Friday May 28 2010
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Our thanks to consumer advocate Clark Howard
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Don’t accept or carry anything larger than a $20 bill
RIP-OFF ALERT: Clark Howard has a rule: He never carries anything larger than a $20 bill. Why? Because bills larger than that have a much higher chance of being counterfeit.
The Los Angeles Times reported a story about a fellow who cashed a large money order at the Post Office. He was given eight $100 bills, all of which turned out to be counterfeit. He discovered this when he tried to spend one of them at a gas station that used a counterfeit-bill detector. The police were called on him.
While the cops were on the way, he consulted a lawyer, who advised him to report the remaining bills to the police. The police confiscated the bills, and the fellow was out $800. Even though the bills came from a government entity (the USPS), once someone accepts a counterfeit bill, the liability becomes theirs, and it immediately becomes a felony to pass them on to anyone else.
Clark Howard wants you to look anything larger than $50 as poison: just don’t accept them for payment. Sure, there may be counterfeit $20’s floating around, but on the off chance you get one of those and lose that cash, it won’t hurt nearly as bad as losing $100 or more.