[Reporter] Counterfeit money is an important weapon

of the saboteur.

[Jonathon] Throughout time,

counterfeit currency has played a vital role

in the history of the United States.

[Reporter] To banks, and other financial institutions,

Secret Service offers instruction

in how to detect spurious money.

There are always minute differences obvious

to the trained eye which make detection possible.

Since the Secret Service inception,

they have worked tirelessly

to suppress counterfeit currency.

[suspenseful music]

A lot of people are unaware

that the United States Secret Service

was formed during The Civil War in response to the rising

of counterfeit currency that was being printed

by the Confederate Army and distributed in the North.

When we talk about counterfeit currency,

what we're talking about isn't something

that you print at home,

we're talking about a very high-level artistic formation

of Federal Reserve notes.

Notes that are so undetectable to the common person,

and they're very oftentimes not even picked up in banks.

During World War II,

Hitler and the Nazis tried the same methodology.

They forced Jewish artisans to create counterfeit currency

to try to destabilize the U.S. dollar globally,

all of those attempts failed.

Their experts in genuine currency said they were able

to secure the Treasury and the U.S. financial institutions

from this impact of counterfeit currency.

In major financial regions of the United States,

hundreds of thousands of dollars of counterfeit currency

are seized every week.

The role of the Secret Service is to suppress

that counterfeit count and ensure

that those bills don't continue circulating

through the U.S. economy.

Incorporated into every Federal Reserve note

are certain security features.

Some of those security features remain classified

and are closely guarded secrets of the U.S. Government.

Here, we're looking at a 20 and $100 Federal Reserve note.

Both have watermarks that are printed into the paper itself.

A process that's developed when the paper stock is made

and it's embedded into the fibers.

It's not a print,

it's actually an imprint into the paper itself.

Additionally, a common feature that is seen

with the naked eye,

is present in the lower right-hand corner

of the 20 and the $100 bill,

and it's called optical varying ink.

It's image shifting ink that changes color

as the bill moves.

Microprinting is fine, fine artistic work,

that's embedded in the genuine plate,

and what that means is you can't take a bill

and photocopy it and have it have

the same quality in the microprinting,

it'll come through as just a straight line.

That's a key indicator that it would be a counterfeit bill.

One feature on the $100 bill,

if you look very finely printed on the lapel of Franklin,

is microprinting, it says the United States of America.

Very hard to see with the naked eye,

but under magnification, it's another security feature.

An finally, embedded are colored fibers,

red, blue, and there's also some that glow with UV lighting.

These are key indicators of a genuine bill.

On the higher denomination bills,

there's a 3D hologram strip that's imprinted into

the fiber itself that is again,

another indicator of a genuine bill.

Every bill from the one to the 100,

has a serial number,

that serial number for the Secret Service

is used as a tracking device.

We know what genuine bills look like

and we know what their serial number and sequence are.

Counterfeiters don't, necessarily.

So oftentimes,

a bill that does not follow a specific sequence

are a key indicator of a counterfeit Federal Reserve note.

Every genuine Federal Reserve note is associated

to a Federal Reserve bank,

that is indicated on the bill via specific locationss here.

Oftentimes counterfeiters don't align the bill

to the right Federal Reserve Bank,

again, a key indicator of a counterfeit bill.

Counterfeiters seek to undermine the credibility

of the U.S. financial system by just the sheer manufacturing

of counterfeit currency.

The Secret Service, mindful of the impact that this has,

they've worked with the Department of the Treasury

to come up with security standards

that are inherent in every bill.