News & Notes Volume I, No. 35

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• U.S. Customs and Border Protection seizes millions of "hell money" (CBP). And here (Business Insider).
• Why not a 5000-Swiss Franc banknote? (The Local). So far, even with negative interest rates the Swiss haven't started to hoard cash (Bloomberg).
• Tom Chao's top three banknotes for 2015 (Nutmeg Collector).
• Also from Tom Chao, A new Lesotho 200 Maloti note (Nutmeg Collector).
• The 'forbidden' notes of Cuba (Coin World).
• Two new portraits for Colombia's 2,000 Peso and 100,000 Peso notes (both links via MRI Bankers' Guide, in Spanish).
• Investigating note shortages at Libyan banks (Libya Herald).
• South Africa gets its currency-laden airplane back from Zimbabwe (iAfrica).
• A profile of small-size silver certificates (COIN Week).
• Paper money auction season begins soon in Rosemont (Coin World).
• Artist inspired by slaves depicted on banknotes (Press-Republican).The Philippine's more vivid-hued P100 note is now in circulation (Cebu Daily News). And here (Banknote News).
• A Kentucky bill in favor of "Constitutional Tender" (Tenth Amendment Center).
• "Beating the cheats": Waterloo explores the art of the engraver (Waterloo Chronicle).
• South Carolinians were against paper money from the very beginning (Fitsnews).
• Guild of Independent Currency Conference, Liverpool England, April 20-21, 2016.
• "Where's Scotland?" (The Scotsman). "It has gone too far." (The Courier).
• Larry Summer's case against the $100 bill (Washington Post). The big-denomination debate in New Zealand (Stuff.co). "All About the Benjamins" (Chicago Tribune).
• More on the cashless version of Monopoly (Time). How will we teach our children to count?
• Denied access to the banking system, legal pot growers turn to Bitcoin? (ThinkProgress).

                                                         Cash Only, Sorry (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, via Think Progress)

For this week, in lieu of any industry news I've assembled a short list of recent publications on technology and counterfeiting. Some are highly technical, and are gated.
 

• ARTICLE: Construction of Fluorescent Cellulose Biobased Plastics and their Potential Application in Anti-Counterfeiting Banknotes (Macromolecular Materials and Engineering, February 8, 2016, gated).
• ARTICLE: HPLC and HPLC/MS Analysis of red Ink on Counterfeit 100-Yuan Notes (Forensic Science International, February 2016, gated).
• ARTICLE: Automatic Recognition and Counterfeit Detection of Ethiopian Paper Currencies (International Journal of Image, Graphics, & Signal Processing (February 2016, available as pdf).
• PAPER: Does Banknote Quality Affect Counterfeit Detection? Experimental Evidence from Germany and the Netherlands (DNB Working Paper 499, February 2016, available via SSRN as pdf).
• PAPER: Substitutes for Legal Tender: Lessons from History for the Regulation of Virtual Currencies (Indiana Legal Studies Research Paper 316 (available via SSRN as pdf).

• Czeslaw Bojarski, counterfeiter (COIN Week).
• They were poised to print millions in fake Euros in Toledo (Spanish News Today).
• He forced his disabled roommates to spend fake money (The Daytona Beach News-Journal). Scum.
• U.S. passports to be made more secure this year (Conde Nast Traveler).
• A photo gallery of Chinese coin counterfeiting (About.com, via Metal Detecting Forum). Things that make you go hmmm.