SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

When the pa­per-based $100 bill was de­mon­e­tised three months ago, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young claimed the fea­tures of the new poly­mer $100 bill that re­placed it would be much hard­er to coun­ter­feit.

But a whole­sale ven­dor at the Cen­tral Mar­ket in Port-of-Spain is now warn­ing the pub­lic that scam­mers have pro­duced a close repli­ca to the bill af­ter he was paid with a coun­ter­feit $100 note on Sat­ur­day night.

The man, who asked to re­main anony­mous for safe­ty rea­sons, said the coun­ter­feit bill is so close to the re­al poly­mer $100 bill that the av­er­age per­son would be scammed by its ap­pear­ance.

In De­cem­ber last year, the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that the pa­per-based $100 bill was be­ing tak­en out of cir­cu­la­tion as it was be­ing too eas­i­ly coun­ter­feit­ed and al­so used for mon­ey laun­der­ing.

The new poly­mer bill was to make this process too hard for the scam­mers and came with a suite of se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures, in­clud­ing a trans­par­ent win­dow with the 100 de­nom­i­na­tion in the top left-hand cor­ner and the let­ter ‘X’ in braille on the bot­tom right-hand cor­ner.

The coun­ter­feit note, which the ven­dor gave to Guardian Me­dia as proof of his claim, al­so has repli­cas of a trans­par­ent win­dow and an X in braille on the bot­tom.

The most ob­vi­ous dif­fer­ence be­tween the two bills (re­al and fake), how­ev­er, is that the coun­ter­feit one seems more glossy and the trans­par­ent win­dow is not as clear as the orig­i­nal and on­ly one line of the X in Braille is prop­er­ly per­fo­rat­ed. The coat of arms is al­so small­er on the coun­ter­feit bill, which is al­so dark­er in hue than the orig­i­nal.

Through­out the day, as the bill was passed around in the Guardian Me­dia news­room, the print on it be­gan to flake and come off, leav­ing blank white ar­eas be­neath it. 

The ven­dor said the bill was among a wad of re­al poly­mer bills and in his haste to do busi­ness in the busy whole­sale mar­ket, he looked on­ly for the trans­par­ent win­dow to en­sure the bill was re­al.

“Peo­ple buy goods all the time, peo­ple pass a cou­ple $100 bills, like $500 or $1,000. But when you are check­ing in the night you are not see­ing it. When we came home and we were count­ing the cash, that’s when we saw it,” the ven­dor said.

He said he plans to take the bill back to the Cen­tral Mar­ket to show to oth­er ven­dors so they will not fall vic­tims to the scam­mers who passed it off on him.

“I think peo­ple need to see it for them­selves be­cause a lot of peo­ple didn’t get used to the new one yet and it (the coun­ter­feit) is easy to pass in the night when you in a rush and try­ing to sell your goods,” he said.

He said he came to the me­dia as he pre­ferred to make the is­sue pub­lic rather than hand over the coun­ter­feit bill to a bank, as he said he was scep­ti­cal about bankers ‘sweep­ing it un­der the rug.’

“They might just take it and no one would ever hear about it and we are the ones who are get­ting it.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter Young yes­ter­day, pro­vid­ing him with a video of the coun­ter­feit bill along­side a re­al bill via a What­sApp video mes­sage.

Young re­spond­ed, “I am cer­tain that the coun­ter­feit bill is not print­ed on poly­mer. This is the first tell­tale sign. It is ex­pect­ed that per­sons will at­tempt to coun­ter­feit mon­ey. Per­sons coun­ter­feit US$100 bills.”

He said, how­ev­er, that the pub­lic needs to fa­mil­iarise them­selves with the bill - which he said has the con­tex­tu­al fea­ture of be­ing made of poly­mer, along with its oth­er se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to the TT Po­lice Ser­vice. The TTPS said its Fraud Squad had no re­cent re­ports of any coun­ter­feit bills.

But chair­man of the Bankers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BATT) In­ter Se­cu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee, Hay­den De Four, told Guardian Me­dia that news about coun­ter­feit bills is not new.

“The fact that coun­ter­feit bills are in cir­cu­la­tion is not a new thing. If you re­call the in­for­ma­tion came out ear­ly in De­cem­ber on so­cial me­dia,” De Four said when con­tact­ed.

He, how­ev­er, de­clined to com­ment fur­ther on the bill, say­ing he would need to ex­am­ine it in per­son to give an as­sess­ment. He said BATT of­ten re­ceives coun­ter­feits that are both ‘good and bad’ but he re­ferred oth­er ques­tions to the Cen­tral Bank.

Calls to the Cen­tral Bank went unan­swered yes­ter­day.