Day To Day Stories

ATM Dispensed A Fake 500?

  • Sumo

I wonder how the money on ATM machines are loaded. Do they check each bill for authenticity? The story below is very rare, but sad it happened.

Last Thursday, my husband withdrew my salary from an ATM (is it legal to mention the name of the bank?). We usually withdraw the entire a mount leaving only the required balance and the amount needed to pay our monthly bills. The reason for this is we transfer the money to our BPI account. The only difference last Thursday was we were not able to deposit the money immediately. It was only this morning Hubby had the chance to go to Tagbilaran to pay my loans and premiums and to deposit the money to BPI.

One of the 500 bills withdrawn from the ATM (it is really tempting to mention the name of the bank) was found fake. Hubby told me that he was asked to sign a form stating he deposited a fake money and confiscated the 500 peso bill.. He texted me about it and I told him to file a complain to bank. The bank has probably a way to trace it based on the serial number of the bill.

500 peso bill

When Hubby and I met this evening he told me that the ATM bank didn’t replace the money. We need to file a formal complaint letter. I told him that he should directly talk to the manager. He told me that he first approached the manager but was redirected to the teller (uso din pala sa mga banks ang turo-turo). The teller insisted that it was impossible for their ATMs dispensed the fake money (Hindi nila matanggap? Mas lalo na kami). She further asked why it was only today that Hubby complained. Hubby told her that it was only today the money was found out to be faked because he deposited it to another bank. We didn’t bother to check the bills  one by one because they came from an ATM anyway and we trusted that all the bills coming out from that machine are genuine. Besides we believe that they have a way to check and filter fake bills before they load the bills to the machine. We don’t have any other source of cash, except money withdrawn by my husband from that ATM machine. So where would the fake money came from?

The value of the money is less important. Anyway I can still earn it. But Husband was very embarrassed that he tried to deposit a fake bill and he kept telling me that. Hubby told me that the teller consulted the manager when he started to get mad and he insisted that the bill was from their ATM machine. That was the only time they told him that he needs to file a formal complain. They probably need some raise on the tone? For me, they should have at least a pre-printed form to record the incident, shouldn’t they?

Upon searching, I found out that the same case happened in Digos two years ago. The only difference was the client discovered immediately that the money was fake because she used it to pay her purchases few minutes after she withdrew the money.

So now my question is, is it really possible for ATM to dispense fake money? If not, how come we got one? Is there anyway for the banks to trace if the money was really from their ATMs?

Tomorrow we will draft a formal complain letter and we will bring it to the bank on Thursday. I care less if they will replace the money or not. I am after for the record that the fake money did not originated from us.

Do you have any experience similar with this? How did the bank deal with this?

Tagged ,

4 thoughts on “ATM Dispensed A Fake 500?

  1. It happened to me yesterday UNION BANK 500 Fake bill. I called the bank to report what happened and the person who answered asked me to email her manager. No answer so far. They should investigate this

  2. This could be an isolated case. People from the bank where you withdrew the money from might not have been that vigilant in examining every piece of paper bill that their employees receive. Though they have been trained to detect whether it’s genuine or fake, they are prone to make a mistake too.

    I’m glad that the issue will be soon resolved. This is also a good means to warn them to be more careful all the time.

  3. That’s too bad! Even ATM nowadays can’t be trusted anymore. I guess your bank has their way of determining if the money came from them or not. Like serial numbers like what you said. Or perhaps they are not really strict in placing money on their ATMs. Sad.

  4. What a horrible experience! I understand getting fake bills from stores because not everyone is trained to check for authenticity or have machines to check, but banks should have that. They should definitely have fixed the issue right away.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.