Counterfeit Money - A Moral Dilemma!

The law is clear:-

If you find that you have a counterfeit bank note (currently, there are a lot of £20 notes in circulation) you must report it to the police. You will be given a receipt.

If a shop or bank etc realise that the note you have given them is counterfeit, they must confiscate it and give you a receipt and report it to the police.

If a shop discovers, after a customer has left their premises, that it is counterfeit they must hand it over to the police.

In all these cases the innocent party is not recompensed for the loss of the money.

What would you do if you were the individual or shopkeeper that was going to lose the money but had an opportunity to ignore the law and pass it on elsewhere (or in the case of the shopkeeper, hand it back to the customer so that the customer didn't lose out or, if the customer had already gone, pass it on when you give change)?

The Bank of England state that the amount of counterfeit notes in circulation are just a fraction of 1% of all notes. A small amount in proportion to the whole.

If you lose £20 it is likely to be a lot more than a fraction of 1% of your money!

The orginal purpose of banknotes was to make it easier to make transactions between people and traders, instead of them having to carry gold etc. around, and the statement on the note "I promise to pay the bearer..." was linked to the value of gold. That ceased to be the fact after WWI when the 'Gold Standard' was dropped. The bank is still supposed to exchange the notes for money 'on demand' but they can't give you gold.

If you do not pass the counterfeit notes on to the police they will remain in circulation and continue to do what was the original (and current) purpose of banknotes.

(I'm leaving out what effect there is from having counterfeit notes in circulation as the explanation is extremely complicated.)

We know what the law says you should do but, if you don't, would you feel guilty or immoral?

 

Regardless of the law it's dishonest to pass them on, so I wouldn't, but then I never look closely at the notes so how would you tell? Whether I could be bothered to go to the Police, I don't think so given how difficult they have made it to access them around here, maybe I'd take them into a bank and let them deal with them.

 

Some of the big companies used to have management seminars where an expert used to set a scenario and then ask them what they would do.

Every so often, during the discussion, he would change the parameters slightly and the decision process got more difficult each time.

If you went to the bank or post office and drew out £200 in £20 notes and, when you got home, you discovered they were fake, what would you do?

If you took them back they would deny having given them to you and would confiscate them. Can you afford to lose £200? (The person running the seminar would, probably, keep escalating the sum.)

 

I only use £50 notes so not a problem

(I wish!!)

 

But, if it was £200 ... or £1,000?

 

If you have to pay for something coasting £200 in cash and you go to the bank to draw out the money. The bank give you 10 x £20 and you take it to pay for the goods. The vendor looks at the notes and says they are counterfeit. If you take them back to the bank they will deny having given them to you and they will confiscate them .

So what do you do? Lose £200 or pass the notes on by paying for your shopping only using one note each time!

Paper money is only a method for making transactions without having to go back to the old barter system.

 

To be honest, some of the counterfeits are so good, there is a high possibility that we have all at one time or another passed one without even knowing it.

As mentioned on the other thread, there was a real spate of fake £20's (with £10's not far behind) in our area, and for the sake of experimenting we took one that we knew to be a fake and one that we knew to be real and went round the office asking people to identify the fake only by handling it for a few moments as you would from pocket to tender or tender to till - the vast majority of those we asked could not pick out any difference between them; a couple of the fakes even passed the detector pen test (we knew they were fake as they all had the same serial number!)

Don't get me wrong, some of the fakes are properly dire - they even feel like they have been printed on loo roll, but there are definitely some that in isolation you could be forgiven for not spotting.

 

On a more serious note, that is actually what happened on the other thread (a single £20 note) and started me off with this one. Spruce's mum was given a counterfeit note by the Post Office!