30 Million New $100 Bills Destroyed Due To Ink Error


A total of 30 million new $100 bills were destroyed due to an ink error which ruined them, rendering them “illegal tender.”

A printing error known as “mashing” is the culprit as the federal reserve suffers another setback in its plight to introduce the new bills. Mashing occurs when an excess of ink is applied to the paper. As a result, the whole lot needs to be completely destroyed.

A spokesman from the BEP, (Bureau of Engraving and Printing), told David Wolman of the New Yorker:

“This time, recent batches of cash from the Washington, D.C., plant contained ‘clearly unacceptable’ bills intermixed with passable ones, according to a July memo to employees from Larry Felix, the bureau’s director,”

Wolman goes on to explain: “So the Fed is returning more than thirty million hundred-dollar notes and demanding its money back, Felix wrote. Another thirty billion dollars’ worth of paper sits in limbo awaiting examination, and Fed officials have informed the bureau that they will not accept any hundred-dollar notes made at the Washington, D.C., facility until further notice.”

The latest $100 bill screw-up is one of many which has plagued the federal reserve. A recent printing error meant that bills were printed with a black spot on them and also needed to be destroyed. Not to mention that little under a year ago a large shipment of newly printed bills was stolen by thieves.

The spokesperson from the BEP said that they are “Investigating this issue to determine the root cause,” continuing,”The $100 notes returned to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing had a small proportion of notes affected by mashing, which were included with many, good, quality notes. It’s expected only a marginal fraction of the notes will be unacceptable,”

When the new bills finally do get printed properly they are going to look pretty smart. They will also be very hard to forge as they will have colors that change when the bills are bent, and a 3-D anti-counterfeit strip inside the new $100 bills..

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