Patent ID: 7187795

Claim:
A system for processing documents, the system comprising: at least one input receptacle that receives a stack of documents; at least one output receptacle that receives the stack of documents; an image scanning system that obtains an image of at least a portion of at least one side of each document in the stack and extracts, from the document image, an amount of information which uniquely identifies the document; a transport mechanism that transports each of the documents in the stack, one at a time, from the at least one input receptacle, past the image scanning system, to the at least one output receptacle; a memory that stores an amount of information which identifies at least one counterfeit document; and a processor operating to compare the extracted amount of information which uniquely identifies each document in the stack to the stored amount of information which identifies at least one counterfeit document, and to identify, as a suspected counterfeit document, any document in the stack with matching information.