Fake Tk 500 note comes out of ATM
But bank officials shrug off responsibility
Staff Correspondent
A customer of American Express Bank found a forged Tk 500 bill among the Tk 10,000 cash he withdrew yesterday from the bank's Gulshan Branch ATM (automated teller machine).Six days ago another fake note of Tk 100 denomination was found at the same ATM booth. Bank officials at the branch admitted that the 500-taka bill, with serial number Ba-7943153, was counterfeit but refused to change it when the unhappy client, Abdul Mannan Hawlader, went to return it. A supervisor of the Agro-based Technology Development Project of the USAID, Hawlader withdrew the cash from the ATM at 12:30pm and went to the British consulate in the same city area to pay visa processing fees. "As I deposited the money to the Brac Bank branch adjacent to the consulate, an official separated a note from the bunch and said it was forged," Hawlader told The Daily Star last night. He then took the bill back to the American Express Bank branch and handed it over to a senior officer named Mizan. "Checking the bill, he admitted its forgery but said they have nothing to do about it, since they draw money from the Bangladesh Bank," said the aggrieved client. "I asked him to change the note but he refused. He said he could have changed it if I had returned it immediately after withdrawing the cash," Howlader went on, exclaiming, "But how could I know if the note was forged or not? It seemed okay to me. The thread and the watermark were there, and the design also looked genuine. No ordinary man but an expert could recognise it as a fake bill." On May 26 last, Abul Hossain, a director of the same USAID project, found another counterfeit note of Tk 100 when he withdrew some cash from the same ATM.
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