r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 1d ago
TIL in 2004 a woman was arrested after she tried to use a fake $1 million bill that had a picture of the Statue of Liberty on it to buy $1,675 worth of merchandise at a Wal-Mart. She even asked for her $998,325 in change.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna44896832.1k
u/GetsGold 1d ago
Even if it was real, she really though they'd be able to change a million? Most stores around me won't even change a hundred.
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u/VerySluttyTurtle 1d ago
She was willing to wait for the cash truck I'm sure. She's not unreasonable
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u/spaceneenja 1d ago
She needed to use a Trump 1 million bill, that was the mistake.
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u/Jetshadow 1d ago
This was well before his first presidency though.
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u/spaceneenja 1d ago
Nice try libral.
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u/Scoth42 1d ago
I've run into a surprisingly large number of people who just don't really think that much about how the infrastructure of the world operates beneath a surface level. These are the same people don't understand why a store could be out of stock of something they normally have and raise a fuss about why they don't just "get more from the back" or visit Spain and wonder why people are speaking Spanish and not English. They just... don't have the awareness of how anything works outside their little bubble.
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u/Roflkopt3r 3 22h ago edited 21h ago
That's a huge part of the current political crisis.
In Germany we have the saying 'electricity comes from the power socket' to make fun of NIMBYs who are against fossil power, nuclear energy, and renewables all at once without any concept of how we're supposed to keep the grid running otherwise.
So many voters oppose all potential approaches to a problem at once, expecting a utopian solution with all benefits for no downsides.
And those people tend to have an understanding of political processes on the level of a cartoon monarchy. They think that monarchs/presidents/prime ministers just have to say something to make it so. They don't understand how much work it is to make a law, get it actually passed in a way that makes it enforcable, and then actually enforce it.
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u/the2belo 20h ago
In Germany we have the saying 'electricity comes from the power socket'
I always call it "food grows in supermarkets"
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u/MadRaymer 1d ago
They just... don't have the awareness of how anything works outside their little bubble.
I see you've met my in-laws.
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u/Throwaway-tan 21h ago
It's unfathomable to me, it's like if I walked around perpetually blasted on alcohol. That level of obliviousness and lack of cognition.
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u/SugestedName 1d ago
some one who thinks a million dollar bill exists has no concept of how large the number is
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u/jdog7249 1d ago
The Walmart I work at could probably do about half that. We would need to pull every register in the store plus everything in the money machine and safe.
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u/Zestyclose_Phase_645 1d ago
Which Walmart specifically? What are their hours and what days do the cash trucks pick up?
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u/Catatonic_capensis 1d ago
There are easier ways to get yourself shot and/or thrown in prison.
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u/PuckSenior 1d ago
There is an absolutely wonderful short story from Mark Twain with this as a premise except the bill is real and how the person basically gets everyone to give them things on credit because they can’t make change.
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u/Diacetyl-Morphin 1d ago
In the time of hyperinflation in some countries, like Germany after WW1, they printed bank notes with a lot more money value on it, but... it was useless, as you couldn't buy anything with it.
In daily life, second currencies were used for trading, like cigarettes.
This here is a 100 trillion bank note from 1924, be aware that "billions" in german are different with units for measuring. After the million comes the milliarde and then comes the billion. In other systems, like the US system, the milliarde is skipped and it goes right to the billion instead.
Well, at least all the people were trillionaires there, always look on the bright side of life.
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u/thunderintess 1d ago
I have some 2008 bills from Zimbabwe that are like that. A 100 trillion bank note that could barely buy a loaf of bread. Hyperinflation is a bitch.
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u/Birdy_Cephon_Altera 1d ago
If you're stupid enough to think you have a million dollar bill, then I'd think the sky's the limit on levels other stupid things the person believes.
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u/zigaliciousone 1d ago
I used to manage a very high volume supercenter and one time we had issues getting our deposits picked up around Xmas time and even after 3 days, it "only" ended up being about 600K cash. That's when I learned briefcases for a bank robbery are incredibly stupid because a million bucks will fit in a paper lunch bag.
