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

They return the physical bills to the local Federal Reserve, which passes it to the bureau of Printing and Engraving who shreds the paper. The Federal Reserve credits the bank’s account for the amount.

Answer 2

It’s taken out of circulation. Same thing if the bank receives money that’s been destroyed, covered in blood or other biological substances.

Answer 3

Banks can send money back to the treasury and have the bills replaced with new ones.

You can too. If you had a stash of bills and they were burned in a fire. As long as they can find 51% off the bill and the serial number, they’ll replace it

Small edit, fire or other damage, water, critters, Whatever. Remember seeing on a show somewhere people sitting in a room basically doing jigsaw puzzles with a pile of water rotted bills.

Answer 4

[deleted]

Answer 5

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/

Answer 6

Left out of here is that few banks still use this practice because it sucks to have someone rob your bank, get hurt by your dye pack, then sue you and win. They’re a liability. I worked in a retail bank branch 25 years ago that didn’t use them for this reason. Who still uses them?

Answer 7

The Federal reserve will replace any damaged bills 1:1

The damaged bills are subsequently destroyed/shredded to prevent there circulation.

The bank in turn ends up with the same amount of money they started with

Answer 8

Long time back, a robber stole money from the bank with a die pack. He puts it down the front of his pants and runs out the store. At some point the die pack exploded and blew his nads off. He sued the bank and won. But lost too. Not sure if that story is an urban legend, but it was told repeatedly at my branch office.

Answer 9

The banknotes are returned to the treasury and securely destroyed. You can buy a briquette of shredded cash for twenty or thirty dollars or so on ebay.

Answer 10

If it’s a rough neighborhood they just save the same bills for the next robbery. Saves money on dye packs.