The U.S. Secret Service is alerting consumers to the risk of counterfeit currency during the holiday shopping season. The agency emphasizes that fake money can appear unexpectedly and may not be immediately obvious.
A recent incident highlighted this risk when a tractor trailer traveling from Alabama to Orlando, Florida, was stopped at an agricultural inspection station near Pensacola. Inspectors discovered three cardboard boxes hidden under vegetables. After notifying the Florida Highway Patrol’s Criminal Interdiction Unit, authorities later stopped the vehicle and found boxes containing what amounted to $5.94 million in counterfeit $100 bills.
At first glance, these bills closely resembled authentic $100 notes. However, further inspection revealed Asian writing, the words “World Universal Bank Limited,” a different color compared to real currency, and a bright yellow mark next to Benjamin Franklin’s portrait. Several standard security features were also missing.
These counterfeit notes are classified as ‘altered design notes’ and fall into three categories: those with foreign text, those marked for motion picture or prop use, and miscellaneous types labeled as copies or replicas.
“With all the bright colors and the Asian writing, I think most people, 99.9%, would probably pick up [on it being fake money]. But there is always that small percentage of people that don’t pay attention or you have several hundred dollars and they mix one of these in thinking they might get passed,” said U.S. Secret Service Senior Special Agent Gregory Howard of the Tallahassee Resident Office.
Florida Highway Patrol coordinated with the U.S. Secret Service’s Tallahassee office following the discovery. Howard collected the fake currency at the scene.
“Could they have been passed? It’s always possible. You get a naive enough person behind the counter at a fast-food restaurant or a bar where it’s very dark, and you’d be surprised at what you get passed,” Howard said.
No charges were filed in this case; however, authorities confiscated the counterfeit banknotes. According to federal law, an attempt must be made to use fake money as genuine U.S. currency for it to qualify as counterfeiting.
“It was a good example of Florida Highway Patrol and the U.S. Secret Service working hand-in-hand so that this potential counterfeit money is off the street so it would not be passed,” Howard said. He also noted that some individuals try to remove foreign writing from such notes to make them look more authentic.
The seized boxes were returned to the Tallahassee Resident Office for inventory and tracking before destruction—a standard procedure for fraudulent banknotes handled by the Secret Service. The $20 bill remains the most commonly counterfeited denomination in circulation.
Julia Barker, Senior Counterfeit Specialist with the U.S. Secret Service, stated that encountering counterfeit banknotes is rare for most people. The agency began monitoring altered design notes in 2015; in 2025, these comprised 10.4% of all counterfeit bills detected in the United States—a decrease of 6.3% from 2024 levels.
Barker advised consumers to use a three-step process—Look, Feel, Tilt—to identify genuine currency:
Look
“Look at the overall banknote. Make sure it doesn’t say ‘For Motion Picture Use Only’. Make sure nothing stands out to you on that banknote. Make sure there is no foreign text on it. Flip it over and make sure the back is printed,” she said. “Sometimes the counterfeiters will spend time on the front and very little time on the back.”
Feel
“Run your fingers over the note to make sure it feels like real currency,” Barker said. “Real currency has intaglio ink, which is that raised, thick, tar-like ink. If you run your fingers over it, it has a texture to it.”
Tilt
“Lastly, just tilt your note. Especially, a $100 banknote, if you tilt the note, you have two locations of that color-changing ink called Optically Variable Ink. It shifts from copper to green. You also have the blue ribbon down the front. That’s called an Optically Variable Thread. You have 100’s shifting to bells and bells shifting to 100’s the opposite direction that you tilt the note...”
During periods like holidays when cash transactions increase, there may be more opportunities for altered design notes or other counterfeits to circulate among consumers.
The U.S. Secret Service encourages shoppers to carefully inspect any cash they receive during purchases this season as a precaution against accepting counterfeit bills.
Further information about verifying genuine currency can be found on uscurrency.gov's Denominations page (https://www.uscurrency.gov/denominations).
