Expert Completes £4,000 Jigsaw Made of Banknotes
Liu Hui-fen, a Taiwanese justice ministry specialist, was presented with an almost impossible task when she was given a bag of 200 mutilated $1,000 bank notes that had inadvertently been dropped into a shredder.
She pieced together all of the bank notes, some of which had been torn in as many as 20 places into one £4,000 jigsaw puzzle.
It took the 30 year-old forensic scientist seven days to reassemble all of the cash. In looking at the incredible pile of paper scraps before her, she developed a plan of action.
She began by finding the Chinese character guo (which stands for country) on each of the 200 bills and worked her way outward.
Liu was happy to help out the businessman known only as Lin, but admitted that this was the most difficult task she had ever accomplished
Liu wears many hats, so to speak, but she usually investigates handwriting samples but has worked with torn cash before torn cash many times in past five years.
Taiwan’s Justice Ministry, which is located in the capital city of Taipei, has a special investigations unit that offers a free service repairing damaged cash. Often bills are destroyed due to fires and such and the ministry receives around 250 cases of mutilated notes each year.
Liu did a great job and the central bank determined that the shredded notes had been restored to its requirement for three-quarter completeness.
I’m sorry the job brought her so much trouble,” said an embarrassed and very grateful Lin.
Is there a moral to this story?
Probably not, except for maybe avoiding shredders after returning from the bank.
(Link)
MDeeDubroff
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