People have been warned to be alert for fake cash after a milk delivery driver was handed a counterfeit $50 note from a shop in Orange this week.
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Ed Maclean, a partner at milk delivery company, Milk Express, said he spotted the fake when checking money collected by an employee.
He said the note had been handed to the driver in a bundle of 12 $50 notes.
“When it got back to the office, I was going through it,” he said.
“You look at the note on its own and it just looks dodgy.
“It feels like a paper one rather than plastic.”
Mr Maclean said the fake was darker than normal.
And he said there were no little $50 symbols in the clear window of the note.
“The window is the key part,” he said.
“It looks like it has been stuck on.
“Everything about it is not right,” he said.
He said the note might have been photocopied from an original.
Mr Maclean said he took the fake to police.
He said he had a good idea which shop had handed the driver the fake.
“I’m pretty sure, 95 per cent,” he said.
Central West Police District crime manager Detective Inspector Bruce Grassick said it was the first report of a fake note in Orange for “a significant period of time.”
He urged anyone who received a fake note to hand it to police.
The latest Reserve Bank of Australia [RBA] figures show the $50 is the most faked note of the currency.
It found that of 12,004 fake notes detected in the three months to June 2017, 9343 [77 per cent] were $50 notes.
The RBA advised anyone concerned about receiving a fake note to check out its detection guide at www.banknotes.rba.gov.au and hand fakes in.
“It is an offence to knowingly possess counterfeit banknotes,” it said.