Dr. Aminu Gwadabe, the President of the Association of Bureaux De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON), has raised alarm over the circulation of fake $100 bills in the public domain.
Gwadabe, who disclosed this to newsmen after the group’s National Executive Council (NEC) Meeting in Lagos, alleged that the fake $100 bills in circulation were imported from India into Nigeria.
According to Gwadabe, the $100 bill is majorly counterfeited because of huge profit margins that come with it.
Gwadabe stressed that some of the fraudsters’ objective is not only to make profit, but to undermine Nigeria’s chances for automatic membership of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) after assessment of Nigeria’s financial system scheduled for the first quarter of 2019.
How to detect fake dollar bills
ABCON had released a guide to all Bureaux De Change operators, on how to detect a fake dollar bills, made up of seven notes- $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 and the seven steps to authenticate them.
Putting into consideration of the followings will help one detect a fake dollar bill;
- The weight of each bill is one gram, 2.61 inches wide and 6.14 inches length.
- It is 75 per cent cotton and 25 per cent linen.
- Your finger can feel thickness and texture.
- The portrait watermark is partly overlapped by the Treasury seal, while the $100 bill is printed on the right side of the bill.
- The strip is thin, faint and runs vertically from top to bottom to the left of the watermark portrait.
- The 3D security ribbon, also called the thread, is bright blue and vertical on the bill.
- The raised printing feels rough on the right shoulder of Benjamin Franklin portrait, while the colour shifting ink works under ultraviolet light.
Gwadabe explained that the dollar bill undergoes microprinting, which is the production of recognizable patterns or characters in the bill at a scale that requires magnification to read with the naked eye. To the unaided eye, the text may appear as a solid line.
