Christmas fakes

Soon Christmas is coming. Pushed for cash as the Christmas season approaches, many people consider buying cheap fakes and imitations.

How many fakes will your family have under the tree this year?

Chinese fake brands

Fake brands are common in China sold with unreasonably low prices at different markets.

See all of the Chinese fake brands here

How to spot fake 100 dollar bills?

The bills are being distributed by a street gang from Los Angeles called Crips and the Bloods. The same bills are connected to other arrests in the Los Angeles area where more than $4 million worth of bills that turned up. About $150,000 worth of bills were passed in the last week in Hawaii. These bills are scattered all over the islands.

The suspects purchase items and will return it for legitimate cash… Smart huh? Yes, why? Because merchants were fooled that even if they use a counterfeit detector pen, the mark will turn out to brown, this means legal or genuine money.

The bills were printed on a “high quality” printer on paper that is close to the material used for U.S. Currency. They have also sprayed with a chemical so that counterfeit detector pens will not detect or identify these bills.

How to spot a counterfeit bill

- Look for currency security threads. There should be a 100 USA on the thread. These are made of thin polymer thread that glows RED when you put it under ultra-violet light. Certain bills has different colors, like the one on $5 bills that glows blue. For other bills, there should be a 50 USA, FIVE USA, and so on.
- Genuine currency has blue and red fibers in the paper, not just printed on the paper.

- Look for distinctive and sharp printing in the border, portrait, and the treasury seal.
- Check the watermark by holding the bill up to the light. Real money should have the face of the person in the portrait that can be seen both sides. Some bill may turn out real when you mark with a counterfeit detector pen but when you hold the bill up to the light, the watermark image is different from the one on the portrait. Why? It is because…

- Sometimes, fake bills are shinier than the real ones.
- The color-changing ink at the 100 on the bottom right of the bill. It should change its color when you tilt it in any angles and turns black when viewed in an angle.
- Microprinted words that are printed on a specific part of the bill. The words “The United States of America” are printed as a line in the left collar of Ben Franklin’s coat. The USA 100 is repeatedly printed in the bottom left-hand corner of the bill. :-) These are so small that it is hard to see even with a magnifier.
- There are also fine lines and concentric lines in the portrait and in the Independence Hall that is difficult to reproduce with standard printers.

source:http://inutiles.wordpress.com/

Fake iPods spotted in Spain

One Million again

Buy now on eBay :)

Fake IDs

A forged driver's license seized recently by Waikato police was so good it had to be sent away for expert analysis. Ten young people are facing a total of 22 charges for altering or using forged documents.

Waikato police said the fake IDs, used to gain access to bars, were largely created on school computers and printers. The police will not confirm which secondary schools are involved, but the Waikato Times understands at least one case involved a city boarding student using a computer and printer in their room on the school campus.

The maximum penalty for forging driver's licenses is $2000 and up to 10 years in prison. Hamilton police liquor licensing sergeant Jim Kernohan said the quality of the confiscated fakes varied widely. "Some were so bad you wonder why they bother, but there were some that were hard to pick out straight away." He said one of the better fakes had to be sent to the NZ Transport Agency for analysis, then on to the card manufacturer.

Hamilton police liquor licensing team member Constable Murray Macdonald said that in the past eight months several doctored driver's licenses had been handed in by city bar staff. Police had taken action against 130 people over the IDs and suspected people had no idea how much trouble they could get in by producing someone else's license as identification. "It's fraud and not only can the person presenting the fake identification be prosecuted but the owner as well.

Read the whole article about the fake IDs here

Fake Windows XP bought on eBay

"I've recently built a new PC and needed a copy of Windows XP Professional to load onto it. I found an advert on Gumtree for a copy of XP Pro OEM, exactly what I needed, so I emailed the seller who confirmed he had one available. I sent the cheque and waited for weeks for it to arrive; finally I became fed up with waiting and found a copy on eBay, the listing stated it was genuine (no less than 48 times) so I bid on and won it. The copy bought on eBay arrived within the week and the copy bought via the Gumtree adverts arrived several days after that."

Read the whole article written by the guy who bought this fake copy