Spending A $10 Bill While Black

I would assume that a lot would hinge on what the tenner in question looked like. A few weeks ago, I had a ten in my change that was old-style; with the green paper and the small portrait. Despite the fact that I grew up with those bills, it looked bizarre. Of course, I knew it wasn't a counterfeit (as somebody else pointed out, $10 bills aren't big enough to be worth counterfeiting). But I could imagine it might look bogus to a younger person.

Assuming the story all checks out, I would assume he has a good case, unless there is some issue with the time it took him to file his lawsuit.
 
Brainster said:
Assuming the story all checks out, I would assume he has a good case, unless there is some issue with the time it took him to file his lawsuit.
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But if the lawsuit requires racism to be a factor then it might be iffy and not certain to be a good case.
 
Those starch-indicating pens used to be quite common in the UK too. They were always rubbish. Back in the day, when I was in the Met Police, I had an office job for a few months which included checking all the "counterfeit" notes which had been passed locally before sending them off to the Bank of England (who do the same job as the US Secret Service in this regard). An experienced eye and comparison with a genuine note was pretty reliable.

I guess this guy has a good case on the bare facts - the allegation of racism may be true but seems unecessary to support his case.
 
I may be wrong but I remember something about people counterfeiting smaller bills because they weren't suspected as being counterfeit much of the time.

Regardless of how he got there, three months in jail is disturbing. Well, according to the few actual facts we have anyways. Maybe it actually isn't. I'm not sure where my outrage should lie, if anywhere.

I love it when we get a story with all the important facts left out. Why 3 months? How was the bill tested? We got the homeless black guy part though, and the mysterious sentence, but nothing else mentioned. Probation for what?

This story is trying to be another "...while black" outrage piece but he could just as easily been suspected because he looked homeless. He could have used the bill to wipe himself for all we know. We don't know much of anything.

If the guy was treated unfairly then I hope he wins his lawsuit, but I have no way of knowing what really happened.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...e-months-after-trying-pay-burger-king-n875346
The lawsuit comes on the heels of recent cases of police being called on black people that have sparked uproar and claims of racial profiling.
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Ahaaa! What they meant to say was on the heels of recent cases where racism is mostly inconclusive, or at least arguable, but the media has suddenly decided are important enough to warrant international headlines anyways. Actually the only obvious one was the Cheesecake Factory where a black man was called a n* and threatened with violence for wearing a MAGA hat, but that definitely does not fit this narrative, and it wasn't mentioned in the article.

If he was wronged then I hope he wins a lot of cash, but this article is so incomplete it makes me wonder if it was done deliberately. Why else publish such a one-sided fact-starved story?
 
Brainster said:
I would assume that a lot would hinge on what the tenner in question looked like. A few weeks ago, I had a ten in my change that was old-style; with the green paper and the small portrait. Despite the fact that I grew up with those bills, it looked bizarre. Of course, I knew it wasn't a counterfeit (as somebody else pointed out, $10 bills aren't big enough to be worth counterfeiting). But I could imagine it might look bogus to a younger person.

Assuming the story all checks out, I would assume he has a good case, unless there is some issue with the time it took him to file his lawsuit.
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I had a customer once who tried to 'get away' with paying using what he thought were fake nickels. Like, ten dollars' worth.

In my earlier full-blown, 1970s nerd childhood, I had been into coins. These looked fake, yes, because they were the wrong shape, colour, thickness. They were brown, which I think we can agree is an odd colour for nickels. Some were blue, again, odd. But I recognized them immediately as Victory nickels. During WWII, nickel (the mineral) was being reallocated for arms, so the mint substituted with something called tombac, which was a copper core coated with chrome. Kid tried to buy $6 of pop and chips with about $750 of mint condition collectable vintage coins.

Idiot.

My moral dilemma at the time was: "These are obviously stolen from a breakin. Do I call the cops, or do I swap them out with my own money at par?"
 
ahhell said:
The pens are unreliable, they detect starch, so they'll only detect really bad counterfeit bills. There are numerous anti-counterfeit features built into real bills that are far more reliable. A cop should have been able to tell on the spot that it wasn't. I wonder if this guy got belligerent or something. Not uncommon for homeless folks and makes more sense than he was actually arrested for having a possibly counterfeit $10 bill.

I used to frequent a krispy creme that routinely checked my $5 bills with those pens that don't work. As a middle aged white guy*, I found it infuriating and complained to the store and wrote an email to krispy kreme. They clearly didn't care and I stopped going. Seriously, who's counterfeiting fives?

