Fake money goes by several names depending on the context. Currency produced to imitate real government-issued money is called counterfeit money. But “fake money” can also refer to play money used in board games, prop money used in films, or historical substitutes like scrip. Each type has its own terminology and legal standing.
Counterfeit Money
“Counterfeit” is the primary legal and everyday term for currency deliberately made to look like genuine government-issued money. Under federal law (Title 18, Chapter 25 of the U.S. Code), counterfeit refers to obligations, securities, coins, or bars that are falsely made, forged, or created in resemblance of genuine items. It is the word used by the Secret Service, law enforcement, and courts.
Several related legal terms describe specific aspects of creating or using counterfeit currency:
- Forged: A document or instrument that has been falsely altered, signed, or endorsed to appear genuine.
- Altered: Genuine currency that has been modified to misrepresent its value, such as changing a $1 bill to look like a $100 bill.
- Uttering: The act of knowingly passing, selling, or attempting to use counterfeit money. You can be charged with uttering even if you didn’t make the fake bills yourself.
- Fictitious obligations: Fake financial instruments designed to look like they were issued by a government or official organization, even if they don’t closely copy a specific real bill or bond.
Each of these carries serious federal penalties. Manufacturing counterfeit currency and knowingly spending it are separate crimes, meaning a person who both prints and spends fake bills faces multiple charges.
Slang Terms for Fake or Illicit Money
Outside of legal contexts, people have invented plenty of informal names for illegitimate currency or dishonest payments. “Funny money” is probably the most widely recognized slang term for counterfeit bills. “Bogus” was used as early as the 1800s to describe both fake coins and the machines used to stamp them.
“Boodle” originally referred to graft money, whether already stolen or potentially stolen, and has been used loosely to describe any dishonest cash. “Payola,” which entered English in 1938, describes illegal payments made for commercial favors, like bribing radio DJs to play certain songs. While payola involves real currency, the term carries the same sense of illegitimacy that surrounds counterfeiting.
Play Money and Prop Money
Not all fake money is illegal. Play money is the broad term for pretend currency used in board games, classrooms, and children’s toys. The U.S. Currency Education Program even offers printable play money designed to help kids learn to recognize and count real denominations. Board games like Monopoly come with their own branded bills, and “Monopoly money” has become a casual phrase people use to describe any sum of money that feels unreal or inflated.
Prop money (also called motion picture money or theatrical money) is fake currency manufactured specifically for use in movies, television, and photo shoots. Federal regulations require prop bills to be clearly distinguishable from real currency. They must be either significantly larger or smaller than actual bills, printed on only one side, or marked with “MOTION PICTURE USE ONLY” or similar text. Prop money that too closely resembles real currency can trigger a counterfeiting investigation, even if it was never intended to be spent.
Scrip and Alternative Currencies
Scrip is a term for substitute currency issued by private entities rather than a government. Historically, mining and lumber companies paid workers in scrip, paper coupons or metal tokens that could only be redeemed at company-owned stores. Workers sometimes called these tokens “flickers” or “clackers.” Scrip wasn’t counterfeit in the traditional sense since it didn’t imitate government money, but it functioned as a privately controlled replacement for it. Paper scrip was eventually replaced in many company towns by metal tokens stamped with their redemption value and marked as nontransferable.
Modern equivalents include gift cards, store credit, casino chips, and cryptocurrency tokens. These aren’t “fake” in a deceptive sense, but they share scrip’s core characteristic: they act like money within a limited system without being official government currency. The broader term for all of these is “private currency” or “complementary currency.”
How the Law Draws the Line
The distinction between legal and illegal fake money comes down to intent and resemblance. Play money and prop money are legal as long as they don’t look too much like real bills and aren’t used to deceive anyone. Counterfeit money is illegal because it’s designed to pass as genuine. Federal law targets every link in the chain: making it, possessing it with intent to use it, and spending it. Even holding counterfeit currency that you know is fake, with plans to pass it along, qualifies as “dealing in counterfeit obligations” under federal statute.
If you receive a bill you suspect is counterfeit, avoid trying to spend it. Passing it along knowingly, even to get rid of it, is the crime of uttering. The Secret Service asks that you handle the bill as little as possible, note who gave it to you, and turn it over to local police or a bank.