Can You Spot The Fake $10 Bill?

An impressive counterfeit bill has left people scratching their heads after pictures of it adjacent to a real bill were shared online.

Mike, who only gave his first name, lives in upstate New York. He received the bill as change after paying for a meal in a pub. But before he put the bills away he became aware of something unusual.

"I paid for my meal with a $50 and received two $10 bills as change," Mike told Newsweek. "When I went to put the bills in my wallet I noticed one was shorter than the other. This caused me to look more closely."

Upon further inspection, he discovered a lot of differences between the two bills and alerted the waiting staff.

"I let the staff at the host counter know. I had to show them the blank watermark as they did not initially recognize the difference," he explained. "They provided me with a new $10 and I recommended that they report the counterfeit bill to the authorities."

Further down the article, the fake bill is revealed, so scroll carefully if you want to try to work it out yourself.

It wasn't just the watermark and the size that drew attention to the counterfeit, but despite a series of systems in place to make fake bills easier to spot, adjacent to a real one, it still isn't easy to notice the difference.

"I found that instead of the typical green, the ink on the bill was more black in color," said Mike. "The printing had a smudgy look in the more complicated areas and the overall paper color was off—sort of pink."

It was when he held the bill to the light he found that the watermark on the back was completely blank.

The watermark is designed to help prevent counterfeiting of paper currency. Visible when the bill is held up to the light, a genuine $10 bill will show a faint image of founding father Alexander Hamilton in the blank space to the right of the portrait, and is visible from both sides of the note.

Mike also noticed a few more subtle differences: "The bill was smoother than the typical fabricy texture and seemed slightly lighter weight than a regular bill."

But above all he said that the copy was impressive: "It was a pretty convincing fake," he said. "If I had not received two 10s together, which allowed me to compare, I may not have noticed."

The $10 counterfeit went unnoticed before it was spotted by the eagle-eyed customer. Two years ago, a pair of women in Tennessee went even further when they were caught trying to pay for items using a fake $1 million bill.

Before returning the bill to the pub, Mike snapped a picture of the fake adjacent to a real one and shared the picture on Reddit's popular r/mildlyinteresting subreddit.

Here the picture captured lots of attention with over 26,000 upvotes and more than 1,700 comments.

"Amazing that a counterfeiter would go to all the trouble of making a nearly perfect bill, only to screw up and make it like 3 percent too short," wrote Redditor ShutterBun. "That actually seems like it would be MORE work than making it the correct size."

But others were amazed by the accuracy of the bill. Teapot156 said: "That would fool 99 percent of people unless you had tools. Nobody checks $10 bills for counterfeit these days besides gas stations and banks."

While one commenter found the perfect opportunity for a well-placed joke: "They're both genuine. Top bill has been adjusted for inflation," wrote MrJoshua_182.