Eli5: sincerely just out of curiosity, if a bank robber is caught after a dye pack explodes and the money is returned, what do they do with the money? Is it cleaned or do they throw it away?

Question

Edit: thank you for all your helpful responses! My curiosity is sated!

In: Economics

Answer 1

Banks return damaged bills with their deposits to their Federal Reserve Bank. Damaged bills are filtered out by a machine and shredded.

Source: I recently saw this at the Kansas City Fed’s Money Museum, which is definitely worth checking out: https://www.kansascityfed.org/moneymuseum/