Vancouver police are warning the public to take note of polymer bills after fakery has been found among various denominations of the Bank of Canada’s current Frontier Series.
In a May 15 story published by CTV News, there are reports of people “splicing $5 bills to remove the holographic strips and add them to colour-copied $100 notes, making the phony seem less suspicious.” The spliced $5 notes are also being used by counterfeiters, who have been reported to replace the $5 note’s hologram strip with foil, which is then laminated with packing tape.
CTV News took one of these “splice-and-tape” banknotes to the street and “most people we talked to admitted they never would’ve noticed the funny fiver because they don’t usually pay attention to small bills.”
According to the May 15 story, Vancouver police noted a recent surge in tampered currency and has since launched a series of investigations.
“We started hearing about it at the end of 2016 and continued now into 2017,” Vancouver Police Department (VPD) Const. Jason Doucette told CTV News. “These types of crimes are driven by greed and financial gain. There’s not a lot of financial gain in doing a single five dollar bill, so I suspect that there’s more to come.”