High-quality counterfeit currency can be hard to spot with the naked eye, but a video that has recently gone viral in Indonesia purports to show an easy way to spot fakes. The authenticity of the video is still in question, but the country’s central bank says it doesn’t approve of it’s testing method either way.
Recently, a man named Ahmad Hudlori posted a video on Facebook showing a gas station attendant dousing a IDR50K bill to show that it was fake. According to him, he had just withdrawn the money from an ATM to fill up his car in the East Java city of Kediri, only for the gas attendant to ask his permission to carry out the verification trick, which he agreed to and filmed.
In the video, which has gone viral across multiple social media platforms, the gas attendant is seen holding three IDR50K bills that she soaks with a squirt of gasoline from the hose. She then shows the camera that the gasoline was absorbed by just one of the bills, meaning that it’s fake, while the other two seemed to repel the liquid. The attendant then rubbed the supposedly fake bill until it splits into two pieces.
After the video went viral, Bank Indonesia (BI), Indonesia’s central bank, said they could not confirm if the gas attendant’s method was an effective way of determining counterfeit bills.
“Bank Indonesia never educated the public to check the authenticity of money by dousing it with gasoline,” BI Communications Department Head Onny Widjanarko told Kompas yesterday.
Onny says that the only method that is approved by BI is the 3D method (Dilihat, Diraba, Diterawang), meaning that one can look at and feel a bill for inconsistencies, as well as holding it up against the light.
If you’re not sure how to perform the 3D method, here’s a cute little musical number by BI explaining the steps (only available in Indonesian):
While BI did not specifically caution the public against trying the gasoline method, we can go ahead and tell you that soaking your money in a highly flammable liquid, for whatever reason, is a terrible idea. Don’t do it.
