Counterfeit money

[TypesAndShadows]

Okay, this is a fairly light-hearted problem. It’s not something that keeps me awake at night, or really bothers me that much. But, nonetheless, I turn it over in my head now and then and wonder where the right and the wrong lie. I thought it might be fun for other people to wonder, too.

The problem: roughly 1 in 36 pound coins (as in British Pound Sterling) in circulation is counterfeit. Using counterfeit money is technically illegal.

Some coins are easier to spot than others, but most people (deliberately or otherwise) simply pass them on in circulation and, presumably, the last one in the chain, who hands it into a bank, is out £1 for every counterfeit coin. I assume. I don’t actually know.

Whether because I pay more attention or for whatever reason, I recognise quite often when I’ve been given a counterfeit coin. If I notice when I’m handed my change in a supermarket, I ask for the coin to be exchanged (although I don’t know if I’d have the nerve to keep going if the second one was counterfeit too!). Sometimes I’m given a lot of coins, or am distracted, and so don’t notice until it is really too late.

So, what to do with these counterfeit coins? A couple of times, I took them to the bank and explained. Once, the teller exchanged the coin for a new one and once they (more reasonably) confiscated it with no reward except thanks. I’m not sure I can afford to simply lose those pounds, although it’s not a huge amount of cash and I won’t go hungry.

So, do I pass them on by buying things with them? I know everyone else does, and most people wouldn’t know they were even doing it. But it is illegal, and I can actually tell I’m doing it, and presumably the person on the end of the chain misses out on the pound, so it’s like I stole a pound from them even if I never met them. It’s one thing to not look too closely and negligently pass on counterfeit money, but when I know I’m doing it?

Should I just accept that every time I accidentally accept a counterfeit coin, someone I never met stole my pound and I’m not getting it back?

I suspect the moral thing to do is always hand it in at the bank.

 

[hsmomforlife]

Should I just accept that every time I accidentally accept a counterfeit coin, someone I never met stole my pound and I’m not getting it back?

I suspect the moral thing to do is always hand it in at the bank.

Yup and yup!

If someone attempts to give you a counterfeit coin and you catch it, you can reject it. Once you accept it and then you realize it, the only legal (in the US) action is to turn it in to a bank (where you will get a ‘thank you’ and that’s all! )

I used to work as a bank teller and sometimes it was hard to tell people that the $20 bill they gave was counterfeit and that they wouldn’t be getting anything in return for it. Sometimes they were elderly and living on an extremely fixed income… Sometimes I wanted to dig in my purse to help them out…but couldn’t because of bank rules.

 

[George_Stegmeir]

Anyone who recognizes counterfeit money in their posession and spends it is guilty of theft- both from a moral as well as a legal standpoint. In short, not only are you committing a grievious sin, you can go to jail for it!
If you find you do have money that you recognize to be counterfeit, you are morally as well as legally obligated to turn it in to the authorities and “eat the loss”. mThere is no gray area where this is concerned.

 

[TypesAndShadows]

Anyone who recognizes counterfeit money in their posession and spends it is guilty of theft- both from a moral as well as a legal standpoint. In short, not only are you committing a grievious sin, you can go to jail for it!
If you find you do have money that you recognize to be counterfeit, you are morally as well as legally obligated to turn it in to the authorities and “eat the loss”. mThere is no gray area where this is concerned.

So then, if someone deliberately avoided examining their coins, never took a pound coin out by itself (in case they felt that it was the wrong weight), are they also culpable for passing on a coin that everyone else in the chain has treated as legal tender?

 

[George_Stegmeir]

So then, if someone deliberately avoided examining their coins, never took a pound coin out by itself (in case they felt that it was the wrong weight), are they also culpable for passing on a coin that everyone else in the chain has treated as legal tender?

Yes, if in your heart you had any suspicion, like the weight you cite, and you still passed it on, you committed a sin. Just because everyone before you did it does not make it right!
Carrying the argument further, your logic is why we have the problem of secularism today. People have been led to think that atrocities, such as abortion and public acceptance of homosexuality are morally ok. Never forget that the NAZI’s who ran the extermination camps in Europe that murdered millions of innocent people, did not think they were doing anything wrong at the time they did it. It is very easy to delude oneself about moral impropriety.
A loss of a Pound may not be much for you, but what happens if some poor indigent person gets caught with it? Then the loss could be a major thing.

 

[thistle]

So then, if someone deliberately avoided examining their coins, never took a pound coin out by itself (in case they felt that it was the wrong weight), are they also culpable for passing on a coin that everyone else in the chain has treated as legal tender?

Nobody is required to examine notes or coins to see if they are counterfeit.
If you do, however, know that you have a counterfeit note or coin it would be sinful (and probably a crime) to use it.
If I had a counterfeit coin I would simply throw it in the trash. If I had a counterfeit note I would take it to the police.