Patent ID: 8467591

Claim:
A method of processing currency bills comprising: receiving a plurality of currency bills in an input receptacle of a document processing system, each currency bill including a respective serial number; transporting the plurality of currency bills along a transport path, in a serial fashion, from the input receptacle to an output receptacle; imaging each of the plurality of currency bills with an image scanner positioned adjacent to the transport path to produce image data, the image data being reproducible as a visually readable image of at least a portion of each of the plurality of currency bills; extracting the serial numbers from the image data for each of the currency bills; simultaneously to the transporting of a portion of the plurality of currency bills, comparing extracted serial numbers with a plurality of serial numbers in a first currency bill database to determine if a currency bill associated with an extracted serial number is a suspect currency bill; and comparing each extracted serial number with a plurality of serial numbers in a second currency bill database to determine if one of the plurality of currency bills associated with an extracted serial number is a suspect currency bill.