{"id":86975,"date":"2026-09-03T08:29:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T08:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/86975\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T08:29:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T08:29:28","slug":"small-businesses-scanning-for-counterfeit-cash-as-border-seizures-explode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/86975\/","title":{"rendered":"Small businesses scanning for counterfeit cash as border seizures explode"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Thirroul business owner Calvin Gorsuch’s employee was handed a $100 bill by a customer last weekend, they instantly knew it was a fake.<\/p>\n

That was because his business, Ohana Home, runs every bill under a blue-light machine.<\/p>\n

“So we picked up that it was fake,” Mr Gorsuch said.<\/p>\n

“They were adamant that it was genuine, but we kept refusing it, and then they left.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr Gorsuch said he put the safeguard system in place after the business was stung with a counterfeit $50 note last December.<\/p>\n

\"man<\/p>\n

Calvin Gorsuch says staff turned the customer with the counterfeit note away. (ABC Illawarra: Penny Burfitt)<\/p>\n

Fake notes hit small businesses<\/p>\n

Later that same day, neighbouring shop owner Adrian Erdedi’s employee was counting the till and noticed something “a little bit odd” about a $100 bill.<\/p>\n

“Eventually we identified that it was a fake note taken by one of the other staff members during the day,” he said.<\/p>\n

The business owners both said more local traders were reporting the same issue.<\/p>\n

Mr Erdedi said he posted about the incident on a local Facebook page, where he was overwhelmed by responses from other business owners across the Illawarra.<\/p>\n

“There’s been a lot of people coming out saying they’ve had the same notes coming through,” he said.<\/p>\n

“From what I’ve heard, there are also $20 notes involved now.”<\/p>\n

High quality deceptions<\/p>\n

In the past financial year, the Australian Border Force (ABF) made 700 detections of counterfeit cash entering the country, intercepting fake notes with a value of $6 million.<\/p>\n

That was more than 50 times the number of counterfeit currency imports detected the previous year.<\/p>\n

In a statement issued last month, the ABF said there had been “a concerning improvement in the quality of counterfeit notes”.<\/p>\n

\"image<\/p>\n

Adrian Erdedi found this fake $100 note in his till at the weekend. (Supplied: Adrian Erdedi)<\/p>\n

Mr Erdedi said he could not believe how realistic the fake $100 note was.<\/p>\n

“It could have easily been missed if you’re not looking for these specific things on the note,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Once we compared it with another $100 note, you could see the difference, but you had to look really closely to find those little defects.”\"image<\/p>\n

Adrian Erdedi’s business was hit with a fake note at the weekend. (ABC Illawarra: Rory McDonald)<\/p>\n

Mr Gorsuch said in 10 years working in retail, he had seen the quality of fake notes improve substantially.<\/p>\n

“In the past when we got fake notes, they were paper-based, and if you scrunched it, it wouldn’t pop back,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The ones now are a polymer, so to the touch they feel more real.<\/p>\n

“The colour seems to be the distinguishing factor.”<\/p>\n

New measures<\/p>\n

In Australia, it is against the law to make, possess or knowingly use counterfeit money.<\/p>\n

The maximum penalty for producing fake banknotes is 14 years in jail.<\/p>\n

On its website, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) advises that suspect banknotes should be reported to police and that counterfeits had no value, meaning scammed businesses would not be reimbursed.<\/p>\n

Mr Gorsuch said fake cash also ended up costing local businesses at a time when cost-of-living pressures were already biting.<\/p>\n

After the first scam in December, his employees had been trained to verify every note that came through using a blue-light scanner near the till.<\/p>\n

\"hand<\/p>\n

Employees now scan every note through the machine. (ABC Illawarra: Penny Burfitt)<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery bill we accept we quickly wave it under the light and then that usually shows the invisible UV marks, and then we know it’s a genuine note,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Polymer notes issued by the RBA after 2016 also have a serial number and date of manufacture that light up under blue light.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr Erdedi said he had also ordered a blue light and was now training employees to check every note.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Thirroul business owner Calvin Gorsuch’s employee was handed a $100 bill by a customer last weekend, they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[103,22,21,145177,36405,26683,7508,58911,14110],"class_list":["post-86975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-afp","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-blue-light","tag-counterfeit","tag-counterfeit-cash","tag-currency","tag-fake-money","tag-scam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}