WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A newly designed $100 note aims to thwart counterfeiters with advanced security features, top US Treasury and Federal Reserve officials said yesterday.
The “new Benjamins” to be released in February 2011 retain the traditional look of the US currency, with Benjamin Franklin’s portrait. They aim to foil counterfeiters with difficult and costly to reproduce features such as a blue three-dimensional security ribbon with alternating images of bells and the number 100 that move and change as the viewing angle is tilted.
The new notes, which cost slightly more to produce, also feature a bell image inside a picture of an inkwell that changes from copper to green when tilted, as well as a large “100” that does the same.
“As with previous US currency redesigns, this note incorporates the best technology available to ensure we’re staying ahead of counterfeiters,” US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said at a Treasury Department unveiling ceremony. “Welcome to the new Benjamins.”
The $100 note is the most often counterfeited denomination of US currency outside the United States due to its broad circulation overseas. It is the highest-denominated note issued by the Federal Reserve.
The approximately 6.5 billion older design $100s already in circulation will remain legal tender after the new notes are released next year.
In recent years, US officials have been trying to combat the continued production of extremely high-quality counterfeit $100 notes they say are produced in North Korea, dubbed the “supernote,” which are undetectable to nearly all but the most sophisticated currency experts.
The US Secret Service, the agency charged with policing the cash dollar’s integrity, maintains that less than 1/100th of one percent of the $890 billion in physical US currency in circulation is counterfeit. But Secret Service officials say they still encounter supernotes and other highly sophisticated fakes from overseas.