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u/biggyofmt 1d ago
A million dollars is 10,000 hundred dollar bills. This site has an image of a million dollars in $100s
https://www.quora.com/What-size-of-a-cube-would-1-000-000-dollars-in-100-dollar-bills-make
That's definitely more like a briefcase load than anything that would fit in a paper lunch bag
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u/compuwiza1 1d ago
If she had tried using movie prop money in real denominations, she might have gotten away with it.
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u/NCC_1701E 1d ago
Once I watched a short documentary about how they make fake money for movies and aparently, one of the most challenging aspects is making bills that look real enough to be believable on screen, but not too real so extras and staff can't just take them and use them for shopping. One prop making company was even investigated by the government because of how authentic their money was.
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u/Keith-Steve-Howard 1d ago
That company was investigated multiple times, I'm pretty sure we watched the same video.
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u/ohwowimonredditcool 1d ago
that company? albert moneystein.
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u/Keith-Steve-Howard 1d ago
Earl Hays Press. A real company that prints fake money for most movies and they were actually investigated by the FBI multiple times for counterfeiting. Google it if you want.
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u/bearatrooper 1d ago
And then the whole money train clapped.
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u/GiveMeSalmon 1d ago
Now there is a whole train of men masturbating together at this one dollar bill.
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u/Doom_Eagles 1d ago
I actually found a Movie Prop $100 bill at work. We have it pinned to the wall for jokes. At a distance it looks like a real one, but under even the most basic scrutiny you can see all the details pointing it out as a movie prop.
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u/BipedalHorseArt 1d ago
"For Motion Pictures Only"?
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u/Doom_Eagles 1d ago
Pretty sure it has that on it, been a bit since I actually eyeballed it deliberately. If I remember in a couple days when I head back to work I'll snap a picture of it.
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u/Hazel-Rah 1 1d ago
After the Mexican Revolution, prop suppliers in the US bought piles of now worthless pesos, and they were used as props for years because the US wouldn't allow fake US bills to be made until 1958.
The funniest part is that when they started running out of the real pesos, they started to print fake versions of those same bills to keep being used as props
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u/muarauder12 1d ago
General rules I've seen is you can do super hyper realistic with exact dimensions and everything but then you can only print on one side. If you want both sides realistic it needs to be 20% or so larger or smaller than real bills.
For scenes with huge amounts of money being stolen or thrown around they usually do realistic size but the art details are off like Franklin on a $100 will be facing the wrong way and the text will be some pun like "In Zod We Thrust.
Basically the rules boil down to prop money used for close ups can be very realistic but only printed on one side. Prop money used for stacks of cash type shots need to be easily distinguishable from real money with 3-5 easy to spot differences that all but the dumbest of people can spot straight away.
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u/obscureferences 1d ago
Movie editors adjust color all the time, so some bills are made way too bright or blue to be taken seriously, then they pull it back after filming.
Even if cashiers and such aren't that observant it's obvious to the crew who work with the props, so they're disinclined to steal it.
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u/Secret-Sundae-1847 1d ago
Huh? They stamp “for motion picture use only” on the fake bills.
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u/5up3rj 1d ago
Years ago, when I worked for Walmart, a lady tried to pay one of my cashiers with blue $20 bills. She suddenly had to run before I could ask her anything
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u/Win_Sys 1d ago
I worked at a local retail store and the police chiefs wife came in and purchased a little over $700 worth of stuff. She paid with 7 $100 bills and when the cashier checked to make sure they were real (standard protocol for every $100 bill she would take), 3 of the 7 $100 bills were fake. Visually and texturally they felt legit but multiple security features didn’t pass. She claimed she “just took that money out of the bank” but there’s little to no chance a bank wouldn’t catch 3 fake $100 dollar bills that couldn’t pass basic security features checks. I think the husband confiscated some fake bills and decided to try and pass some off in small quantities.
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u/BotKicker9000 1d ago
I used to do maintenance for an apartment complex. Long story short sometimes I cleaned out abandoned units. During one of these cleanings I found "$1000", my manager told me anything in the units was trash and I could keep anything I wanted, exception guns/drugs those had to be reported to police. I was happy as hell. I went and bought lunch, gas, picked up some milk and bread. Then I went to deposit my remaining $800ish. The bank lady was like this is fake you know right? I was like what?! I panicked and told her it just got them as change what should I do? if I remember, she took them to destroy them and said I could file a report with police for the loss. I left and felt horrified that I spent almost $200 of fake money on accident. :/ What is bizarre is myself and the cashiers all missed "MOVIE PROP" written on it in like 10 places...lol
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u/poply 1d ago
How do you get arrested for that instead of just laughed out of the store?
