WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- Krasdale Foods, a wholesaler serving mostly small inner-city supermarkets, has begun providing its stores with counterfeit detection boxes that can be used to weed out phony currency as well as bogus credit cards and drivers' licenses.
So far, Alpha Marketing, based here, the marketing group and owner of Krasdale, has sold the $150 boxes to 18 stores at cost, said Mitch Klein, Alpha's vice president of retail services. Over the last few months, the stores, mostly based in the New York metropolitan area, "all say fewer bad bills are being passed, and those that are passed are being caught," he said.
Using ultraviolet lighting technology, the 4-inch-square by 10-inch-long box reads currency placed inside it, generating a different color for each authentic denomination. The system, called SmartView, is made by M&R technologies, Somerset, N.J., founded last year.
Previously, Krasdale-serviced stores were using a specially designed marker that detects counterfeit bills by creating a black mark on the bill. While far less expensive than the box, the markers were considered less effective, said Klein. Besides being "faster and neater" than the marker, the box, usually situated at checkout lanes, often serves as a visual deterrent to counterfeit money purveyors, he said, which a pocketed marker can't do.
The small, typically four-lane supermarkets served by Krasdale usually buy two boxes and share them among the checkouts, he said.
Klein said the unit can be considered cost effective because "if you stop one or two $100 bills it pays for itself." The Krasdale-served stores average two to three bad bills per week, the most common being a $20. "It's not a horrific problem," he said. "But a lot of the stores don't accept personal checks, so they are susceptible to bad cash.'
