in U.S. engraving plates — an odd thing for any counterfeiter to do. Also, they show practically invisible but intriguing additions.
—Stranger yet, the number of supernotes found indicates that whoever is printing them isn’t doing so in large quantities. Only $50 million worth of them have been seized since 1989, an average of $2.8 million per year and not even enough to pay for the sophisticated equipment and supplies needed to make them.
Industry experts such as Thomas Ferguson, former director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, said the supernotes are so good that they appear to have been made by someone with access to some government’s printing equipment.
Some experts think North Korea does not have the sophistication to make the bills; others suspect Iran and others speak of criminal gangs in Russia or China.
Klaus Bender, the author of Moneymakers: The Secret World of Banknote Printing, said the phony $100 bill is “not a fake anymore. It’s an illegal parallel print of a genuine note.” He claims that the supernotes are of such high quality and are updated so frequently that they could be produced only by a U.S. government agency such as the CIA.
(Serious tinfoil hat time; and not well-thought-out, to boot!) If these things look SO MUCH like the real thing, who’s to say they gov’t might not confiscate, I don’t know, thousands or even millions of “them” if it sees fit? Let’s say someone (a banker?) doesn’t play ball (with TPTB) — oh my, turns out he was holding lots of these “bad bills” — better shut him down.
Or, somebody with a hell of a lot of power (like a national gov’t) is short the US dollar.
The Plunge Protection Team protecting America from deflation?
At best its a bit of flowback from a CIA sting?
Insider trading with the funny cash?
My initial instincts lean toward black ops “play money”, printed using official equipment and techniques, that’s trickled back into regular circulation through the usual method: spending.
I’ll wager they’re kept on-hand for use during specific operations. Such a tactic seems extremely useful from an intelligence point-of-view. They can spot their bills being used in follow-on transactions, even perhaps monitoring the cash (by number) as it finds its way back into the regular use patterns of currency.
The SS confiscates under the guise of “fighting counterfeiting”, when their actual role is data collection, tracking and monitoring. A near-perfect cover.
Those infamous pallets of $100 US bills flown into Iraq as administrative “grease” under Viceroy Bremer?
You didn’t think they were REAL?
Now, imagine a local warlord receiving his suitcase full of American confidence from within the Green Zone. Wouldn’t you, knowing that he can’t be trusted any further than you can throw him, want to be able to see where and when those hundreds surface?
I know I would. The possibility of shining a little light down the occasional dark rabbit hole seems just the sort of thing our ever-so-talented sneaks would want to achieve, if they could only find a means of uncovering the connections between the enemies they know and the enemies they’re currently doing business with. Capiche?
…of course, the Nutter’s suggestion is another equally valid function within the scope of “dark side” operations: planting the special hundreds directly on specific individuals they may wish to compromise later, as a form of leverage…
“Remember all those century notes you used to pad your travel budget Vito? Well, they’re official, specially-made bills that we can track around the globe, and if you don’t play ball with us right now we might just have to set the SS to sniffing around, and you know how they love to use the dogs when they raid a site…”
Now, contemplate what becomes possible when you combine such an operation with the practical gains of thin film technology in electronics. The technology already exists to place an extremely thin RFID tag inside a bill. It would be difficult and expensive, which may account for the relatively small total number of bills being made.
Or, the corollary, they’ve made mountains of the them, but as official play money being spent mostly in relatively out of the way places, not that much of it tends to find its way out into regular circulation due to the places and people through whom it is channeled. In which case, more of it likely exists in Europe and Asia than stateside. All speculation, naturally.