Mike Miller, the owner of Wilbert’s downtown, sent Scene the above photo yesterday. 

“Look at the bill we took in this past weekend,” he said. “Look closely. Movie production is so great for our city!” 

From this up-close vantage, seeing that the $100 bill says “For Motion Picture Use Only” is pretty clear. It’s almost like a Benjamin Franklin thought bubble. But the bill is otherwise a very close replica, and amidst the sweat and noise of a weekend crowd, it’d be easy to mistake for the real thing.

The list of ‘pros’ for hosting major film productions in Cleveland is long indeed: economic boost for local businesses, jobs for film school grads, Tremont celeb sightings. But along with outlandish unplanned road closures, we can now add “counterfeit money” to the list of ‘cons.’

This article appears in Jun 8-14, 2016.

Sam Allard is a former senior writer at Scene.

6 replies on “Downtown Cleveland Bar Got Paid with Fake $100 Bill From Movie Set”

  1. Back in the day, a political party creatively used a fake check in a campaign mailer — and a couple actually got cashed at banks.

  2. “Look closely. Movie production is so great for our city!” That bill is immediately recognizable as fake. Don’t blame the production for your server being stupid

  3. How about, don’t try to defraud your wait-staff. It is clearly fake now, but in a packed bar full of inebriated butts with low light conditions, it’s a different story. They took advantage of the chaos of the situation. But thanks guys, now every time someone presents cash, they will have to run it through the anti-counterfeiting device now. That’s really going to speed up service.

  4. Kevin, what are you talking about? Running through devices? The pens/markers that are used to detect fake bills cost less than $2 and take 5 seconds to use, and will do nothing to effect service.

  5. You can buy a stack of these on Amazon for 24.00, just because a movie is in town that did not even have fake money in it you have to point a finger.

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