The Reality Check Episode 74

Counterfeiting + Daniel Loxton Interview + Celery Myth

Part 1:

Counterfeit money is currency that is produced without the legal sanction of the state or government to resemble some official form of currency closely enough that it may be confused for genuine currency. Producing or using counterfeit money is a form of fraud.

Roman coins were struck using a minting process, not cast, so these coin molds were created for forgery.

Counterfeiting is probably as old as money itself. Before the introduction of paper money, the most prevalent method of counterfeiting involved mixing base metals with pure gold or silver. A form of counterfeiting is the production of documents by legitimate printers in response to fraudulent instructions. During World War 2, the Nazis forged British pounds and American dollars. Today some of the finest counterfeit banknotes are called Super-dollars because of their high quality, and likeness to the real US dollar. There has been a considerable amount of counterfeiting of Euro banknotes and coins since the launch of the currency in 2002.

Some of the ill-effects that counterfeit money has on society are: a reduction in the value of real money; and increase in prices due to more money getting circulated in the economy - an unauthorized artificial increase in the money supply; a decrease in the acceptability of paper money; and losses, because companies are not reimbursed for counterfeits. Traditionally, anti-counterfeiting measures involved including fine detail with raised intaglio printing on bills which allows non-experts to easily spot forgeries. On coins, milled or reeded (marked with parallel grooves) edges are used to show that none of the valuable metal has been scraped off. - Wiki

Part 2:

Daniel Loxton is a Canadian writer, illustrator, and skeptic. He is the Editor of Junior Skeptic magazine, a kids’ science section bound into the Skeptics Society’s Skeptic magazine. He writes and illustrates most issues of Junior Skeptic.

Listen to the interview here: The Reality Check Episode 74

Science Myth of the Week: