It’s the ultimate in money laundering — bleaching the ink off $5 bills and reprinting them as $100s.

Damond Gallagher, a Park Slope store owner, was suspicious of one of the bills handed to him by a young girl.

The girl and a friend had come into his gift shop, Scaredy Kat. Each tried to buy a small item with a $100 bill. The money looked off to him; the printing appeared soft.

But, when he ran a counterfeit-detection pen over them, they passed.

“The pen is used to detect iodine or starch,” says Todd Madison of the US Secret Service. So it won’t help with “bleached notes,” an insidious and little-known counterfeit scam being played all over the city.

The crooks take a $5 bill, chemically strip off the ink, and print a $100 bill on top of it. All you need is a computer, a laser printer and a little know-how.

On average, 600 bleached notes a month get turned into the New York field office of the Secret Service. Agents there are on a public awareness push to get the word out this holiday shopping season.

In the frenzy, it can be easy to forget to take proper precautions against counterfeit cash. Once you know what to look for, though, it’s pretty easy to spot these fakes.

Bleached $5 bills turned into $100s look worn, like they’ve gone through the wash. Hold up one of them up to the light and you’ll see Lincoln’s face staring back from the watermark. The embedded security thread will also say “USA FIVE.” And the fact that someone is trying to buy a tiny item with a big bill should set off alarm bells.

If you encounter a suspicious note, call 911. You’ll probably lose the $100, though. It gets taken as evidence, and if you get a refund that’s customer service, not a mandate. But whatever you do, don’t use the phoney bill yourself. Then you’ll go from victim to perpetrator. A counterfeit bill is kind of like a hot potato. You don’t want to be the last one holding it.

(Source: NY Post)