I normally get told to wee off if I offer a £20 note for a £50.

money laundering??

[Edited on 22/10/2010 by mcerd1]

as above money laundering legislation.

wotcha talking about? It was building society not a launderette. The £ 20s didn't need cleaning as they were brand new cripsy notes straight out of the service till.

Is it some sort of government big bother monitoring type thing if I say kept on changing 1,000s every week? (not like that is ever gonna happen).

ohh pleasseeeeeee.

say i had 300,000 in stolen notes which had been untracable but i wanted to ensure they are clean.

then i would go into local banks and swap 300-400 per time and get clean money.

the best route to do this is goto europe and exchange thousands and thousands in foriegn exchange banks and get euro's then trade euro's into your european business account where you get the best rate of transfer and pay your self in pounds at low rates.

i thinks :O)


david

I had a similar problem a few weeks back. I had a violin case full of brand new £50s. I wanted to swap them for used ones and preferable ones with different serial numbers. I tried all the highstreet banks and ended up getting Big Jeff from the carboot sale to buy them off me for £100.....

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Originally posted by jossey
ohh pleasseeeeeee.

say i had 300,000 in stolen notes which had been untracable but i wanted to ensure they are clean.

then i would go into local banks and swap 300-400 per time and get clean money.

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the point of money laundering is to get rid of the original cash, and swap it all over, so the serial numbers (if known from when they were stolen) can't be traced back. basically to break the link between stolen money and you. its usually done by buying property, antiques etc, then selling on for less than you paid. if its stolen cash, its still 100% profit.

anyway, yes, they don't scan the numbers, but if they realise you're in every week changing money over (even £100 at a time) then they will have a 'paper trail' (as RBS call it) and making it go through your account means they can track how often you do it. its easier than writing down serial numbers for everything.

there's a lot more to it than that, but its been a few years since i had to think about it, but basically its a way of keeping track of how often you change notes over, as it may look like money laundering if you're doing it every week

[Edited on 22/10/10 by blakep82]

Apart from money laundering, people are scared of £50 notes, as they're the favourite target for faking and it's a big loss if you end up stuck with one.

Maybe we need notes that are harder to fake, such as the Aussie plastic ones. I was handing over A$100 notes (~£65) while on holiday and no-one batted an eye, as they still trust them to be genuine.

I can understand the money laundering concerns, but I find this country's over-cautious view of £50 notes to be very amusing. Go to the continent or Ireland, walk into a shop and buy a drink using a 100 Euro note and not a single eyelid will bat. Even when using a 500 Euro note as I have done once or twice. Whereas, here in the UK, most shops will not even consider £50 notes for payment.

Chris

^^^^ ok, gotcha ... so there is some monitoring then.

There are a huge number of Fake 50's out there. Someone sends out reports about it alot (We get them at work but I don't know who sends them). People vary rarely get them anyway as they don't tend to be in ATM's and banks don't like to use them either which confounds the problem and makes notes being used in shops more likely to be faked (Especially when your giving out £45+ in change).

I thought the best way to launder money was buy loan sharking as you got more clean money than you had dirty to begin with.

quote:

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Originally posted by David Jenkins
Apart from money laundering, people are scared of £50 notes, as they're the favourite target for faking and it's a big loss if you end up stuck with one.

Maybe we need notes that are harder to fake, such as the Aussie plastic ones. I was handing over A$100 notes (~£65) while on holiday and no-one batted an eye, as they still trust them to be genuine.

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barcode or RFID tag on each note?

that is scanned each time transaction is made so real time check can be made on fakeness?

Bar codes and RFID's are fairly easy to manufacture/clone/copy especially if you are a big time criminal with a budget to spend on getting it right.

I suspect we still use paper partly because people would complain (a significant number of people hate/resist any change) and partly because the paper used for notes is made specially for the mint and is apparently hard to copy and impossible to buy.

There is apparently a huge problem with Euro's and pound coins at the moment.

English notes are made with nettles...

When I was in Germany (over 10 years ago) I noticed at a petrol station a sign that they don't take notes over 3000DM (might have been 300) which is way bigger than a £50.

There must be a lot of scottish fakes too as few people south of the border will take them

I thought that was just people got confused about them as they don't recognise them. Try using NI notes, most people seem to assume they're old ROI money and run a mile. Changing what money is made of is always held back by silly arguments, there have been talks of replacing the £5 note with a coin which would save a huge amount of money because fivers don't last long and coins last forever (Look in your wallet, some of your pennies could be almost 40) but it gets held back by people who want to keep notes for the sake of keeping notes. Look at America and the Dollar bill they had an article on the BBC not long ago about how much money thats wasted because the population won't use the coin.

quote:

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Originally posted by Ninehigh
There must be a lot of scottish fakes too as few people south of the border will take them

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quote:

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Originally posted by scootz

quote:

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Originally posted by Ninehigh
There must be a lot of scottish fakes too as few people south of the border will take them

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Not so much to do with fakes... more to do with ignorance!

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quote:

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Originally posted by iank
Once tried to use a Scottish £20 in a pub in Cambridge, needed to use the internet on my phone to convince him they were legal tender in England

[Edited on 24/10/10 by iank]

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Going back to the title of the thread - I also know a "Herbert Wye"....

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Sorry

quote:

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Originally posted by scootz

quote:

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Originally posted by Ninehigh
There must be a lot of scottish fakes too as few people south of the border will take them

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Not so much to do with fakes... more to do with ignorance!

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I've seen loads of Fake English notes but never any from Scotland or Northern Ireland. I've seen people try and pass the most obvious of fakes and I've seen some pretty good ones aswell.

The main reason people don't except them is because they are unsure as to whether they're legal currency in England (Which is different to Legal tender). Scotish and Northern Irish Banknotes are legal currency but are not Legal tender in England and Wales and I believe the opposite is true but it has no bearing on use as currency.

I thought legal tender meant currency..

I guess now the difference is that, say a 10 Euro note is real (legal tender) but isn't really accepted in the UK (not legal currency)

Or would it be the other way round?

Also, as I figured the problem with scottish notes is not knowing the fakes, how would you know if said scottish note was fake or not?

Legal tender laws determin what can and can't be refused when settling debts. Coins (And maybe some notes I'm not actually sure) are only legal tender upto certain quantities, these laws are basically in place to stop debtors paying you in a way that would cost you money or time. In England and Wales, Scottish notes are legally regarded as promissary notes which is why they aren't legal tender, presumably there was a time long ago where you'd actually have to take them to Scotland in order to swap them.

Legal tender has no affect on what can be used as currency and a business can accept or decline what ever they want (At what ever sort of exchange rates they want, just ask shops that accept Euros what thier rate is.)