Smash Notes
What to Do With Fake Money
Adrianne buys some money online in order to track down a rumor about Chinese bank tellers. 2:06 - Photos of the $100 bills: Front / Back 3:35 - Hell money 13:18 - Reporter Jon Christian 16:35 - Wayne Homren's blog post from 2011 19:00 - Money Makers (99% Invisible) 21:30 - Fascinating ways to count money! Bank teller shows quick counting skills (YouTube)…
Notes
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Adrienne, of the podcast Underunderstood, says she walked through the lobby of the WeWork where she worked and found the kitchen counter covered in hundred-dollar bills. They were fanned out loose, not under glass, and a wire stand held a piggy bank with more hundreds sticking out of it like a tree. A personal-finance event was underway, with bank representatives and free pens. The bills were not real. They were extremely realistic props, realistic enough that she thought they might be illegally close to the genuine article, with one obvious tell: Chinese writing, in large hot-pink letters, plus a diagonal run of dashes across the 100 in the corner that a real bill does not have.
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It's money offered to the diseased for their afterlife.
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Adrienne of Underunderstood traced the prop hundred-dollar bills at her WeWork to articles, a blog post, and a Reddit thread that call them training money for Chinese bank tellers learning what American currency looks like. Friends who read Chinese told her the large hot-pink letters say something like coupon, ticket, or cash, and the smaller letters say training materials, not for circulation. She is not sure the label makes them legitimate. Local police warnings describe people and businesses taking the bills and then reporting them. The articles name no bank and no expert. Her question is whether the training money is real, or a story printed on notes so they can be sold as legal.