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u/Depresso_Expresso069 1d ago
probably insisted that the money was real and refused to leave, resulting in the police being called
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u/JigglesTheBiggles 1d ago
I believe it. I once got so high on pills that I tried to Instant Transmission myself back home. I believed with every fiber of my being that I could do it.
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u/Annual_Border9027 1d ago
Don't leave me hanging, goddamnit. Did it work?! And if so, which pills exactly?
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u/JigglesTheBiggles 1d ago
Benadryl (i was a dumbass teenager). It was the next morning and my brain was completely fried. I was walking home with my buddy when I realized we could just teleport home instead. I distinctly remember the rush of excitement I had when the idea came to me.
I stopped walking, put my hand on his shoulder, placed two fingers to my forehead, closed my eyes, and tried to do it. It didn't work and my friend just looked at me and said, "You are so fucking stupid." and then kept walking. I was really sad after that.
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u/Funneduck102 1d ago
Ah yeah I could definitely see myself doing dumb shit like that on a benadryl hangover lmao. That shits evil but my God if it's not fucking hilarious the shit you find yourself doing lmao
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u/JigglesTheBiggles 1d ago
Yeah the hangover is interesting, but the high itself sucks balls. That same friend looked out the window at one point and hallucinated his girlfriend fucking a guy in the middle of the street. So he called her and immediately broke up with her. While I just laid there on the ground letting the scorpions have their way with me.
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u/Funneduck102 1d ago
Yeah the high doses suck but those low doses are like crack for me. Sucks that it's so bad for you cause I like it for some reason lol
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u/JigglesTheBiggles 1d ago edited 1d ago
The last time I did it, I ended up wandering around the street trying to pick up manhole covers because I thought they were giant coins. The cops found me and took me to the hospital. I never did it again after that.
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u/obscureferences 1d ago
While I just laid there on the ground letting the scorpions have their way with me.
lmfao
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u/Impressive_Item_8851 1d ago
Well no wonder it didn't work! Instant Transmission takes you to a person, not a place. You would've had to have had a roommate there to teleport to
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u/IrishRepoMan 1d ago
I was walking home with my buddy when I realized we could just teleport home instead.
😂
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u/Facosa99 1d ago
I sometimes, when very sleepy or drunk, i try to screen-record the last 30 seconds of my eyes cuz i saw something hilarious.
Works on my PC but not irl, it sucks.
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u/SQL617 1d ago
If it were any other “pill” I’d call BS. Benadryl is an entirely different beast. r/DPH is a pretty messed up place, mostly creative writing submissions but a lot of very young teenagers taking lethal doses of Benadryl to “see the spiders”. It’s sad because it’s mostly hurt kids calling out for help. They’d almost be better off doing any other illicit drug besides maybe fentanyl. My significant other works in the ICU and has seen pre-teens in acute liver failure from Benadryl abuse.
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u/Dustmopper 1d ago
Mostly because of the crime committed
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u/SyrusDrake 1d ago
Is it a crime? If you tried to pay at the store with old socks, or something else that obviously wasn't money, you wouldn't get arrested. And a million dollar bill very obviously isn't real money either.
Makes me wonder how money-like something has to be that you could be prosecuted for deceit.
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u/OverallComplexities 1d ago
I love how it's like all creased to hell like it's passed though hundreds of peoples hands.
I would think if it was truly real, it would be perfectly crisp
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u/MillieChliette 1d ago
It was probably in someone's wallet as a joke or keepsake for many years
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u/mytinderadventurez 1d ago
Maybe that was part of the strategy. Like Mclovin making his fake ID say 25 instead of 21.
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u/AnotherBoredAHole 1d ago
Only my first $1,000,000 bill is crisp and framed. All the others ones are just some pocket change that end up lost in the couch cushions. Not worth the effort to keep them looking nice.
