Student arrested for using counterfeit money at flea market

Monday 28th September, 09:34 AM JST

HYOGO —

An 18-year-old student from a high school in Kobe was arrested Sunday on suspicion of using a counterfeit 1,000 yen bill at the Shiawase no Mura flea market in Kobe’s Kita Ward.

According to police, the student admitted to counterfeiting the bills himself, saying, “I didn’t have much money, so I printed two bills using the color copier at my house.” Police are currently investigating to see if the suspect has done this before.

The student was caught when he used the bill to attempt to purchase a used book for 50 yen and the woman selling the book noticed the bill was not watermarked.

News reports

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Latest 15 of 41 Total Comments Show All

nemoflow at 09:47 PM JST - 28th September

Would have been better for the shop staff to accept the fake money and hand over the goods. The total cost of the apprehension is going to cost way more in money and time than 1000yen. Would have acted as loss leading advertising too.
mnemosyne23 at 11:06 PM JST - 28th September

ThonTaddeo: I agree that the government has no business tweaking people's home software, but the software companies would do this of their own accord even if there was no kind of government pressure. It does companies like Adobe and Xerox no service to create programs and machinery that can assist counterfeiters refine their craft. It behooves them to thwart those efforts proactively, or LOOK OUT for government interference!

I almost feel bad for this kid. He got busted for buying a USED book for FIFTY YEN. That would be like getting busted for accidentally getting two bags of chips for the price of one out of a vending machine. Talk about a cruddy way to get caught. Hopefully he'll learn his lesson, though, and not try this kind of thing again. we can hope.
lunchmeat at 11:41 PM JST - 28th September

What a dork. He should be filing down pennies into dimes. Oh, sorry, wrong country. No matter, Kim Jong Il would love this guy.
rajakumar at 11:49 PM JST - 28th September

Japan is rich,why do some people not have 50 yen to buy book?

Hatoyama administration must make more aid benefits for poor families,like in many other developed nations.
Klein2 at 11:50 PM JST - 28th September

Wow. What a pig. This kid went for the gold.

Mnemo, I think you misunderstand. In the game of passing trash, you try to get the most LEGIT money in change as possible, as Oyabaka said. This kid tried to buy the cheapest thing he could from what he thought was the least experienced vendor and got nailed. In a way, it is a cruddy way to get caught, but it is so fitting. He deserves what he gets, that is for sure. No way he was just doing this because he is a starving student or avid reader. He was looking to move up.

There are software and hardware barriers to counterfeiting. I am all for them. Most are pretty harmless, but they do rely on degraded quality of the image. The VOID mark that shows up results from a very slight offset of some printing that will show up as one pixel at low resolutions or at multiples of commonly used resolutions. The teeny tiny numbers on US currency must be a nightmare for counterfeiters. They will pixelate on color printers.

Yelnats, what do you mean "scanning with Photoshop?" You scan an image and import to Photoshop. So I do not understand why you could not use some other program if the scanned image is ok.
Sarge at 12:25 AM JST - 29th September

Question: What happens if someone uses a fake bill to buy something, but it's not noticed right away and it passes through a few hands and I wind up with it and then when I use it to buy something it gets noticed? Do I get arrested?
Klein2 at 12:54 AM JST - 29th September

No. Sarge. You don't. You did not commit a crime because you did not know you did. In fact, the bill will be confiscated and you are out your money though.
grafton at 12:55 AM JST - 29th September

Never mind the poor kid rubbish, this little rat tried to take the old lady for ALL of 1000yen. 50 for the book and 950 in change. The bank might give her a percentage of the value and then again might not, leaving her with nothing more than a piece of paper that is still illegal to own. Think about it this way, she would have had to sell 20 MORE books just to break even. That is just not nice.
Klein2 at 01:06 AM JST - 29th September

This is why you have to be really careful about what money you accept. Once you accept it, you are out whatever you exchanged it for. The temptation is great to try to pass it on to someone else to limit your loss, but see... then it is criminal.

In the scenario you describe above, you are only innocent if you did not KNOW it was bogus.
Klein2 at 01:08 AM JST - 29th September

Grafton,.... actually, she does not "break even." She would only break even if the PROFIT on each book were 50 yen, not REVENUE.

If she makes 5 yen per book, she would have to sell 200 to make up for the loss this guy wanted to throw on her.
grafton at 01:48 AM JST - 29th September

Klein2 at 01:08 AM JST - 29th September

I stand corrected, you are right, and if anything it just reinforces what I said, it just isn’t trivial, not to that old lady anyway.
bdiego at 04:37 AM JST - 29th September

As pointed out, the bills themselves are designed to degrade and sabotage copies. If someone manages to pass off a printer made bill, it's because the person didn't even look at it. That's not to mention the lack of watermark for a 1000 yen bill, or the lack of additional items on a 5000 or 10000 bill.

It's much harder to pass off a fake 10000 bill for many reasons, another one of them being that the central banks take them out of circulation fairly quickly. They ten to be in very good condition if not brand new.

At retailers like Yodobashi, I've noticed the cashier will actually enter the money into bill machines. Same with a bus and many fast food places where you buy a ticket.
bdiego at 04:40 AM JST - 29th September

Also, I feel sorry for the first few commenters who thought the kid was after a 50 yen book. Tim needs to troll somewhere else.
Klein2 at 12:11 PM JST - 29th September

You know. It occurs to me that this is a pretty smart kid who figured a lot of angles and used what I would call sophisticated machinery (relative to what the general populace might have or use). But his excuse makes him seem kind of "aw shucks, I just wanted bubble gum money."

It makes me a little angry. The kid should get a job harvesting crops or something and quit trying to game people. He is smart enough to know better and he will do it again unless he gets his attitude fixed.

And Grafton, we are both right. That is why shoplifting is heinous. Retail margins are typically very low after you get all your overhead done... like 5% usually, so a shoplifted 1000 yen item eats up all the profit from 20000 in sales.
WilliB at 05:11 PM JST - 29th September

menemosyne:

" I almost feel bad for this kid. He got busted for buying a USED book for FIFTY YEN. "

No, he got busted for trying to cheat the bookseller out of NINEHUNDRED FIFTY Yen. Still not a fortune, but 20 times more than you assume.