This holiday season, Public warned of possible proliferation of fake bills

CEBU, Philippines - As bankers and retailers brace themselves against the reported proliferation of “fake bills” this holiday season, the public are also warned to be vigilant to avoid being victimized by unscrupulous individuals.

As of this writing, the Cebu Bankers Club (CBC) and retailers in Cebu said that they have not received any information on the existence of fake bills in Cebu.

“Cebu Bankers Club regularly conducts counterfeit detection seminar to financial institutions to include among others savings or rural banks, foreign exchange dealers, lending institutions, mall/grocery store personnel and others,” said CBC spokesperson and past president Prudencio Gesta.

Gesta said the latest seminar was held last October this year at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP-Cebu). The two-day seminar was handled by an expert from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and BSP.

“We would be glad to assist the general public or request their bank on basic guidelines on how to detect fake notes,” said Gesta.

CBC secretariat Carmela Go, in an interview with The Freeman yesterday said that the organization will be disseminating information campaign to the public, on the guidelines of detecting counterfeit bills immediately.

This is to prepare the public of such incident, although in Cebu there is no significant report yet.

On the other hand, the Philippine Retailers Association (PRA-Cebu) President Jun Yap said that while this issue is one of the top priorities of the retailers, especially on the high-spending seasons like Christmas, retail store cashiers have already been well-trained on this concern.

“Almost always every season this issue will emerge. Cashiers are trained but still a few get through,” said Yap.

Likewise, PRA-Cebu chairperson Melanie Ng said that so far no significant incident on fake bills has been reported by retailers in Cebu. Besides that, “our cashiers at the retail store front are also all trained to monitor and detect fake bills.” — (FREEMAN)