Research by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board shows that the number of counterfeit bills in circulation has plunged over the past 20 years. Today, an estimated 1 in 80,000 notes are fake, whereas in 2006 approximately 1 in every 10,000 notes was fraudulent. This means that somewhere between $15 million and $30 million worth of counterfeit bills are currently circulating—a small percentage of the $2 trillion worth of all circulating notes.
Ruth Judson, researcher and senior economic project manager at the Federal Reserve’s global financial flows division, says that the study brings good news. “When counterfeit notes of reasonable quality are considered, losses to the U.S. public from only the high-quality counterfeits of the most commonly used notes, the $20 and smaller denominations, are minuscule.” Although the ideal number of counterfeits is zero, a radical drop in circulating fakes is worth celebrating.
A version of this article appears in the April 2025 issue of The Numismatist (money.org).