Fake €50 Notes

I was working over the weekend and it was crazy busy on a Saturday. I was on the tills all day and the queues were all the way back to the front door, with people buying over €100 worth of stuff. As you can imagine a lot of money is taken in on these days and as we are responsible for the cash we are handed we are supposed to check every single note with a money tester, especially €50's and €100 notes if we are given them. As it was so busy we were all under pressure and someone wasn't paying as much attention to the notes being handed in as they normally would on a quiet day because there was two fake €50 notes found in one of the tills when a cash lift was done. It was clearly a mistake but it is so easy to be caught out. We were warned when we started working there about dodgy people taking chances and to trust our judgement but I never thought it possible for someone to have the nerve to hand in fake money. It has made me more wary and now I take my time and check every single note as I do not want the company losing profit because I wasn't paying attention. 

This is a picture of a real €50 and circled are the easiest areas to check to determine if it is real or not:

1. A  watermark on the left hand side, should only be seen under light
2. The middle area circled is the easiest one to check in a hurry. Run your nail across this and you should hear/feel the corrugated vertical lines, fake €50 notes are known to have these also so be sure to check everything else
3. On the right hand side there should be a hologram, it should have the € symbol and the number of the note. Holograms are basically two images on top of each other so move the note around so you can see both images.
4. Also when you hold it up to the light you should see a straight line running down the middle of the note.

If any of you work on cash registers, just be careful and don't get caught out. Also when you are given change in a shop or supermarket check to see if the notes are real, just to be sure. Our economy is in a bad enough way as it without fake notes floating around!

Until next time,
Liz X