The Fake currency - Be cautious

Recently received a few of the fake currency notes and felt like a good samaritan to inform everyone and potential ways of how to distinguish the fake from the real.

Following is based on 2 notes of denomination of 10/-, one real and other fake.

Let's take the real first.

Here is how it looks.

That's easy. No surprises there. A regular looking 10 rupee note with the number 68D 705574. I am sure in this era of rising disposable income, you would have seen many such notes and surely would have observed the silver lining in the middle.

Now let's zoom the white blow on the left edge just above where the currency note number is printed and look it through light.

Besides the embossed "Gandhi" picture, you could see a '10' [horizontally embossed] and another '10' right above it, kind of embedded in the floral pattern.

Now let's turn over the note and look at the other side.

Hopefully you can see the year '2012' written right almost at the end of the pattern design and in the middle of the note.

Now I am uploading the 3 similar pictures of a fake note with the number and it's missing these 3 identifiers. I am sure there may be many others too but for now these seem to give a differentiation between the fake and genuine.

The fake note number is 06N 607202.

To begin with, it looks amazingly crisp as if it is freshly minted and the color is a little too bright.

It's so bright that you would find the central 'silver lining' missing, although on closer inspection you might see it.

Let's pull up the translucent white on the left end under light.

Whoa. No embossing. No "10" anywhere. And a meaningless 'floral' pattern instead. Let's turn it over and see if there is any year printed.

Clearly, the 'fake' people have done a lot of effort with all that printing but seems like they couldn't get everything right. There are a few other differences I noted by the time I finished the blog but I will not make them public, primarily out of my laziness and secondarily, let's not give it all away.

Isn't it? (or as the English say 'in'nit'?)

PS: All the pictures in the blog or any other content is free to download, inspect and do whatever as long as you do not mis-represent it.

PPS: A little bit of googlig made me land at the page of RBI around the security features in the currency note (http://www.rbi.org.in/currency/security%20features.html), although that's slightly more technical in nature with words like "Instagilo printing" and "Micro lettering", but still worth a read.

Enjoy and be cautious from these photo-shop wizards trying to make a quick buck.