So last night after guzzling down copious amounts of beer at the ski meet, I went to pay my bill, but was told that the 50 CHF note I had was a counterfeit.

So after a small examination / comparison with a normal one, we were like, "holy sh!t, it is!!!".

So, the noticeable differences were that it had a different texture (slightly thinner, and smoother), and on one side of the note, there were supposed to be silver dots, but there weren't.

Of course I handed the note into the authorities, so that the problem may be attacked, but I just wanted everyone here to know, because I am sure that there are more floating around.

perhaps getting one of those little flashlights for detecting counterfeit notes is in order

So that's 50 Chufs down the toilet then.

Any idea how prevalent they are?

Oh .. So it happens in Switzerland too ...

You didn't keep it to pay your next speeding fine/overpriced grocery bill/unreasonable landlord charge???

No.

That would be the wrong thing to do.

If I were a lesser person with no morals I may have purchased three pretzels at 6am at Oerlikon station.

Where did you get it from? if you remember...

Did you get those salty ones?

Anyway, this is the first I've heard of counterfeit notes here. Did they try to do anything about the silver foil strip on the notes? (Sounds like no ...) I guess that would be the easiest way to tell if a note is real or not.

Vaguely recall a few days ago paying a taxi driver with a 200 CHF note, and it was in the change.

Slave girl was mumbling something about a new color copier Woodzy brought home from work.

06.00am at Oerlikon station? Yay, you pulled!

Well done Natasha! Turning the note in to the authorities was the right thing to do, hopefully it'll help in getting to the bottom of the matter.

Pertinent question is whether this counterfeit problem exists only for 50 CHF notes or whether the 10, 20, 100 and 200 notes also have a similar issue.

Any pointers on how we can easily detect abnormalities in atleast the 50 CHF notes?

The SNB website has all you ever wanted to know, and a whole lot more...

They have a great program in Canada for handeling Counterfit money..you bring in the note to any bank and tell them that its fake and by law they have to give you a real note of the same value....it creates a good incentive to hand over any counterfit money, and that way it keeps it out of circulation.

Although, you have to bring in 2 pieces of ID to do this..including your Social Insurance Number...just so that no one person is bringing in too much fake money ..I know too bad

Or boo that's gonna be a painful hangover.

Or both???

If I were at Oerlikon station looking for cheeseburgers at the time, one would think that it would be a very painful hangover.

It's Eires fault - he drove us to our fate

I resemble that remark.

Those 'silver dots'

are they the foil-like hologram stuff?

and in that case, were the holograms missing too?