For a $10, the most the should have done is not take it, this seems pretty stupid.


*Not really why I found it infuriating, just pointing out that some folks do this for even white dudes with tiny bills. Seriously, a 5?
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I agree that they're not foolproof but they're cheap and convenient. I've never detected a counterfeit with one but that could mean the pens are worthless or that I've never been given a counterfeit bill. I have tried marking other types of paper, including foreign currency, with these pens and I haven't found any other paper that responds the same way American currency does.

Pen or no pen, the cashier and the police officers should've been able to do some sort of a test to determine if the bill was genuine before they arrested the guy.
 
LTC8K6 said:
If you did not know the bill was counterfeit, and had no intent to deceive, then you haven't committed a crime.

Merely possessing or even passing a bad bill is not a crime unless the prosecutor can show intent.
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Homeless Black Guy, there's the intent in the eyes of the Cops.
 
LTC8K6 said:
I've seen the pens a lot, but I've never seen anyone check a bill smaller than a $20 bill.

If the BK cashier used a pen or machine that determined the bill was fake, then Ellis is going to lose his lawsuit, I think.

If the BK cashier called the police to have the police determine if the bill was fake, and it was the police who made the determination, then Ellis is going to lose his case, I think.

If the BK cashier just decided the bill was fake, then Ellis has a case.
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No case for being held in jail for 3 months for trying to spend real money.

What kind of Banana Republic are you living in?
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Because he was a homeless black guy of course.
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How did this cashier know that he was homeless? He can see that he is black. So does this cashier regularly take bills from black guys and say, "This bill is fake now get the hell out of here!"?

There seems to be something about this particular bill, or else this cashier does this habitually because he's racist?
 
Captain_Swoop said:
No case for being held in jail for 3 months for trying to spend real money.

What kind of Banana Republic are you living in?
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Probably because anytime you are on probation and get arrested, it's an automatic violation of probation. You then have to stay in jail until your court date because there is usually no bail for a violation of probation.

Or so I been told. ;)

Of course, that's absolutely ridiculous. I'm just stating how it is.
 
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How do you put a homeless person on probation? They have no address. How do you locate them if you need to? I don't know how this works with the law.
 
Diablo said:
That doesn't make sense either. Since the bill was real the arrest was in error and he should have been released.
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Sorry. What part of the US justice "system" do you expect to make sense? It's a collection of punitive measures joined together by random and inconsistent rules designed to make criminals "pay" for their transgressions.
 
mike81 said:
Probably because anytime you are on probation and get arrested, it's an automatic violation of probation. You then have to stay in jail until your court date because there is usually no bail for a violation of probation.

Or so I been told. ;)

Of course, that's absolutely ridiculous. I'm just stating how it is.
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Because you can only be guilty if you have been arrested.
 
Giordano said:
That is my understanding too. In most cases the counterfeit is confiscated but no further action is taken against the possessor.
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Sounds like a great way to increase profits. ;)

Me: "My new super duper counterfeit detection pen with the bonus red LED light that was included with my order of Ginsu steak knives indicates that you gave me a counterfeit $20! Instead of calling the police and getting you arrested - we'll be happy to dispose of it for you sir!"

Slightly bewildered customer: "Ummm...OK...I guess you know what you are doing with that fancy pen thingy."

Customer either pays with another bill or walks away while I pocket the $20.
:D
 
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blutoski said:
That still sounds like there's a problem, though. I find it hard to believe the store's policy is to use an expensive forgery pen on all $10 bills.

What I would believe is "Check all $100 and $50s, and if the customer looks sketchy, check all his bills." Which brings us back to cashier could be biased.
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Looking at UK prices, the pens are as cheap as £1, which doesn't sound "expensive." I wouldn't say I see them being used a lot, but they're not uncommon, especially in smaller shops, although obviously the switch to polymer notes is making them less useful.
 
William Parcher said:
How did this cashier know that he was homeless? He can see that he is black. So does this cashier regularly take bills from black guys and say, "This bill is fake now get the hell out of here!"?

There seems to be something about this particular bill, or else this cashier does this habitually because he's racist?
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Given it was a Burger King, I would expect they get more homeless customers - and probably get to know them individually - more than most retail operations. There may be an element that they'd had homeless people pass fake bills before, and were overzealous.
 
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