An eighth-grade student found herself in hot water for buying chicken nuggets for lunch – using a $2 bill.
Danesiah Neal, an eighth-grader at Fort Bend Independent School District’s Christa McAuliffe Middle School outside of Houston, Texas, attempted to pay for lunch with a $2 bill given to her by her grandmother, Sharon Kay Joseph. However, cafeteria workers at the school didn’t believe that it was real – they never see $2 bills, apparently – and she was sent to what Neal called “the police office.” The school district has since clarified that the Fort Bend ISD has its own police department. According to Neal, the police officer told her that she could be in “big trouble” for using the bill which they believed to be counterfeit.
How much trouble? Under federal law, a person who intentionally uses counterfeit money can be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison and subject to a fine.
Some semblance of sanity eventually took over and school officials called Joseph, who confirmed that she had given the bill to her granddaughter to pay for lunch. In the meantime, the police (who apparently didn’t have much else to do that day) went to the convenience store where Joseph was given the bill. They also took the bill to a local bank where it was eventually determined to be real. Phony crisis averted.
Eighth-grade chicken nugget eaters aside, counterfeit money is a problem in the U.S. with as much as $220 million in counterfeit cash thought to be circulating at any given time. And it’s not a new problem. In fact, the United States Secret Service – which you and I tend to associate with protecting the President – was originally founded to fight the counterfeiting of U.S. currency in the 19th century. When it was formed on July 5, 1865, the Secret Service was actually part of the Department of the Treasury, just like Internal Revenue Service (IRS). It wasn’t until 2003 when it became part of the Department of Homeland Security, though it still plays a role in the fight against counterfeit bills.
The first $2 bill was used in March 1862, three years before the advent of the Secret Service. It was pretty popular for about 100 years but in 1966, the government decided to discontinue the $2 bill from production, citing a lack of interest. Ten years later, however, the bill was brought back into circulation with a new design: Thomas Jefferson on the front and John Trumbull’s depiction of the drafting of the United States Declaration of Independence on the back.
Today, $2 bills are still being printed: there are about 1.2 billion $2 bills currently being circulated. That seems like a lot but consider this: out of the $1.2 trillion worth of coins and bills in circulation, less than 0.1% of them are $2 bills (with respect to actual bills, not including coins, the statistic is closer to 3%).
The design of the $2 bill has remained the same since the note was re-issued in 1976. The U.S. government redesigns bills for security reasons and to make it hard for thieves to counterfeit bills. So why not redesign the $2 bill? According to the government, which has no plans to redesign the bill, it’s “because the $2 note is infrequently counterfeited.”
Tell that to Neal. Her $2 bill was eventually returned. She did not, however, get her chicken nuggets for lunch that day.
(Here’s how to tell if your $2 bill is a fake.)
Author’s update: The district’s communication officer responded to me this evening. She wanted to clarify that “the concern presented was not whether a two-dollar bill was legal tender, but whether the bill presented was real or counterfeit, due to a pen that was used by a cafeteria worker to detect possible counterfeit bills.” She went to say that “[w]ithin the same day of receiving the report, the investigating officer at that time, confirmed that the bill was not counterfeit, and there was never any criminal charge/referral as your article seems to suggest.”
By way of clarification, I did not suggest that any criminal charges were filed, but I did report that a person identified as a police officer allegedly told Ms. Neal that she could be “in big trouble.” The district spokesperson went on to say that “this was all handled at the school-level two years ago by an officer who was assigned to the campus at that time.” I have corrected the article to clarify that point. The district did not answer my remaining questions. I am, however, linking to a statement on the front page of the school’s website addressing concerns about counterfeit bills at the school.