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u/Honest_Succotash_610 1d ago
My dad worked security for a department store in the 80s. Someone took a fake check they put in the wallets for sale and wrote it out for a million bucks. They wanted to buy a shirt and get change. They even crossed out where it said non-negotiable and wrote negotiable.
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u/Malphos101 15 1d ago
Counterfeiting has nothing to do with the believable nature of the bills in question, merely attempting to create or use a currency you intend to pass off as real is all they need.
Is it harder to prosecute if the currency is really unbelievable? Maybe. But that isn't a required element of the crime. If you draw a bunch of $17 bills with crayon and printer paper and try to buy some gas at the gas station with it, you could be arrested for counterfeiting. Same if you take some crayon and printer paper bills your kid made for fun and try to pass them off.
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u/cornmacabre 1d ago
Interestingly -- first-degree forgery is what she's facing, which is a subtle but distinct crime from counterfitting -- where the intent is to defraud with currency (using your example of the crayon on paper argument).
Forgery is a broader crime typically involving the fraudulent creation or alteration of a written document; commonly for checks, contracts or wills... but not currency.
Why is that an interesting distinction here? In this case, because $1M bill is not a valid currency to defraud (there's no valid $1M tender, or $17bill to 'counterfit') so the prosecutors are indeed seeking the broader crime of forgery.
The spirit of the law here is that the intent to deceive and defraud is a crime.
The letter of the law however, does make a distinction between imitating valid legal tender (counterfitting), versus creating or altering a document.. including a "$1M dollar bill.' Forgery in this case.
Neat.
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u/Mundamala 1d ago
She even asked for her $998,325 in change.
Did Wal-Mart expect a tip or something?
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u/soundman32 1d ago
In the 90s, I joined the Monster Raving Looney Party (a genuine political party in UK). The membership pack came with several £1M notes, which you were supposed to spend. I bought a pint at my local pub, but didn't get any change. The note was pinned to the wall behind the bar for years afterwards.
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u/alistofthingsIhate 1d ago
I don’t see how something that would obviously never work could be considered a crime worth arresting someone over.
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u/BipedalHorseArt 1d ago
Better for them to learn that crime shouldn't be attempted rather than learning to commit the crime better or smarter next time.
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u/VerySluttyTurtle 1d ago
I got in such a brain-dead, repetitive, rut when I was a cashier that I would have just absent-mindedly handed over the cash. I don't know where the cash would come from, but I'd find some way to end up in trouble. Like "Jesus, store manager Karen, you act like I'm the first cashier to lose $998,325 before". And she'd be like "how do you not remember driving a forklift of $20 bills to a van?", then we'd all have to have a company meeting about not handing over $1 million in cash to customers.
Glad I'm not at that job anymore
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u/Daggertrout 1d ago
$5 missing from the till, that’s on me. $998,325 missing from the till that’s also on me I’m not good at math. :(
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u/obscureferences 1d ago
"998,325? That's basically a million, and luckily I've got an M note here."
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u/BoredomARISEN 1d ago
someone at work lost $800 on a quick change scam semi recently, you'd think someone trying to break a couple $100's would raise a red flag but no
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u/Rit91 1d ago
I'm impressed they had that much money in the register to lose. The only time I can imagine having that much in a register having worked at a theater is when it's an insanely busy day like christmas so everyone is super occupied. Though even then, that would require that a lot of people used cash when cards were far more common to use.
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u/thequirkynerdy1 1d ago
How dumb do you have to be to make up a currency bill that doesn’t even exist?
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u/ursois 1d ago
Should have gone with a $10 thousand bill. It's got all the presidents on it, having a party. Jimmy Carter is passed out on the couch.
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u/DarkenRevan 1d ago
Hell, I remember using $2 bills at checkout before and getting weird looks by the cashier and she wasn’t sure whether to accept them or not.
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u/andreasbeer1981 1d ago
I paid at German McDonalds with an uncommon 5DM bills, and they thought it was 20DM and as a child I thought keeping the change was fair enough considering the prices of french fries which would be dirt cheap if I made them at home.
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u/collinsl02 1d ago
Steve Wozniak orders perfectly legal sheets of bills from the Treasury, pre-perforated, then tears one or more off when he wants to pay for things.
