NewsX Community
Related Tags:
Indian Rupees
Latest craze in Uttar Pradesh: Fake currency detectors
Tue-Sep 09, 2008
Lucknow / Indo-Asian News Service
With fake currency notes tumbling out of various places in Uttar Pradesh at regular intervals, no one is willing to take a chance. From the mall owner to the common man, everyone is now depending on currency detector equipment to tell the real from the fake.
The trend has increased after a counterfeit currency racket in the State Bank of India's (SBI) Domariyaganj branch came to light July-end.
A Reserve Bank of India (RBI) team found fake currency notes nominally worth nearly Rs 30 million (Rs 3 crore) in the currency chest of the bank after scanning it for over 20 days.
The problem, according to sources, however, does not end there, as fake notes have been found in various parts of Uttar Pradesh over the last one year.
As a result, shopkeepers and customers in Lucknow have pushed the panic button. While the owners of showrooms and malls have installed money detector machines, their customers carry special laser torches to check fake currency.
"After the SBI scam came to light, who knows who presents you a fake note. So, we had to install fake currency detection equipment," Ashutosh Chaddha, owner of a showroom in Lucknow of the clothes brand Peter England, told IANS.
"Though it is Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination notes which are usually found to be fake, I check even fifties and hundreds before accepting them." Chaddha added.
The owner of a Reebok showroom, Shyam Bahl, said that recently a customer handed over two fake Rs 500 denomination notes and he discovered it later.
"We have now installed a machine to detect fake currency," Bahl said.
Laser torches
Fake currency testing machines can be bought from most electronics goods shops in the state for Rs 1,500 to Rs 4,000.
The machines which have found the maximum takers are made by companies like Methodex System, Godrej and Klick.
Klick's Marketing Manager Ashwani Sahay told IANS that there had been an increase in the sale of money checking machines.
He said the ultra-violet rays emanating from the machine could help detect fake currency.
But not everyone can afford these machines, and small shopkeepers and roadside vendors have found an ingenious way to detect fake currency - laser torches.
These laser torches can be bought from any electronic shop for Rs 10 to Rs 40.
Rajaul Chaurasia, who runs a public phone booth in Kanpur's Parade area, said: "I always check a note with a laser torch before keeping it".
The equipment available at banks, however, is much more expensive. The currency detectors installed at various banks cost as much as Rs 1.5 million to Rs 7.5 million.
SBI's chief general manager for the Lucknow region, Shiv Kumar, told IANS that as many as 300 branches of the bank with currency chests are installed with equipment which could check notes worth Rs 5 million.
Meanwhile, an official of the ICICI Bank revealed they found more people withdrawing money through cheques than ATMs after the scam came to light.
Rate This Article:
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Propeller
Reddit
Magnoliacom
Newsvine
Furl
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Technorati
Icerocket
Print
Comments For This Post
The basic difference between Note Sorting Machine & Desk Top Fake Note Detector/Sorter seems to have not been understood by the majority of Indian Banks as most of the banks presume NSM as the panacea of all remedies against problem of infiltration of Fake Notes in banking channel and have been repeating the very same mistakes by issuing tenders for procurement of NSM for intricate operation of detection of fake notes at cash desks while receiving deposits on counters from the public at large.
Note Sorting machines basically have been designed for currency sorting processes on the basis of set criterion like designs, quality, orientations, faces, series, fitness etc but
have not been designed aptly & exhaustively for accurate fake note detection and hence NSM can not be used as a perfect substitute of Desk Top Fake Note Detector/Sorters which are exclusively designed for the specialized process of detection of Fake Notes offering other ancillary functions useful at cash desks or at ATM centers.
With deployment of accurate Desk Top Fake Note detector the huge investment can be recovered back by avoiding the losses on account of erroneous acceptance of fake notes at cash desks, as also heavy expenditures on consequential legal hassles and lose of Goodwill due to non compliance of strict provisions of law regards to handling of fake notes, though handled unintentionally.
Most of the recent cases of remittance of fake notes to RBI by many famous Banks have been emerged as a result of deploying wrong equipment like NSM on which highest reliance has been placed. We feel majority of cases seems to be unintentional of human attitude problems while submitting fake notes to RBI’s treasuries.
The Speed of NSM kills the accuracy of fake note detection as it leaves behind large number of security criterions being unchecked and specifically due to incompatibility of NSM adapting digital technology which ensures the perfection. NSM can not check/scan notes pixel to pixel leading consequential inaccurate & imperfect detection of fake notes except for detecting poorly fabricated notes and thus runs with great risks of passing fake notes as genuine or rejecting genuine notes as fake or doubtful. NSM just throws out large number of doubtful notes with comparatively large number of false alarms and carries very high possibility of passing super fake notes as genuine resulting into issuance of such notes at cash counters or at ATM centers and subsequent
While as the process of 100% accurate detection of fake notes mixed up with genuine notes it self is a different operation requiring a equilibrate combination of Data based and Image based technology where large numbers of check points are to be scanned for a perfect adjudication of fake notes.
Just image based scanning in NSM bound to pass fake notes which also could be influenced by factors like crispiness, identical images, colors, sizes, ink, water mark, paper, spoilages folds, mutilated, physically damaged, soiled, corner fold, tear, tear, holes, missing corner, denomination, orientation, formats, adhesive taps, limpness, stains etc and those instate of getting detected fake notes would be sorted out under different criterions for which the sorter is set.
We feel with a view to facilitating the detection of Counterfeit notes, all bank branches/treasuries, at their cash Desks, specifically branches those have been dealing with members of public for acceptance and issuance of notes, should be equipped with Automatic Fake Currency Note detectors commonly known as Desk Top Fake Notes Detector/Sorter or Automatic Currency Validity Verification and Processing Systems (ACVVPSs), instead of Note Sorting Machine.
The kind of machines Indian Banks at cash counters needed for the fake notes detection purpose are the machine which can verify not only the images, emblems, portraits, texts, water marks, magnetic and other machine readable features of notes but also checks the physical and chemical properties of security paper, varied types of inks, resins, security threads and other materials used in production of notes, constituting large number of check points out of the interrelated combinations & permutations of varied security features in the notes, by automatic one by one pick ups of single note at a time out of the stacked packet of 100 notes of single or mixed denominations, and processes a note in 0.6 seconds and 100 notes in 1 minute. The machine meant for detection of fake notes as prime function invariably should be capable of not allowing any fake note to pass as genuine. It is possible only with the detectors specially developed considering the large number of intricacies concerning to Indian notes.
Post new comment