As part of our festive season content, the “Cape Argus” retrieved articles from its archives looking at what made news in 1922, and 2002.
The article below was published in the “Cape Argus” dated Cape Town, Thursday, June 15, 1922.
(Note: The author of the original article is not mentioned or referred to in the article)
Bogus bank notes – magazine illustrations palmed off
Johannesburg, Thursday – An audacious attempt to foist on the public a “dummy” of the new South African Reserve Bank notes for £1 has come to the notice of the police authorities in Johannesburg, and if it shows nothing else it reveals the fact that there are in Johannesburg people with a good deal of criminal initiative.
Incidentally, the trick has been due to the innocent publication in the South African Banking Magazine, the official organ of the South African Society of Bank Officials, of a reproduction of the Reserve Bank note.
In the May issue of that journal an article appears on the note and is illustrated by a photograph of the front of the note in English and another of the back in Dutch.
Copies of the May issues of the South African Banking Magazine have apparently fallen into the hands of some individual who conceived the idea that if he cut out the back and front of the note and stuck the two sides together, he might present the note as genuine and get its equivalent in hard cash, and he has been successful in at least two instances known to authorities, who now which to warn the public of what is happening.
In one instance a “dummy” is known to have been passed into a branch of Standard Bank in town where the fraud was discovered, and another into a branch of the same bank at Fordsburg with like result.
In one case the note had passed through two or three hands before it reached the bank without the fact that it was a dummy being known. In the second case an actual cash purchase is reported to have been made and change given.
There is, however, one salient fact by which this particular dummy note can be recognised, and that is by its number.
The number of the note published as an illustration in the banking magazine is 102840, and any other dummies there may be abroad must possess the same number.
Beware, therefore, of any Reserve Bank note numbered 102840.
Seen today on what has happened, the secretary of the South African Society of Bank Officials, alluding to the illustration in the magazine, said the note was not reproduced until legal opinion had been taken as to whether the Society was within its rights in publishing it.
The note was really published so that country members might see what it looked like.
Asked about the circulation of the magazine, Mr Matravers said copies of it were sent to all members of the South African Society of Bank Officials, and to a certain number of subscribers, while reading clubs and the principal periodicals throughout the country received a copy.
No charge was made for the magazine and it was not sold on any bookstall, or sold at all for that matter. Obviously there was no intention of publishing the illustration with malicious intent.
[Editor’s note: The South African Reserve Bank printed its first run of £1 (equivalent to £58.09 in 2021) notes in 1922.]