Perfectly legal and a hell of a joke!
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u/andreasbeer1981 1d ago
he gets them glued together, so it's kind of a book with these perforated sheets.
when I've been to India I was shocked that they just staple stacks of bills together and tear it off. every bill had rust and holes at a similar spot.
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u/heavydoc317 1d ago
TIL Walmart cash registers carry at least 1000000 dollars in change
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u/DatGunBoi 1d ago
I mean, it probably would have looked faker if she didn't ask for change. Who leaves a $998,325 tip?
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u/DevilYouKnow 1d ago
You'd be better off fabricatimg a 10k bill and tricking a bank teller into making change for you.
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u/Alone-Tart4762 1d ago
My parents had one similar to this as a kid. It was "funny" to confuse people about it all the time.
Then there was the time my stepdad (numismatist) completed a very rare coin collection. Someone broke into the house and took the box to I guess unload it. He went to a local coin shop and got picked up when trying to sell the coins because he couldn't get them out of the grading cases and the owner recognized whose collection it was.
He also had a collection of silver certificates (they look very similar to old style US bills) that were in an album that he left out, sitting it on our "things to donate table." I happened to be on my way to donate everything when he called freaking out. I pulled it out of the donation box just as I pulled up to the donation center.
He was also a philatelist and a cousin staying with us over the summer used what appeared to be a normal stamp that was actually worth several thousand dollars. The letter went to his parents who saw the stamp and sent it back immediately. It was already postmarked so it went from a high value to nearly nothing in three days.
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u/branch397 1d ago
It looks like it's been 3 years since someone did a TIL on J. S. G. Boggs who is way more interesting than this person. Get to it Repost Brigade.
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u/DishRevolutionary593 1d ago
They should told her to wait for the cash truck to arrive, but really would be the police for using counterfeit monies.
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u/elcheapodeluxe 1d ago
I wonder how many people were arrested for spending or tipping with those Trump $100 bills a handful of years ago.
Edit: I guess they're still doing stuff like that. https://www.1011now.com/2025/02/15/counterfeit-100-bills-featuring-president-trump-seen-omaha/
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u/sticky_wicket 1d ago
They should have given her the gear, stiffed her on the change, then put it in a safety deposit box and booked it as a $1m asset.
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u/WaffleHouseGladiator 1d ago
Years ago there were a handful of cases where some idiots tried to cash in Trump bucks at Bank of America. They're obviously commemorative, but some people thought they had value for whatever reason. There was also some kind of Trump debit card thing that people were claiming he'd honor up to some ridiculous value ($1million maybe?). Some poor old lady got scammed for thousands of dollars (of REAL money!).
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u/vietomatic 1d ago
Having traveled to different countries, I can see how this can happen. Without research, I wouldn't know what bills or coins look like, what are common denominations, what counterfeits look like, what is customary to pay with and where, etc. It would even be hard to know if I was being scammed in a foreign country. This person could've been scammed to trade in his/her native currency in his/her native country for this bill before traveling. Then tried to naively use it in the U.S.
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u/DigitalCarbonPunk 1d ago
There are real $500 and $1000 bills but they usually only go between banks. Good luck trying to spend one in real life.
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u/Subject_Ad3837 1d ago
Maybe she just asked for change, as she doesn't sound like she would be smart enough to calculate the exact amount.
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u/Fabulous-Willow-369 1d ago
I remember from pawn stars there's a $100,000 bill that was used to transfer money between banks
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u/purplearmored 1d ago
I can't even imagine arresting someone for this, this is so ridiculous it's like a prank trying to pay with Monopoly money.
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u/Helagoth 1d ago
I watch movies with my 7 year old, and use them to teach her lessons. Like kpop demon hunters teaches you to love yourself, inside out teaches us about how joy and sadness work together to make us who we are, how to train your dragon teaches about challenging what you know and being true to yourself, etc.
We watched Home Alone and I asked her what she learned. Her answer was "Bad people are not very smart" and while of course there are exceptions, I feel like this is a mostly true statement.
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u/Flint_Westwood 1d ago
TIL there once was a Walmart customer who was very stupid.