Silas

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Criminal Masterminds At Work

It seems that a collection of the world's stupidest people have attempted to defraud the Bank of England to the tune of £28bn ($64bn). I say "attempted", to be honest, a child could have made a better attempt.

Basically, there used to be a £1000 bank note in the UK, but it was withdrawn in 1943 and the location of all bar 63 of them are known to the Bank. Apart from the "avalanche" that these super criminals decided to forge. Badly. And the £500,000 note they decided to completely make up. Badly.

Armed with all these completely fake notes they went to the Bank and asked them to deliver on the promise to "pay the bearer on demand". Now, if I'd been the Bank I would have asked if they wanted paying in £113 notes or $4.99 coins before telling them to fuck off out my bank, but the Bank of England played the long game and decided to press charges so the rest of us could have a laugh too.

Remember kids, while the $2 bill is real, the £1k note was real, there's nothing worth more than £50 in legal UK currency.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Can't remember where I heard this, but apparently only coins are considered legal tender in England. In Scotland it also includes £1, £5, and £10 notes. £20s in Scotland are not in the list of legal tender, as such, but them along with the £5,£10 and £20 in England are considered common and verifiable enough to be generally accepted. £50s are not necessarily in the group.

If it's legal tender, then I think it must always be accepted, and can't be refused, the common notes are generally accepted, but legally they could be refused (though some of them are legal in Scotland).

Inn practice, most places will take anything up to a £20 without much more than a casual check. And it's still quite common for a lot of places to not accept £50 notes.

Now I could just be talking out my backside, but I'm sure someone more enlightened than me could tell you, and that doesn't necessarily include wikipedia.

13:28  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hmmm. I think I got it the wrong way around. No notes are legal tender in Scotland, and technially only certain amounts of coins are

13:35  

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